The Beauty of the Beastly: New Views on the Nature of Life"The beauty of the natural world lies in the details, and most of those details are not the stuff of calendar art", Natalie Angier writes in the introduction to The Beauty of the Beastly. "I have made it a kind of hobby, almost a mission, to write about organisms that many people find repugnant: spiders, scorpions, parasites, worms, rattlesnakes, dung beetles, hyenas. I have done so out of a perverse preference for subjects that other writers generally have ignored, and because I hope to inspire in readers an appreciation for diversity, for imagination, for the twisted, webbed, infinite possibility of the natural world. Every single story that nature tells is gorgeous". She has taken pains to learn her science from the molecule up, finding "the very pulse of the machine" in everything from the supple structure of DNA to the erotic ways of barn swallows, queen bees, and the endangered, otherworldly primate called the aye-aye. Angier knows all that scientists know - and sometimes more - about the power of symmetry in sexual relations, about the brutal courting habits of dolphins, about the grand deceit of orchids, about the impact of female and male preference on evolution. She knows how scientists go about their work, and she describes their ways, their visions, and their arguments. |
Contents
Mating for Life? | 3 |
The Urge to Cuddle | 11 |
Tell a Tale of InLaws | 15 |
Copyright | |
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activity allow animal appears approach become beetles begin behavior believe biologists birds blood body brain called cancer cause cells chemical chromosomes cockroaches complex considered creatures death depression disease dolphins dung eggs evidence evolutionary example face feel female fish genes genetic genistein give given grow growth happens heart histones hormone human hundred hyenas insects keep kill known learned least less live look male mammals mate molecular molecule mother nature observed offer offspring once orchid organism oxytocin pair parasites parents percent plant play possible protein reason relatives remains researchers result scientists scorpions seems sequences sexual signal single snake social species suggests suicide tail telomeres thing thought thousands tion tissue turn understand women worm young