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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 – Fires of Life: Endothermy in Birds and Mammals

6-minute read

Endothermy, colloquially known as warm-bloodedness, was a major breakthrough in the history of life on Earth. It gave rise to the active lifestyle of birds and mammals. But how did it evolve? Research into this question has been ongoing for decades, though in the eyes of evolutionary physiologist Barry Gordon Lovegrove, the field has stagnated amidst competing single-cause hypotheses that all try to find that one killer explanation. In his wide-ranging Fires of Life, he brings together many disparate strands of research and gives an overview of our thinking on the evolution of endothermy in mammals and birds. Providing food for thought for students in this field, it also is a great overview for the general reader that stands out for its superbly accessible writing.

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