Specimen of the Week: Week Fifty-One
By Emma-Louise Nicholls, on 1 October 2012
As a zoologist there is nothing in the natural world that creeps me out. The word anus became part of my everyday vocabulary when teaching undergraduates comparative anatomy and I have dealt first-hand with plenty of what comes out of the anus throughout my years of animal encounters. I used to let my pet snails, which are slugs with better real estate, crawl all over me and there isn’t a creepy-crawly in the world that I would shy away from. However, there is one thing, one animal, one bizarre twist of evolution, which leaves me with a wrinkled nose and squinted eyes as I try to blur the vision in front of me into a more suitably unrecognisable smoosh of distant colours. But, not being one to be prejudice against gross things, you now get to share in my experience. This week’s Specimen of the Week is… (more…)