Who says scientists can’t write? Moselio Schaechter finds a lovely passage about a lowly fungus from 1884.
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Carl Zimmer writes about science regularly for the New York Times and magazines such as Discover, where he is a contributing editor and columnist.
He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which is The Tangled Bank: An Introduction To Evolution. His website is carlzimmer.com and his address is [ blog at carlzimmer dot com ].
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The Tangled Bank is the best written and best illustrated introduction to evolution of the Darwin centennial decade, and also the most conversant with ongoing research.--E. O. Wilson, Harvard University
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- DISCOVERmagazine: Living World
- DISCOVER Blogs: Bad Astronomy
August 7th, 2007 at 12:57 am
and, like just about every story in biology, there’s a parasite story there too. Since Pilobolus goes a progress through the guts of a cow and exits in a pile of dung and cows don’t graze around such piles it has developed a kind of hydrolic rocket mechanism to launch itself from dung to grass. If that wasn’t neat enough the larvae of a lungworm (can’t remember which species) that also faces the problem of getting from dung to grass to cow actually invades the Pilobus fungi and gets a free ride.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:45 am
How come we post about the same unusual organism on the same day?