Okay, Okay, the Dark Side of Pandas

Just in time for Mother’s Day Weekend, a most unsentimental piece by the NY Times’ Natalie Angier on the decidedly non-maternal behavior (at least as we think of it) in animals. And as a language watcher, I have to ask: Natalie, what up with all the alliteration and rhyme in this story? Case in point:

Other mothers, like pandas, practice a postnatal form of family planning, giving birth to what may be thought of as an heir and a spare, and then, when the heir fares well, walking away from the spare with nary a fare-thee-well.

Still, it’s well worth a read, complete with bizarro illos, as we say in the magazine business.