Mountainfilm: WTF Evolution?

07 May Mountainfilm: WTF Evolution?

When Mountainfilm director David Holbrooke first invited me to present at the festival this year, I have to admit I was a little surprised. I’m not a documentarian or visual artist. I’m not an environmental activist or mountaineer. I haven’t scaled any sheer rock faces, won any international awards or explored any active volcanoes (unless growing up in the general vicinity of Mount Rainier counts).

So what did I do that merited the great honor of being included in this year’s lineup? I made fun of weird animals on the Internet.

Let’s back up. I’m a science writer and editor, which means that my day job is to learn about science and craft stories about it that will appeal to the general public — and hopefully teach them a thing or two as well. I’ve covered everything from geology to environmental science to engineering, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the biological sciences and all of the strange and glorious discoveries they bring.

To see what I mean by “strange,” just take a look at the animal kingdom. The babirusa, for instance, a wild pig native to Indonesia, has overgrown teeth that erupt through its snout and curve backward around toward its own face. The tusks are, as far as biologists can tell, almost completely useless. The gum-leaf skeletonizer caterpillar, which has to shed its hard outer skeleton in order to grow, keeps a stack of its shed head cases piled on top of itself like a hat. No one knows why. A rodent called the antechinus mates itself to death. Marabou storks look like imaginary monsters. Wombats poop cubes. The list goes on…

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