Science

In 1844, the last remaining living pair of great auks – the "penguins of the north", as they have been called – were killed by three local fishermen on the small skerry Eldey, off the coast of Iceland. The skins were sold to collectors. Some two hundred years earlier, no one could have foreseen their extinction. In fact, the very existence of the extinction of species was heavily debated at the time.

Zombies have eaten their way into our brains. From the halloween party at your neighbour's to the plots of major Hollywood features, they've become part of our culture.

I recently wrote a blog post criticizing how evolution was used in very peculiar way. In an opinion piece, two Swedish academics claimed that we should eat the kind of diet that our bodies “were adapted to” – said to be the time when our distant relatives were hunters and gatherers.