Bioparanoria

The "mammoth" (or is it?) in the tomb of Rekhmire On many occasions, there have been times in which unusual animals are depicted in ancient artwork, often leading to lengthy conversation and debate in the zoological literature. While we can handwave these illustrations as being stylized or inaccurate in their renderings of fauna (the notion that ancient peoples didn’t have imaginations or bad artists is such an untrue and bizarre idea), there is as well the possibility that they are meant to show actual oddities of nature that are lost to time. Each instance should therefore be considered on a case-by-case basis. One famous example, the subject of today’s post, is of a figure seen on the tomb decorations of Rekhmire , a nobleman from the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt the time period in which the North African empire was at the height of its power and influence. Rekhmire was an extremely minor figure in the long history of Egypt, but his tomb was recovered in great preservatio...

     I quite like zoological gardens and aquariums, for reasons that I hope to properly outline in this text. True, zoos can be noisy and crowded, but upon rare days in which it's just you and the animals, the experiences can be fantastic, allowing one to form a better appreciation of wildlife. I credit frequent trips to zoos as a young child as a key factor in my respect for the natural world. There's a lot of controversy surrounding zoos, some justifiable and some not. Unfortunately, I can't help but find those who write off all zoos as being "bad" are uneducated on the history of zoological gardens and their many conservation achievements. A Komodo Dragon at Singapore Zoo      As a better understanding of both the philosophy of animal welfare and the science of zoology has developed over the past few decades, the important question has arisen on if zoological gardens and aquariums are to be considered useful or ethical institutions. Many defenders claim ...

Welcome to Bioparanoria, the blogsite of Aiden Kinerk. Here I post articles on a myriad of topics, from zoology and history to politics and the arts. I'm a man who's intensely interested in every that is, and this site allows me an outlet to use my passion for writing to explore countless fascinating subjects. So long as it catches my special interest and I deem it worthy of a post, it will eventually become one. As for the curious title of this blog, it references a term developed by the obscure paleoartist John McLoughlin, evolutionary bioparanornia. It's defined as "an acute, often immobilizing sense of dread generated by fatigue in persons interested in both the current state of world affairs and the evolutionary history of life on Earth." It's not a psychiatric disorder, so much as a state of mind (one that's quite familiar to me) that the world-weary often have, and it ties into some of the issues that will be addressed over the course of this blog...