Like most children, I adored baby animals from an early age. I bonded deeply with a pet kitten; I campaigned (unsuccessfully but perennially) for a puppy; I delighted in caterpillars. In college, my biology classes introduced me to a profusion of marine larval forms, and a fascination with the true diversity of animal babies fully gripped me. I eventually earned a PhD in the biology of squid babies and, shortly afterward, produced two human babies of my own. I now live with my human family, a cat, and a garden full of grubs, caterpillars, maggots, and innumerable other babies. I read and write about science and nature, especially the intersection of the weird and the adorable.
I wrote
Nursery Earth: The Hidden World of Baby Animals and the Amazing Ingenuity of Life
I laughed so hard and learned so much from this collection of science-based answers to fictional letters from animals.
The author uses an “agony aunt” advice column format to describe bizarre reproductive acts and the evolutionary history behind them. I found the structure incredibly easy to read, and I kept wanting to share snippets with my friends and family.
Compared to reading newspaper advice columns, this book provides all the schadenfreude and none of the guilt since these animals didn’t actually write in for advice and don’t care whether or not you judge them for cannibalizing their mates.
If you have ever wondered why women always bite your head off or why one guy gets all the girls, if you have ever pondered why some men bring you balloons while others leave you their genitals, then Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation is the book for you. It explains all this and much more. It discloses the best time to have a sex change, how to have a virgin birth, when to seduce your sisters or eat your lover. Quirky and brilliant, it takes as its starting point all creatures great and small worried about their bizarre…
I’m in awe of how clearly and completely this book introduces the science of evo-devo, or evolutionary developmental biology, to the general public. It inspired me as both a scientist and a writer to delve into the wonders of how a fertilized egg can develop into the enormous diversity of life on our planet, from anemones to zebras and everything in between.
When I first learned about evolution, I was fascinated but struggled to understand how natural selection could produce such enormous variation. This book makes it make sense.
For over a century, opening the black box of embryonic development was the holy grail of biology. Evo Devo-Evolutionary Developmental Biology-is the new science that has finally cracked open the box. Within the pages of his rich and riveting book, Sean B. Carroll explains how we are discovering that complex life is ironically much simpler than anyone ever expected.
Citizen Scientist begins with this extraordinary statement by the Keeper of Entomology at the London Museum of Natural History, “Study any obscure insect for a week and you will then know more than anyone else on the planet.”
As the author chases the obscure Western red-bellied tiger beetle across New…
This book made me look at something familiar—a bird’s egg—with delightful new depth and wonder. Like all the best science writing, it reminded me how research, far from decreasing our awe at the natural world, can immeasurably increase it.
I loved learning both answers to everyday questions (what are those bits of white on a chicken yolk?) and aspects of the world I’d never have guessed (cuckoo mothers can match their egg color to the color of host eggs).
'I think that, if required on pain of death to name instantly the most perfect thing in the universe, I should risk my fate on a bird's egg'
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1862
How are eggs of different shapes made, and why are they the shape they are? When does the shell of an egg harden? Why do some eggs contain two yolks? How are the colours and patterns of an eggshell created, and why do they vary? And which end of an egg is laid first - the blunt end or the pointy end?
These are just some of the…
I read this book when I was a new mom myself, and I was fascinated to learn how much I had in common with animal parents all over the world. In the process of birthing, feeding, protecting, cleaning, and teaching our offspring, we all face similar challenges and tradeoffs and reap remarkable rewards.
Several stories from this book have stuck with me for years, like the one about breastfeeding bat moms needing to offload their milk into any willing mouth, whether it’s their own baby or someone else’s, just to lighten their load enough to fly!
Being a mom is a tough job-but imagine doing it in the jungle or out on the safari, faced by the ravages of the elements, a scarcity of resources and the threat of predators prowling at all times of the day and night. In Wild Moms, Dr. Carin Bondar takes readers on an enthralling tour of the animal kingdom as she explores the phenomenon of motherhood in the wild.
A journey through motherhood for the animal kingdom-from the initial phases of gestation and pregnancy through breastfeeding and toddler-rearing and trying to parent a teenager through empty nest syndrome (which, in…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
Similar to Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice, this book made me laugh and gasp at scandalous true stories of reproductive biology. What really captured my attention, though, were the unexpected ways that human actions are affecting the courtship, mating, and spawning of animals that might seem beyond our reach.
Knowing that we can unintentionally inhibit the intimate lives of other species through pollution and climate change really brings home the importance of reforming our behavior.
Forget the Kama Sutra. When it comes to inventive sex acts, just look to the sea. There we find the elaborate mating rituals of armored lobsters; giant right whales engaging in a lively threesome whilst holding their breath; full moon sex parties of groupers and daily mating blitzes by blueheaded wrasse. Deep-sea squid perform inverted 69s, while hermaphrodite sea slugs link up in giant sex loops. From doubly endowed sharks to the maze-like vaginas of some whales, Sex in the Sea is a journey unlike any other to explore the staggering ways life begets life beneath the waves. Beyond a…
A world of the babies, by the babies, for the babies—that’s what we live in, even if we don’t realize it. At any given moment, babies represent the majority of animal life on Earth. Entire ecosystems rest on their shoulders (or tentacles or jointed exoskeletons). Their tiny, hidden lives reveal some of nature’s strangest workings: A salamander embryo breathes with the help of algae inside its cells. The spotted beak of a parasitic baby bird tricks unrelated adults into feeding it. Mouse embryos can absorb tumors—and continue developing normally.
At once incredibly vulnerable and incredibly vital, baby animals are not just beings in progress but beings in their own right. And our planet needs them all: the maggots as much as the kittens!
Embark on a riveting journey into Washington State’s untamed Olympic Peninsula, where the threads of folklore legends and historical icons are woven into a complex ecological tapestry.
Follow the enigmatic Petr as he fearlessly employs his pirate radio transmitter to broadcast the forgotten and untamed voices that echo through the…
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
