Tuesday 18 June 2013

let me see you shake your tail-feathers

Science writer and teacher, Carl Zimmer, has a beautiful and provoking science video for TEDEducation (Technology, Entertainment, Design, perhaps best known for their annual conferences, brain-storming sessions and for their slogan of “ideas worth spreading,” which ponders how the evolution of feathers and flight might have evolved over the ages into the explosive variety and creativity we see in birds today.
 Nature is nothing if not resourceful and we are all witnesses to works-in-progress and not the finished-product, however it is still strange (no matter how the family resemblances surface) to re-think dinosaurs as something quirky and almost approachable, decorated with fuzz and fancy plumage like one of those off-breed prize hens or fashion pigeon, instead of something muscular and monstrous, like a Ray Harryhausen creation. It is sort of like being told all those marble sculptures of antiquity were no gleaming white and pristine as they are displayed (and copied) nowadays but rather all painted up in garish harlequin colours, with hair and eye-balls. A whole series of videos on different subjects can be found at the TEDEducation link.