The Biologist (12th Expedition)

The Biologist
Real name	Unknown
Known as	The biologist Ghost Bird
Occupation	Field biologist
Status	Transformed inside Area X
Appears in	Annihilation Acceptance

“I am the last casualty of both the eleventh and the twelfth expeditions. I am not coming home.”
—The last words of the biologist's Journal in Annihilation.

The biologist is the narrator and protagonist of Annihilation and a member of the 12th Expedition. Her name is never revealed to the reader, but its implied that her name is known by many of the other characters.

She is one of very few characters known to have survived for a long period of time inside of Area X. She entered via the Twelfth expedition and later became a giant sea creature with a body mirroring the ecosystems she studied, which Control and Ghost Bird encounter in Acceptance.

Personality

“She's willing to complicate even the simple business of stating her name. [...] She has a kind of self-possession that comes not just from knowing who she is but from knowing that, if it comes down to it, she needs no one. Some professionals might diagnose that as a disorder, but in the biologist it comes across as an absolute and unbending clarity.”
—The psychologist in Acceptance.

The biologist describes herself as an "chronic introvert" with little-to-no social life, unlike her husband, who was very sociable and had many friends. Her socialization was almost entirely limited to her husband's gatherings with his friends, and even then she was not actively participating in conversation. All of her interests revolve around her work as a biologist, and she hates both small and "broad" talk (like politics, religion, or hobbies). This flighty nature and lack of relationships earned her the nickname "Ghost Bird" from her husband.

The defining feature of the biologist is her obsession with nature, particularly with the study and observation of flora and fauna in the transitional- and contained-ecosystems around her. She prides herself on her ability to fall deeply into her observations and lose herself to the environment. She highlights an abandoned swimming pool, an overgrown empty lot, and a collection of tidal pools in Rock Bay as examples of her becoming obsessed with specific ecosystems. These spaces offered distraction and escape as well as an outlet for her mind. The biologist cares more about those spaces than anything, even her husband, and they are crucial parts of who she is. To her, nature and wildlife is much more important than human connection.

Despite how much the biologist likes to be alone, she fears ending up completely alone or being seen as separate from the herd. When her research grant at Rock Bay ran out, she, while sad, was relieved because it meant she would not turn into "the person the locals saw out on the rocks and still thought of as an outsider". Additionally, the biologist enjoys socializing with the other members of the Twelfth expedition and even drunkenly admits a desire to keep in touch with them. The biologist seems to desire relationships with people, but simultaneously wants to exist apart from people. She wants to be a part of the human ecosystem without influencing it.

“Fun for me was sneaking off to peer into a tidal pool, to grasp the intricacies of the creatures that lived there. Sustenance for me was tied to ecosystem and habitat, orgasm the sudden realization of the interconnectivity of living things. Observation had always meant more to me than interaction [...] My sole gift or talent, I believe now, was that places could impress themselves upon me, and I could become a part of them with ease.”
—The biologist in Annihilation.

Physical appearance

A physical description of her doppelgänger, Ghost Bird, is offered in Authority:

“The biologist’s hair had been long and dark brown, almost black [...] She had dark, thick eyebrows, green eyes, a slight, slightly off-center nose (broken once, falling on rocks), and high cheekbones that spoke to the strong Asian heritage on one side of her family. Her chapped lips were surprisingly full for such a thin frown. [...] Even sitting down at the table, she somehow projected a sense of being physically strong, with a ridge of thick muscle where her neck met her shoulders.”
—Control in Authority.

Control, in addition to the description, notes that she must be close to six feet tall. In Acceptance, The psychologist also comments on the biologist's musculature and The Surveyor (12th Expedition) seems intimidated by the biologist's strength in Annihilation.

In Acceptance, Control and Ghost Bird encounter her mutated form on The Island:

“The mountain that was the biologist came up almost to the windowsill, so close she could have jumped down onto it's back. The suggestion of a flat, broad head plunging directly into torso. The suggestion, far to the east, already overshooting the lighthouse, of a vast curve and curl of the mouth, and the flanks carved by deep ridges like a whale's, and the dried seaweed, the kelp, that clung there, and the overwhelming ocean smell that came with it. The green-and-white stars of barnacles on its back in the hundreds of miniature craters, of tidal pools from time spent motionless in deep water, time lost inside that enormous brain. The scars of conflict with other monsters pale and dull against the biologist's skin. It had many, many eyes that were also like flowers or sea anemones spread open, the blossoming of many eyes—normal parietal, and simple—all across its body, a living constellation ripped from the night sky. Her eyes.”
—Ghost Bird in Acceptance.

