Alexander Lee

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, was obsessed with falconry. This led him to write a truly revolutionary book on the subject.

The first of Earth’s creatures to hurtle into the Moon’s orbit were slow and sedentary residents of the Great Steppe.

Captivated by swarming cicadas, the young son of a freed slave was inspired to become one of the greatest minds of the American Enlightenment.

Does the intelligent sea mammal, long associated with Venus, the goddess of love, offer a clue to a lost jewel of the Renaissance?

Defying categorisation since its discovery, was the platypus a mammal, a reptile, or something else?

Roman poet Catullus transformed an unremarkable bird – the sparrow – into a contested symbol of eroticism.

Men who spent their working lives underground found a new world of freedom in racing birds.

Should the finger of blame be pointed at the marmot for the global spread of the plague?

Ungainly but fleet of foot, the flightless bird offers insights into the life of a legendary pharaoh.

It took millennia to find out.