Did you miss? Bugs, genes & dinos

Highlights from OU science in the news this week:

Would you keep a hissing cockroach as a pet? How about a tarantula?

That was the question posed by Wendy Moore in an entertaining article for The Times about our many-legged friends

'Insects always engage kids,' Darren Mann, assistant curator of the entomology department of Oxford University's Museum of Natural History, told Wendy. 'If I take one of my tarantulas into the museum I will be covered with kids in seconds.'

Darren comments that up until the age of 6 or 7 children aren't afraid of creepie-crawlies but later on acquire 'learnt fear' from their parents.

In fact bugs make great pets: tarantulas are placid, entertaining and harmless (provided you buy the right type, apparently Mexican red-kneed are best). We can hear the clamour of 'Daddy, Daddy I want a tarantula!' growing, especially after George McGavin's spider-related adventures on Lost Land of the Jaguar.

Elsewhere words were on the agenda in New Scientist in a feature on the work of Simon Fisher of Oxford's Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, and colleagues, on the genetic basis of language.

In 2001 a team he was part of identified the FOXP2 gene. The team found that mutations of this gene severely disrupted people's language abilities to the extent that it was labelled 'the langage gene' in some quarters.

In fact, as the article explains, the truth is more complex as this gene emerged before dinosaurs walked the earth - and as we don't think they were big on chit-chat it's likely to have started out with other uses.

'It gives us a really important lesson,' Simon comments. 'Speech and language didn't just pop up out of nowhere. They're built on very highly conserved and evolutionarily ancient pathways.'

Dinosaurs were also on the agenda at last weekend's unveiling of a plaque honouring Oxford alumnus and former fellow William Buckland (1784-1856). Scholar and churchman Buckland is credited with creating the first scientific description of a dinosaur, what he called the ‘Great Lizard of Stonesfield’.

Jim Kennedy, Director of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History told BBC Online: ‘William Buckland revolutionised the teaching of science in Oxford, and was the most charismatic teacher of his day.' Buckland's collections are still housed in the museum.

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