Jacob Tennessen

@jacobphd.bsky.social

435 Followers 328 Following

Scientist errant. Genetics, evolution, whimsy, awe. https://connects.catalyst.harvard.edu/Profiles/display/Person/173289 🧬🦟🐌🩸👤🦠🍓🐸🧬

A slide at Oregon Shakespeare Festival that asks, What’s a shrew?
Pacific chorus frog
Flyer warning about bison
Hidden Creatures by Dino Martins at a seaside setting
Candidate statement about aliens
Photo of Gene Cernan and myself in 1994, plus a newspaper column by me about Cernan’s astronaut career and Cernan’s autograph
Attack of the Clones poster
Me petting a dog while attending a talk
SMBC comic where a scientist describes their field like an excited six year old
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Announcement of World Malaria Day at Oregon Health & Science University
A red-dyed pumpkin pie with cream and cranberries depicting schizogony, in which malaria parasites divide within a red blood cell.
Fig 1A from Daron et al 2026 showing ecologically divergent collection sites in Gabon
Cans of vicious mosquito IPA
Missing square illusion such that four irregular shapes are arranged into two triangles of seemingly identical size and shape, except one has a section missing.
NY headline: Many Rare Mutations May Underpin Disease
Science article: Evolution and Functional Impact of Rare Coding Variation from Deep Sequencing of Human Exomes
A man peering through a gap in a large tree
A metal monument to “Genetics” at the Clark R. Bavin National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory
Full frontal Swampy
Life-size sculpture of Swampy, a horse-like molluscivore
Poster with a snake on a progress pride flag that says: don’t tread on anyone
Anopheles darlingi. Credit: Romuald Carinci and Pascal Gaborit, Institut Pasteur de la Guyane, Cayenne, French Guiana
Upcoming Service The Science and Humanity of Gender March 29, 2026 - 9:15 and 11 am Cantabile, Deborah Willoughby, Jacob Jacobson Tennessen Biology teaches us that males and females form part of a continuous spectrum rather than a rigid binary. Come celebrate the diversity of nature, including human nature, that transcends simple classification.
Calvin and Hobbes comic speculating about the function of tails
Figure showing the evolutionary diversification of Lepidopteran larval appendages.
Baby T-rex R. Peterson / © AMNH
Tumblr thread about vegan vampires who have abandoned blood for coconut water
The Phantom Plague by Vidya Krishnan, a book about tuberculosis
Promotional image for Pixar's cancelled film Newt
Chart of measles cases by year in the US. Currently 1136 cases so far in 2026.
Figure from Lebel et al referencing characters from mythology, D&D, Marvel, and an internet meme ("honey badger don't care"). The title of paper itself names two other metaphors.
A man excited to be holding a horseshoe crab while wading in shallow water
Me holding a cow skull circa 1993
Roadrunner with hanging chiles
Painting showing Moctezuma and Cortés praying to their respective gods with their weapons forming a double helix foreshadowing their admixed descents
Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, 10th Duke of Alburquerque
Google translate result in which it changes the prompt "Why is the IQ..." to suggest low or high depending on location when translating
Description of Unitarian church service about evolution from vanu.ca
Passage of text from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17710279/
A drawing of a skunk spraying out a rainbow
Various small items beachcombed in coastal Alaska
Various souvenirs from Venezuela
Press release from 2001 describing how I was rescued off a mountain for being an idiot
Idiotic new AI tool in Microsoft Excel
Role play game description
Cover of Hedrick population genetics textbook featuring multicolored wovles
Herb Robert aka Stinky Bob
Cookie Monster doing his thing
tetrapyrrole biosynthetic pathway from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2883787/
Character from Back to the Future III saying "Run for fun? What the hell kind of fun is that?"
Scanning electron micrograph of blood cells infected with Plasmodium (artificial color)
Part of a figure on early animal evolution from: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-025-00983-6
Vanessa Carlton singing that she'd walk 1000 miles
Evarcha culicivora photo by Robert R. Jackson
Like cycle of Toxoplasma gondii, including "fearless" infected mouse about to be eaten. Source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2020.00036
Pelican
Amanita mushrooms
Monster Mash album cover