I’ve chosen ‘the zoological zeitgeist’ as the tagline for this blog partly in an attempt to encapsulate its desired ethos, but mainly due to opportunistic alliteration. 

My aim is to write about contemporary research and opinion in animal biology with reference to why it is of any interest to me, and hopefully why it should be of any interest to everyone else. With any luck I’ll be able to stick to this without digressing into inane, self-important drivel. More likely though I’ll fail at both of these objectives and just end up rambling about animals. The tagline may as well be: ‘May contain animals’.

Most wildlife enthusiasts will cite a chance encounter with a particularly elusive species in their formative years as the inspiration for a lifelong interest in the natural world. My influences are less grandiose and mostly revolve around television and film. I’m sure I wouldn’t be writing a blog about zoology now if it wasn’t for: Attenborough, Animal Hospital, Pet Rescue, The Animals of Farthing Wood (see video of the opening theme below), The Lion King, and Jurassic Park. I will always maintain that the scene in which Dr. Grant first comes face-to-face with the brachiosaur is the most moving in cinema history (again see video below).

This isn’t to say that I’ve lived out all my wildlife encounters through talking lions, an eccentric Aussie, and fictional palaeontologists. I’ve spent the last four summers working at Tiggywinkle’s Wildlife Hospital in Buckinghamshire as a baby bird and mammal feeder, and so have been face-to-face with most of Britain’s wildlife. Interspersed with this I studied at the University of Birmingham for a BSc in Biological Sciences (specializing in Zoology surprise surprise), and am now at the Silwood Park campus of Imperial College for an MSc in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation.     

Please feel free to comment on any of the blog posts, or failing that, on how ridiculous my stupid little head looks on the top right of this page.