John George Children (1777–1852)

John George Children described several species of insects and animals while working at the British Museum in London, England, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Children also conducted research on chemical batteries called voltaic cells and briefly studied and manufactured gunpowder. One of the species he described, the Children’s python, or Antaresia children, was used in the twenty-first century as the subject of experiments that involved the biological cost of reproduction in snakes. Those experiments helped examine the importance of thermoregulation during gestation as a possible reason for the evolution of live birth in previously egg-laying species. By researching the Children’s python, Children contributed to the many species of animals used to research reproductive physiology.