Python eats pig. But how does the python cope with all the calcium in the pig’s bones? A new study discovers an entirely new mechanism and a new type of intestinal cell

During the 1990s the Burmese Python (Python bivittatus) hit the headlines because of research done by Stephen Secor and Jared Diamond in Los Angeles. Secor was a postdoc in Diamond’s lab. Jared Diamond is of course the polymath who had three simultaneous careers: as a physiologist (in which capacity we have twice given invited papers at the same conference*); as an ornithologist and ecologist working in New Guinea; and as a student of the history of the human environment as exemplified by his...