Gallery of science tattoos

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Witty, smart and beautiful body art. Readers of Carl Zimmer's blog, The Loom, sent in pictures of and stories about their science-themed tattoos. Some are just amazing bits of work, including this one that looks like a standard butterfly on first glance, but is actually the four finch species that helped Charles Darwin formulate his early ideas on evolution. The tattoo's owner writes …

I am a developmental biologist by training. Actually, my Ph.D. thesis does not really have an evolutionary focus because I study joint regeneration in embryonic chick limb. However, I have been an evolution enthusiast and also an activist for educating public about the theory of evolution for a long time. I could not imagine a better tattoo: Darwin's finches arranged to look like a butterfly…I got it in 2009-Darwin's 200th anniversary and On The Origin of Species' 150th anniversary. I spent last few years reading and writing a lot on evolution, as well as playing the "editor-in-chief" for translating UC Berkeley's Understanding Evolution website into Turkish (Evrimi Anlamak – a completely volunteer work by our group called Hard-workers for Evolution). All in all, I am a biologist and "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"… So, I celebrate it with four finches on my shoulder!

The Loom: Science Tattoo Emporium

(Thanks to Hannah Lucy King!)