Tetrapod Zoology is a blog by British paleontologist and zoologist Dr. Darren Naish that covers varied topics regarding tetrapods (which is to say, land-dwelling vertebrates). It is widely considered one of the best (if not the best) zoological blogs in the blogosphere, for although Naish is a dinosaur paleontologist by profession, he maintains a healthy interest in tetrapods of all kinds and his knowledge on them can border on almost-terrifying levels.
Due to the blog's diverse content as well as its frequent coverage of obscure tetrapods and obscure facts on well-known tetrapods, readers are almost guaranteed to learn something new. Unusually for the Internet, the comment sections on the blog are often just as valuable and informative as the blog posts themselves due to a tendency for readers (as well as Naish himself) to provide additional information and discussions in the comments.
Tetrapod Zoology is also associated with a podcast (which Naish co-hosts with artist John Conway), as well as a Twitter feed. The blog started out on Blogspot in 2006, then moved to Scienceblogs in 2007, and then to Scientific American in 2011. In 2018, it moved to the independent website tetzoo.com, thus sharing the same platform as the podcast. Naish has also made the majority of his technical papers (several of which were covered on his blog) freely available here.
This work provides examples of the following tropes:
- Always a Bigger Fish: Predatory animals frequently attack other predators.
- April Fools' Day: Naish used to prepare special blog posts for April Fools', usually presenting outlandish, fabricated "discoveries" about tetrapods, such as the amphisbaenian origin of mammals, the confirmation of Mokele-Mbembe as an extant sauropod, and Permian bears. These were often laced with satire of actual pseudoscientific ideas. Starting in 2018, however, Naish has dropped this tradition, partly in response to sentiments in the science outreach community that such jokes are counterproductive to effective science communication.
- Ascended to Carnivorism: Real life examples of this are a fairly common topic, such as cows & deer that eat birds.
- Australian Wildlife
- Bat Out of Hell: Not literally of course, but the hypercarnivorous ghost bats and (more unexpectedly) noctule bats can give off this vibe. The evolution of vampire bats has also been covered.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Naish normally allows cranks to comment as they please. (Thankfully, as far as popular blogs go there Tet Zoo hasn't suffered as many cranks as one might expect.) But when he does decide to reply to them, or finds that one really has overstepped the mark... Though by that time the crank is likely to have been already torn apart by regular Tet Zoo commenters who are less likely to hold back. And God help you if he actually writes an entire post in response to something a crank has said.
- Big Eater: The various animals in the "overenthusiastic swallowing" series, which covers instances where animals swallow things too large for them. A few examples have the swallowers surviving the ordeal, but most aren't that lucky.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Despite being skeptical of the actual existence of bigfoot and similar creatures, Darren has a strong interest in cryptozoology and has blogged about them several times.
- Clam Trap: A series of posts shows how this sometimes happens to shorebirds. It usually ends badly for the birds.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Essentially any "debate" between a crank and Naish or regular commenter David Marjanović goes this way.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The April Fools' joke on the scientific discovery of the Mokele Mbembe mentions "coelacanths" multiple times while listing "living fossils".note
- Extreme Omnivore: Gulls are known to eat cellphones and entire sets of toy soldiers, among other things.
- Feathered Fiend: Notably, the first ever Tet Zoo post covered eagle attacks on large prey (possibly including humans). Other topics on this trope have included aggression in cassowaries, aggression in steamer ducks, the brutality of bird fights, a video of a hooded crow pair goading two cats into fighting one another, etc.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: There were a few cases when Naish wrote posts about animals that aren't tetrapods. This was also the way he celebrated the 300th post at Tet Zoo V. 3.
- Giant Flyer: Vultures and azhdarchid pterosaurs have both been covered on the blog.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: As anyone well versed in zoology knows, this is definitely not (always) the case. Several posts have covered instances of normally herbivorous animals eating meat (as well as otherwise being aggressive).
- Kidnapping Bird of Prey: Naish's very first blog essay focused on this. The conclusion he reached was that large eagles are definitely capable of killing a small child, and that this has probably happened, but not necessarily of carrying one off.
- Killer Rabbit: Tapirs can kill people, great tits eat bat brains, softshell turtles can overturn boats, noctule bats hunt birds, steamer ducks beat up other waterfowl apparently for the heck of it...
- Lizard Folk: Naish really dislikes this trope as applied to hypothetical sapient dinosaurs, and he's not the only one.
- Mega Neko: Some posts have covered abnormally large feral cats.
- Misplaced Wildlife: This post mentions Spinosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus and Rugops all living together. However, Spinosaurus came from the Baharija and Kem Kem beds of Egypt & Morocco, whereas Rugops was found in the Nigerian Echkar formation (Carcharodontosaurus has been found in all those places).
- This also applies to living species as well; one blog post is about wild wallabies residing in the United Kingdom, not to mention numerous posts about sightings of large felids far from their native range.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Would you believe that rabbits are among "the freakiest of all mammals"?
- Babirusa are pigs with constantly growing tusks. If they let them grow too long, though, the tusks pierce their own skull.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: Somewhat averted, as the frugivory in alligators (and caiman) post shows. Played straight, however, in the post about crocodylians using sticks to lure waterbirds to their deaths.
- Not Quite Flight: Various gliding tetrapods have been covered, most notably lemurs. No, not flying lemurs (colugos). Actual lemurs. Really.
- Panthera Awesome: Aside from posts on regular big cats, "alien big cats" (rumored sightings of big cats far from their natural range) are a common topic.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Many blog posts cover conferences Naish attends as well as publications Naish has worked on.
- Running Gag: There's a recurring gag among commenters that someone will guess "gorgonopsian" or "ropen" whenever Naish does any "guess the animal" posts.
- Another running gag is Naish's utter fanboyism over babirusa, even leading to a picture of him mounting a babirusa like a horse.
- The fact that the discovery of the kabomani tapir was mentioned in two podcasts in a row has led to subsequent jokes that Naish and Conway need to mention it in every podcast. They even have merchandise of it.
- The longest comment thread in the history of the blog made "Permian bears" a running gag for a while.note
- Sea Monster:
- Whales, plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, etc.
- One of the only times Tet Zoo has ever dedicated a post to a non-tetrapod it was to the giant Jurassic fish Leedsichthys. Ironically, the post was about how said fish was probably not as large as often reported. It was still large enough to fit this trope though.
- Cryptozoological sea monsters are a regular subject.
- Series Mascot: Though it's not as prominent nowadays, for a time the babirusa was essentially the blog's icon.
- Stock Animal Diet: As many posts show, most animals in real life do not stick to these.
- Stock Animal Facts: Often averted, but apparently not even Naish can come up with much new for basilisk lizards.
- Swans A-Swimming: Highly aggressive ones, at that.
- Take That!: Sometimes towards various fringe groups, particularly in the April Fools' posts. Naish is also known for heavily criticizing the original "dinosauroid" thought experiment. He's also jabbed at the Clash of the Dinosaurs incident.
- Taking You with Me: Shown heavily in the "overenthusiastic swallowing" series, where many predators are shown choking to death on prey too large or spiny to swallow. Ditto the "when bivalves attack" series, which talks about seabirds getting parts of their bodies caught by bivalves and often dying.
- Threatening Shark: Sharks are not tetrapods, of course, but have been mentioned in passing, and on two occasions Naish actually devoted a full post to them.
- Toothy Bird: Mesozoic birds, of course, are also covered, and many of them had teeth.
- Vegetarian Carnivore: Fruit-eating alligators.