birds

Book review – Taking Flight: The Evolutionary Story of Life on the Wing

6-minute read
keywords: biomechanics, ethology, evolution

Having just reviewed the 2015 book On the Wing, I continue my brief two-part foray into the evolution of flight with Taking Flight by writer and conductor Lev Parikian. In a book that is full of wonder and humour, he marvels at the many different strategies for flying that have evolved in primarily insects and birds. However, the somewhat muddled explanations of flight mechanics and limited attention for other groups make for a somewhat uneven book.

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Book review – On the Wing: Insects, Pterosaurs, Birds, Bats and the Evolution of Animal Flight

8-minute read
keywords: biomechanics, evolutionary biology, paleontology

Flight fascinates me for two reasons: one is pure envy at being earthbound, and the other because it is a fantastic example of convergent evolution, having evolved not once, but on four separate occasions. Last year I was sent Lev Parikian’s book Taking Flight and in finally reviewing that, I took the opportunity to also read David E. Alexander’s 2015 book On the Wing. A very accessible popular science book that tells the intriguing story of the evolution of flight, it helpfully assumes little background knowledge of either evolution or biomechanics. This, then, is the first of a two-part review of how life got airborne.

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Book review – Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior: What They Did and How We Know

7-minute read
keywords: ethology, paleontology

I have written previously that deducing behaviour of extinct animals from fossils millions of years old might seem science fiction, but is very much science fact. That said, in his previous book, English palaeontologist David Hone pointed out that dinosaur behaviour is the one area where we see the greatest disconnect between what we know and what people think we know. His new book Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior is a sobering reality check for the lay reader, but I suspect that even palaeontologists might come away wondering whether there is anything we know for sure. Concise, well-structured, and beautifully illustrated by palaeoartist Gabriel Ugueto, this is a superb book that transcends “merely” being a good popular science work by also addressing professional palaeontologists.

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Book review – The Future of Dinosaurs: What We Don’t Know, What We Can, and What We’ll Never Know

8-minute read
keywords: paleontology

There are plenty of popular palaeontology books that tell you everything we know about dinosaurs and several excellent examples have been reviewed here in the past. For the 500th review on this blog, I take the road less travelled. In The Future of Dinosaurs, English palaeontologist David Hone flips the script by asking what we do not know about dinosaurs. I have been meaning to review this book since it was first published in 2022. With the recent publication of his latest popular book on dinosaur behaviour, I decided to make time and read up on Hone’s work. First up, an exploration of our ignorance that is as much a celebration of all we have learned and how we have learned it.

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Book review – Infinite Life: A Revolutionary Story of Eggs, Evolution and Life on Earth

5-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology

Jules Howard is no stranger to sex. A science writer and zoological correspondent, his gleefully amusing 2014 book Sex on Earth is particularly relevant to the topic at hand. Even there, however, eggs were just a sideshow. And therein lies the problem. Likely, the first question to be asked when eggs come up in conversation is how you like them for breakfast, or some hackneyed joke involving chickens. Focusing on the oology in zoology, Infinite Life retells the history of life, this time from the perspective of the almighty egg.

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Book review – The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate

8-minute read
keywords: ethology

On account of our good eyesight, humans are said to be a visual species. However, when you stop and think about it, human language (at least English) has a surprisingly large vocabulary for the squawks, grunts, chirps, honks, growls, etc. that other animals make. What, if anything, are they saying? Two recent books delve into this question, The Voices of Nature and Why Animals Talk. A last-minute entry on human language, Talking Heads, turns this into a three-part review. In other words, we need to talk…

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Book review – On the Organic Law of Change: A Facsimile Edition and Annotated Transcription of Alfred Russel Wallace’s Species Notebook of 1855-1859

8-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology, history of science

Having just reviewed James T. Costa’s biography of Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, I was keen to read more about one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of science: how two scholars independently hit on the same idea (evolution by natural selection) and how history has largely forgotten one of them. An important piece of evidence to support this claim is one of several notebooks that Wallace kept during his journeys. In On the Organic Law of Change, Costa unlocks this little gem for a broad audience by providing a facsimile, transcription, and a mountain of annotations to place this work in its historical context. You are getting a two-for-one, as I am reviewing this book simultaneously with its companion book Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species, a book I have long been meaning to read.

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Book review – What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds

7-minute read
keywords: ornithology

Owls are one of the most enigmatic groups of raptors, in part because there is so much we still do not understand about them compared to other birds. Nature writer Jennifer Ackerman previously wrote the critically acclaimed The Genius of Birds. In What an Owl Knows, she reveals the creature that hides under that puffy exterior, peeling back the feathers layer by layer to show our current scientific understanding of owls. She has interviewed scores of scientists and owl aficionados as part of her background research, making this as much a book about owls as about the people who study and love them. A captivating and in places touching science narrative, this book is a hoot from beginning to end.

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Book review – The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent

7-minute read
keywords: ethology, olfaction, ornithology

To successfully navigate their world, organisms rely on numerous senses. Birds are no exception to this; and yet, for a long time, people have been convinced that birds cannot smell. This came as a surprise to evolutionary biologist Danielle J. Whittaker. Given that smell is effectively chemoreception (the sensing of chemical gradients in your environment) and was , why would birds have no use for it? The Secret Perfume of Birds tells the story of 15 years spent investigating the olfactory capabilities of birds and provides an insider’s account of scientific research.

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Book review – Fossilization: Understanding the Material Nature of Ancient Plants and Animals

6-minute read

Fossils are our prime source of information about life in the past. As I delve deeper into palaeontology and earth sciences, the process of fossilisation increasingly fascinates me. How does dead biological tissue fossilise? What information is lost, what is added, and what is distorted in the process? And, ultimately, how true or filtered a picture of past life does the fossil record provide? The edited book Fossilization brings together scientists from a range of disciplines working on cutting-edge topics. The result is a well-written if somewhat eclectic collection of chapters that addressed some of my queries and also answered questions I did not even know I had.

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