There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms -- if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a world not constructed for us. So much the better. The answers to moral dilemmas are not lying out there, waiting to be discovered. They reside, like the kingdom of God, within us -- the most difficult and inaccessible spot for any discovery or consensus.

Examples include the "masculinized genitalia in female hyenas exaptive use of an umbilicus as a brooding chamber by snails the shoulder hump of the giant Irish deer and several key features of human mentality. Marriage and family
Gould was married twice. Technical work on land snails
Most of Gould's empirical research pertained to land snails.

Most of Gould's empirical research was based on the land snail genera Poecilozonites and Cerion. Many of Gould's essays for the magazine Natural History were reprinted in collections such as Ever Since Darwin and The Panda's Thumb. He also contributed to evolutionary developmental biology and has received wide praise for his book Ontogeny and Phylogeny.