My name is Zoe Cormier and I am a freelance writer from Toronto, Canada. I specialize in stories relating to biology, the environment, and health.

But that’s not what I really wanted to be. I wanted to be David Attenborough. I wanted to make wildlife documentaries. I didn’t want to write depressing articles about how we’ve ruined the planet. I wanted to inspire people by showing them how amazing life on earth is.

Politics, history, and the arts are all staples for a well-tuned mind. But too often politics can be cynical, history depressing, and the arts pretentious. But biology? I can’t get jaded about it. Living things are endlessly fascinating. Complex beyond our imagination. Brilliantly inventive and creative. Infinitely varied and changing.

Which was the original idea for this blog – to document all that is beautiful, inspiring, weird and baffling about living things. To remind us that biology isn’t just about test tubes, statistics and bunnies in mascara. It’s supposed to be about what it really means to be alive.

But it’s hard to revel in the absolute coolness of life when we’ve trashed the planet so bad. The web of life is slowly unravelling. And it’s only going to get worse.

There’s no point in this day and age writing about how amazing life on earth is without remembering that it’s in serious, serious trouble – and we need to act now if we want a future that’s worth living.

So I’m going to balance the good things, like photos of new species in the deep ocean, cool theories about how the brain works, and sickeningly cute wildlife photos (forgive me, I may have a serious science education, but I’m also a sucker for furry brown-eyed creatures – especially orangutans) with the bad things, like tropical deforestation, oceanic pollution, and toxic chemicals that give us cancer.

All served up with a healthy dose of black humour – it really is the only way to cope with reality.

Welcome to Zoetic – the blog for (as the word literally means) all things relating to life, whether beautiful, funny, perplexing, important, scary or depressing.