Author: Michael Engelhard
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Blood Ties
There was a girl who met up with a wolf, back in Distant Time, when wolves were human. The wolf wanted her for his wife, even though he had two wives already. When he took her home, his two wives smelled her and knew she was human. After a while she had a child –…
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Furry Attractions: Polar Bears in the Zoo
In the western hemisphere, polar bears have lived in our midst since the Middle Ages, a result of our fascination with these charismatic carnivores. Already in 1252, Henry III of England kept a muzzled and chained polar bear, which was allowed to catch fish and frolic about in the Thames. The first unequivocally identifiable polar…
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Darwin’s Polar Bear
Many people may be aware that the beaks of Galápagos “finches” (in fact, the islands’ mockingbirds) helped Charles Darwin to develop his ideas about evolution. But few people realize that the polar bear too, informed his grand theory. Letting his fancy run wild, in On the Origin of Species, the man used to thinking in…