A Canadian biologist and mother of four offers a zoological survey of motherhood in the wild.
Using a wealth of research on instinctual behaviors, Bondar (Wild Sex: The Science Behind Mating in the Animal Kingdom, 2016) hopes new lessons can be learned about the human species through the examination of wild animals and their processes of parenthood. As numerous as they are diverse, there are no wrong approaches to the multifaceted business of motherhood. These diverse processes encompass the “broadcast spawning” of aquatic animals and the oviparity of amphibians, but the author also discusses the complicated factors associated with the egg-laying systems of certain bird species and the intrusive deceit of nest parasitism, in which a menacing foreign species deposits eggs into another nest to be hatched. Bondar also introduces readers to female mammals within the animal kingdom who must jockey for the prized social positioning necessary for even a chance at reproduction, meerkats that adopt a complex hierarchy of dominance to achieve this particular goal, and female hyenas whose retractable “pseudopenises” make gender recognition virtually impossible. From conception to birth, the author vibrantly analyzes a wide array of breeding practices and rearing methods from the cooperative to the communal; each is intriguing, unique, and “evolutionarily stable and successful.” Some of these reproductive enigmas and oddities are positively captivating. For example, many mammalian and primate females can enact a suspended animation state of gestational “diapause” until environmental conditions become optimal for birthing; toothed whales are the only other group of animals that experience menopause “to the extent that humans do.” Throughout, the author stresses how many issues that arise within the animal kingdom occur just as naturally in human child-rearing as well. The heartbreaking closing chapter on grieving animal mothers is especially poignant, providing an illuminating coda to this literary embrace of parenthood in the wild kingdom.
A study brimming with endlessly fascinating fodder for animal lovers.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68177-665-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
Categories: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Did you like this book?
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.
GET IT
Award-winning scientist Jahren (Geology and Geophysics/Univ. of Hawaii) delivers a personal memoir and a paean to the natural world.
The author’s father was a physics and earth science teacher who encouraged her play in the laboratory, and her mother was a student of English literature who nurtured her love of reading. Both of these early influences engrossingly combine in this adroit story of a dedication to science. Jahren’s journey from struggling student to struggling scientist has the narrative tension of a novel and characters she imbues with real depth. The heroes in this tale are the plants that the author studies, and throughout, she employs her facility with words to engage her readers. We learn much along the way—e.g., how the willow tree clones itself, the courage of a seed’s first root, the symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, and the airborne signals used by trees in their ongoing war against insects. Trees are of key interest to Jahren, and at times she waxes poetic: “Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.” The author draws many parallels between her subjects and herself. This is her story, after all, and we are engaged beyond expectation as she relates her struggle in building and running laboratory after laboratory at the universities that have employed her. Present throughout is her lab partner, a disaffected genius named Bill, whom she recruited when she was a graduate student at Berkeley and with whom she’s worked ever since. The author’s tenacity, hope, and gratitude are all evident as she and Bill chase the sweetness of discovery in the face of the harsh economic realities of the research scientist.
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87493-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
