Word: gould
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Gould has selected uniformly amusing and informative illustrations for his theme. In the essay that gives the book its title, he describes a thumb-like appendage on a panda's paw that helps it strip the leaves from bamboo shoots, a panda's favorite meal. The depiction of the panda in its natural habitat typifies the light yet information-filled passages that make this book eminently readable for the non-scientist...
Moving from bears to mice. Gould devotes one of his essays to an assessment of Mickey Mouse's physical transformation over the 50 years since he first appeared on film. Mickey has not merely failed to age during that time, he has gotten younger-looking. Through intricate scientific analysis--using a pair of precision calipers--Gould determined that Mickey's eyes, head and forehead all became larger as he aged, making him appear younger because large eyes and a bulging cranium are features common in infants. Gould extrapolates from the Mickey Mouse illustration to observe that human beings maintain much...
...SUBJECT MATTER of the book--which includes essays on relative brain size, Down's syndrome, and a mite that dies before it is born, in addition to discussions of cartoon characters--remains entertaining throughout in large part because of Gould's style. He allows us to share his feelings of excitement and wonder about the world of natural history. In "The Panda's Thumb" essay, for example, Gould tells us of his childhood adoration of pandas and how delighted he was "when the first fruits of our thaw with China went beyond ping pong to the shipment of two pandas...
Later in the book, in an essay called "Were Dinosaurs Dumb?," Gould takes us back to third grade and quotes from his textbook, the 1948 edition of Bertha Morris Partker's Animals of Yesterday, which the author admits he stole from P.S.26. Presenting the prevalent view of the huge reptiles, Gould writes...
...then Gould launches into a spirited detense of the much-maligned creatures, suggesting that their brains, albeit small for their body sizes in most cases, were quite adequate for the kind of life they...