Alexander Lee

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.

Exploring the meaning of Lascaux’s galloping herds.

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.