Biography

Early Life

“Sometimes it felt as if I had been placed into a family rather than born into one.”
—The biologist in Annihilation.

The biologist, an only child, was a solitary figure from very early on, thanks in part to her parent's neglect and lack of positive social relationships. Her mother was an alcoholic artist and her father was a con-man. Her parents were concerned about how asocial the biologist was and would often lecture her about making new friends. However, eventually they made peace with it and the biologist and her parents largely ignored each other from that point on. The biologist was bullied in school. She once punched another student after being greeted in the lunch line.

In the biologist's childhood home, there was a small "kidney-shaped pool" that her parent's had no motivation to clean. As they lived there, the pool grew into a flourishing ecosystem (complete with fish, birds, insects, and wildlife) that fascinated the biologist. She greatly preferred peering into the pool and writing down observations over talking with her parents or other people her age. This swimming pool became an obsession for the biologist. She refused to read any books about biology or nature, instead wanted to learn from watching the creatures in their natural habitat.

When her family moved out, the loss of the swimming pool and uncertainty about it's future as an ecosystem deeply affected the biologist, even going so far as to call it "one of the great traumas" of her life.

Adult Life

“I was four years away from meeting my future husband, and at the time I wasn't looking for much of anything from anyone.”
—The biologist in Annihilation.

The biologist had a roommate for a short time during her first year of college, but at some point admitted that she preferred to live alone and moved out the next day to an apartment five miles from her campus.

The biologist spent most (if not all) of her adult life alone before meeting her husband. She describes flings and one-night stands during this time, but her husband was seemingly her first, maybe only, long-term relationship. She operated almost entirely on her own for years.

She spent two years in Rock Bay, on her third "and best" field assignment, studying the mussels found in the tide pools nearby. The biologist rented a house from a couple and completely lost herself in the research. The tide pools there became another of the biologist's obsessions, often losing hours just staring at the complex creatures moving about in the water. Her methods were unconventional and eccentric, so her research grant was not renewed. This made the biologist deeply sad and even as she was still working, she mourned the loss of the perfect solitude she had cultivated during her time there.

At one point while doing an internship at a National Park as a grad student, the biologist attacked three men while wearing a mask. The men had been harassing an injured owl: poking it with a stick and even trying to set it on fire. This was just one of a string of violent acts that took place during the biologist's two years there. She was never caught.

According to her file, the biologist also spent time studying burrowing owls in the desert, exploring a recently-burned plateau above a coastline, and hiking a mountain in a scrubland.

Marriage

“We clicked, by being opposites, and took pride in the idea that this made us strong. We reveled in this construct so much, for so long, that it was a wave that did not break until after we were married... and then it destroyed us over time, in depressingly familiar ways.”
—The biologist in Annihilation.

Twelfth Expedition

Main article: Twelfth expedition

“Our expedition was the first to enter Area X for more than two years [...] There were four of us: a biologist, an anthropologist, a surveyor, and a psychologist. I was the biologist.”
—The biologist in Annihilation.

The biologist applied to join the twelfth expedition due to her love of transitional-ecosystems. She saw Area X as the ultimate transitional-ecosystem. On the expedition, she takes extensive notes regarding the nature, wilderness, and biology of Area X, but entirely leaves out description of the other expedition members (unless she is describing their mutilated bodies).

Over the course of the expedition, the biologist recalls her time with her husband and falls in love with him again, this time with deeper understanding of who he was. She is also infected with "the brightness".

Post-expedition

“What am I to say? That I do not miss him?”
—The biologist in Acceptance.

Trivia

• While other members of the expedition refer to The Topographical Anomaly within Area X as a "tunnel" or simply "topographical anomaly", the biologist adamantly refers to it as a "Tower".
• While preparing for her participation in the twelfth expedition, the biologist imagined and dreamed about an enormous monster emerging from the ocean next to the team's camp, foreshadowing her eventual transformation.
• Lena is the biologist's movie counterpart, but the two are very different and have little in common personality wise.