Consider inviting Tatiana to your next dinner party—most assuredly there’ll never be a dull moment.
In the guise of an advice-to-the-lovelorn column, evolutionary biologist Judson masterfully conveys astonishing facts and figures about the sex lives of many, many creatures great and small.
“Dear Dr. Tatiana, I’m a queen bee, and I’m worried. All my lovers leave their genitals inside me and then drop dead. Is this normal? Perplexed in Cloverhill.” From openers like this, Tatiana provides reassurance along with a biological/natural selection rationale. “For your lovers, this is the way the world ends—with a bang, not a whimper,” she jokes, then explains that by plugging up the queen, the drone hopes to prevent her from coupling with another. And so it goes as Judson surveys the plant/animal/fungal kingdoms’ repertoire of sexual practices. They defy easy summary, so her chapters cluster in three parts: “Let Slip the Whores of War!” (long sex acts, the problems of sperm-making, lots and lots of philandering); “The Evolution of Depravity” (rape, necrophilia, the cannibalism of lady manti and spiders); and “Are Men Necessary? Usually, But Not Always,” which concludes with a chapter about Philodena roseola, a half-millimeter-long creature that has been reproducing asexually for 85 million years. This flouts the usual theories that eukaryotes (creatures with their genes enclosed in a cell nucleus) need gene recombination (meiosis) and the mixing up of genes that results when two parents have sex to avoid lethal mutations and fatal infections. Miss Philodena explains that her line has escaped extinction by periodically going dormant and blowing away, thus making a new life in a new environment. The tour-de-force backdrop for this chapter parodies the Jerry Springer TV show. You might think that all this whimsy would pall or seem heavy-handed. It doesn’t. Judson brings it off with great style and wit, laced with the authority of a research evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London.
Consider inviting Tatiana to your next dinner party—most assuredly there’ll never be a dull moment.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-6331-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2002
Ape-language specialist Savage-Rumbaugh and science writer Lewin (co-author of Origins with Richard Leakey, 1977) run the superchimp Kanzi past us once again with this latest in the current deluge of books on animal brain power. Kanzi—already a phenom with Newsweek, Time, and National Geographic covers to his credit—is an ape with a mind of his own; his facility with communication (via a special keyboard) is a marvel. But Kanzi gets only limited airtime here; he's more like a sideshow barker's prop to entice the customers. The authors spend most of the book going over the history of ape-language research (and it does go back: Samuel Pepys's name is mentioned), briefly rummage in linguistic theory (long enough to unconvincingly trash Noam Chomsky), and visit with other ape subjects. When it comes to the use of language by the great apes, the jury is still out; they might have even gone home. Theorists continue to debate the importance of production versus comprehension, to dispute intentionality, to worry about an ape's reflectiveness. It is to Savage-Rumbaugh's credit that she gives as much importance to glances, gestures, and postures as communicative modes as she does to utterances and keyboard talent. It seems quite clear that the apes have no interest in joining the Yale debating squad, so why put them to that measure? When Kanzi is brought into the story, the tone lightens. He is a clever, humorous, astonishing character, and his developing relationship with Savage-Rumbaugh is where Lewin really shines. The quickly sketched vignettes are uniformly winning: For instance, Savage-Rumbaugh has her keys snatched by an obstreperous member of the ape troupe. She asks Kanzi to get them back. He shuffles over to the offending ape, murmurs in his ear, and the keys are returned forthwith. Call this effort ``Notes Toward an Understanding,'' for every theory is conjecture, but there are also many fine nuggets to be mined. (Photos, not seen) (First serial to Discover)
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-58591-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
Lively writing and colorful anecdotes enhance this insightful look at an unexpected side of agriculture.
We’ve cultivated plants since the dawn of time; but all along, the plants have been cultivating us as well.
Pollan (A Place of My Own, 1997) uses four plant species to support his thesis: apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes. Each, by offering some quality that we humans find valuable, has managed to propagate itself throughout the world. In the process, each has generated more than its share of fascinating lore. Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) has become an icon of early American enterprise, creating orchards out of untamed forest. But the apples Chapman planted were meant not for eating, but for cider, the ubiquitous tipple of early America. Only when temperance began to give the apple a bad name did orchardmen switch to the sweet varieties for eating. The tulip boom in early 18th-century Holland saw prize bulbs selling for the price of a fashionable house in Amsterdam. Now, ironically, the plant that commands high prices in Amsterdam is marijuana, over the last few decades the focus of some of the most intense research in the botanical sciences (most of it conducted indoors, away from official eyes). The humble potato, for its part, has come a long way since its origins as an Andean weed: The russet Burbank, for example, which yields perfect fries for the fast-food trade, dominates the US market almost to the exclusion of all other taters, and its cultivation depends heavily on chemicals nastier than anything the cannabis bud secretes. Pollan keeps the reader aware of how the plants induce us to spread their genetic material to new environments—and how the preservation of natural variability is a key to keeping them (and us) healthy.
Lively writing and colorful anecdotes enhance this insightful look at an unexpected side of agriculture.Pub Date: May 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-50129-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
