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Thrifty Thursday: Natural Selection on a Bathroom Tile

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500.

[Apple iPhone 4s - $300]

Easy-clean surfaces are tough on bar bathroom graffiti. Scrawlings that aspire to permanence retreat to the tiny writable spaces between the tiles. It's a natural selection of sorts.


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This particular message was inscribed above a urinal in Urbana, Illinois. As this was not a place I normally hang around with professional SLR gear, my iPhone 4S came to the rescue.

Alex Wild is Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies the evolutionary history of ants. In 2003 he founded a photography business as an aesthetic complement to his scientific work, and his natural history photographs appear in numerous museums, books and media outlets.

More by Alex Wild