New efforts (see below) in France are adding info to the past, isolated attempts to classify the different kinds of teddy bear. The three most celebrated academic studies are: “The Survival of the Cutest: Who’s Responsible for the Evolution of the Teddy Bear?” P.H. Morris, V. Reddy, and R.C. Bunting, Animal Behaviour, vol. 50, 1995, pp. […]
Tag: taxonomy
Towards a LEGO Minifigures® taxonomy
Dr. Christoph Bartneck, at the University of Canterbury HITLab NZ, not only investigates whether robot cats and dogs can be programmed to convincingly display ‘pain’, he also develops taxonomical models for LEGO Minifigures® – of which there are now more than 4000 (and 3600 are listed in his book ‘The Unofficial LEGO Minifigure® Catalog’ He […]
Bugged by buggy bug IDs
Alex Wild writes in his Compound Eye blog: Why are media insects misidentified? That’s not a bee…. How does a fly end up advertising a book whose target audience, not to mention the mortified authors, will instantly recognize as a mistake? Publishers, photo editors, and stock agencies—those entities that purchase from image creators—trust photographers to correctly […]
The gentleman’s least favorite museum
The Disillusioned Taxonomist writes: Guzelyurt Museum of Nature and Archaeology is my least favourite museum of all that I have been to. I admire the fact that northern Cyprus has a museum dedicated to its natural and historical treasures, but I can’t help but feel a little disheartened by the way the specimens look, and […]