Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

An eye is not an eye is not an eye

Posted 16 Jan 2016 / 0

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons National Geographic “Inside the Eye: Nature’s Most Exquisite Creation” This is another fantastic article by Ed Yong that very nicely captures the relativistic nature of the evolutionary process. We basically call any light-sensing organ an “eye”, but animals have eyes that perform radically different functions. How eyes work is a function Read More

A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Convergence, Divergence, Fossil Data, Interactions, Photography, Uncategorized

The costly nature of wind pollination

Posted 05 May 2015 / 2

It is once again that time of year, the time when trees that rely on wind pollination dump a really absurd amount of pollen into the air. The surfaces of outdoor objects become covered in a layer of yellow dust that is shockingly visible to the naked eye. When it rains, run-off nearly glows yellow Read More

A Minor Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Divergence, Pollination

Ben Knight’s “Phyletic gradualism / Punctuated equilibrium”

Posted 03 Aug 2014 / 0

My good friend, artist Ben Knight, has created a nice chart that captures the difference between two different theories of macroevolution: phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium.

A Minor Post, Art & Design, Divergence, Evolution, Information Design, Macroevolution, Science in Art & Design, Speciation, Web

Cognitive Ethology and Cat Companionship

Posted 17 Mar 2014 / 0

The Chronicle of Higher Education “Animal Magnetism” I still think that we would be appalled and offended if we could literally read the inner emotional dialogue of a cat, but I have to agree with the main contention of Barash and Lipton: that animals have feelings and connections with each other — and sometimes with Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Belief, Consciousness, Data Limitation, Divergence, Emotion, Fluidity of Knowledge, Hypothesis Testing, Neuroscience