Bridging The Chasm Between African Rockrubbers And Australian Rockhoppers

Robin and the Honey Badger’s mission is to recharge biology with originality for you, the non-specialist reader. Exploring the Bio-edge is a series of e-essays presenting lateral thoughts in search of ever more interesting stories from biology. In this e-essay: have rock hyraxes been shaped by a capricious Creator, or just recreational killing by baboons? We arrive at this original question by daring to negotiate the phylogenetic gulf between what zoologists have traditionally seen as separate creations: the eutherian mammals of Africa and the metatherian mammals of Australia. Our interpretation helps to make sense of the lack of evolutionary convergence between rock hyraxes and rock-wallabies – a seemingly monolithic anomaly defying the contours of biological cause and effect.

Each morning Robin and the Honey Badger wake up to a world of Nature with new curiosity. Which aspects of the natural world have been underlooked? Which adaptations or non-adaptations of organisms have been downplayed because of some theoretical bias? Which observations have yet to be integrated because of interdisciplinary timidity? How laterally can we think as we cruise the bewildering diversity of life forms on Earth? Join us in our mission of Exploring the Bio-edge in a series of e-essays that fearlessly - but accurately - cover all corners of biology.