Dr helen czerski biography of michael

Every morning on my way to work, I go past a cluster of ducks bobbing about on the River Thames. I love living by a river, because you can see so many different sides to its character as the water height, flow speed, tides and the weather change. Spotting a pattern somewhere new can really change your perspective. While working on this series, my perspective on those ducks changed.

I see them squabbling and feeding and floating in all the colours of the rainbow, but if they look up from the water, they see me in all those colours and in the ultraviolet UV. Evolution has provided the push for many species to grow weird and wonderful sensors as part of their own bodies.

Dr helen czerski biography of michael: This week on Cleaning

Sharks are masters of the sensory world - they pretty much have the full set, including fantastically sensitive one-way nostrils. And when a shark scientist gave me a baby shark to hold underwater, it wriggled a bit, and then I turned it over and it just went limp. It was really weird. This is called tonic immobility , and all sharks do this if you turn them upside-down.

I got to peer up its nose, then I turned it over, it came back to life and then it just swam off.