Whitney Barlow Robles

@wbarlowrobles.bsky.social

443 Followers 348 Following

Raleigh-based writer of natural history (and its history) 🐍 Author of CURIOUS SPECIES 🦝 http://bit.ly/3rMeLNQ 🐡 https://linktr.ee/wbarlowrobles 🐛 whitneybarlowrobles.com

A Google search, "what historical figures were famous for farting," yields two results in the AI summary:

Professional and Royal Farters
Roland the Farter: A 12th-century English flatulist and jester for King Henry II. He was famously granted a manor house and 30 acres of land in Suffolk in exchange for performing a yearly Christmas routine consisting of “unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum” (one jump, one whistle, and one fart) simultaneously.

Le Pétomane (Joseph Pujol): A late 19th-century French entertainer who performed at the Moulin Rouge. Known as the "fartomaniac", he possessed extraordinary control over his abdominal and sphincter muscles, allowing him to draw air in and expel it at varying pitches to imitate instruments or cannon fire.

"A Note to Readers" from Anne Salmond's book Aphrodite's Island asking readers for help finding four lost manuscripts related to the history of Tahiti.

Ziplock bag containing a sloughed, patterned snake skin

Publishers Marketplace announcement reading:

Historian, science writer, and author of CURIOUS SPECIES Whitney Barlow Robles's SPECIMANIA: LIFE, DEATH, & LOVE IN THE MUSEUM, a scientific love story of the adventure and madness of natural history collecting, tracing how it evolved into a desperate attempt at preservation in the face of the extinction crisis, to Ryan Harrington at Timber Press, by Zoe Pagnamenta at Calligraph (NA). Rights also to Connor Stait at Icon Books (UK), by Sally Holloway at Felicity Bryan Associates, on behalf of Calligraph. Rights:
rights@calligraphlit.com

Spanish-language worksheet in which pictures of things have been relegated into “the present” or “the past.” Things in the present column include computers and cars. Things of the past include typewriters and…chalkboards.

Merlin app screenshot showing a Great Horned Owl

A handful of pecans

Screenshot of an email from Lifetouch (a photography company for schools) announcing laser cats are back by popular demand. Laser cats are exactly what they sound like: a photo of your smiling child will be surrounded by lasers and disembodied cats.

CAPTCHA featuring many buckets

1585 portrait of a man in a fancy black and orange doublet that some scholars think is Christopher Marlowe. Others don't. I don't care. I just want the jacket.

Foldout engraving with a silverfish on top, pseudoscorpion bottom left, orabatid mite bottom right

Excerpt from CNN piece featuring this Trump quote: "The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been—Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future."

Whale with a tentacle from Ulisse Aldrovandi, De piscibus libri v. et de cetis lib. unus (1638 edition)

Wet Venus fly traps

A large-eared fennec fox in watercolor, with a cream body and black-tipped tail. A note inscribed in brown ink in the bottom-right corner reads “scale of three inches.”

James Bruce (attributed). Fennecus verdus (Fennec). Undated (18th century). Watercolor and graphite on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream laid paper. Yale Center for British Art (B1977.14.8701).

Roman and Kendall Roy from Succession wrestle one another

Cover of Keith McNally's memoir, titled I Regret Almost Everything

Screenshot of Sir Butts Bacon and a snapshot of his life: his birth in 1580, his death in 1661, and his burial in Suffolk.

A southern hognose snake hatchling, curled up on a bed of moss.

Screenshot of the wikipedia page for the "Jelly bean rule," put forth in 1994 by the FDA to declare that low-fat, low-sodium, and low-cholesterol foods—like jelly beans—cannot be called "healthy" simply because they lack the aforesaid.

Screen capture of a scientific paper describing juvenile grey falcons (Falco hypoleucos) as "begging and harassing their parents, strongly at times."

A detail from a page of the Yale Alumni Magazine reviewing the book Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History. Review text: "The word 'curiosity' has a convoluted and contradictory past," notes historian Robles in this captivating look at how "the [proverbial] thing that killed the cat" was also, in the eighteenth century, "the key to unlocking secrets of nature." That uneasy dualism is with us still. In this wide-ranging look at four groups of animals—corals, rattlesnakes, fish, and raccoons—Robles turns to historical archives and modern-day scientists alike to show how "this deliberately mixed bag of curious creatures helps capture the diverse ways animals have shaped human knowledge." Her book is about them and us, inextricably together and too often apart in the modern extinction era. "We are damned with animals," she writes, "damned without them."

Dora the tricolor cat folds up like a turtle beetle whilst asleep

Silhouette of a great blue heron, stooping on a high crooked branch in a loblolly pine

Photo of a salamander preserved in amber

An illustration of the genus Lucifer, both at actual size and magnified. Plate VII from John V. Thompson, Zoological Researches, and Illustrations; or, Natural History of Nondescript or Imperfectly Known Animals [. . .] (Cork, Ireland: [1828–1834]).