Natural Histories

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.

What’s the meaning of the galloping herds painted on the walls of Lascaux’s cave system?

Putting a pig on trial appears to defy logic, but in medieval France it gave rural folk the illusion of order in a frightening world.

It took an Irish Gothic novelist to tie up centuries of demonic mythology surrounding this leathery, nocturnal mammal.

Plant, animal or other? The struggle to categorise jellyfish mirrors the desire to impose a hierarchy on the natural world.

For centuries, one grossly distorted woodcut defined the ideal of a rare beast.

No canine character has played a more crucial role in literature than Bendicò in Lampedusa’s The Leopard.