Author: inquisitivebiologist

Craving books and passionate about the communication of scientific knowledge, The Inquisitive Biologist is a blog where I review fascinating academic books on biology and related disciplines.

Book review – Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

7-minute read

Whatever mental image you have of our close evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals, it is bound to be incomplete. Kindred is an ambitious book that takes in the full sweep of 150 years of scientific discovery and covers virtually every facet of their biology and culture. Archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes has drawn on her extensive experience communicating science outside of the narrow confines of academia to write a book that is as accessible as it is informative, and that stands out for its nuance and progressive outlook. Is this a new popular science benchmark?

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Book review – Owls of the Eastern Ice: The Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl

6-minute read

Some encounters change the course of your life. For young American Peace Corps volunteer Jonathan C. Slaght, it was a chance sighting of a rare owl in the Russian Far East that turned him onto the path of wildlife conservation. Hidden behind the conservation plans and the data there are amazing personal stories that are not often told. Owls of the Eastern Ice is a spellbinding memoir of determination and obsession with safeguarding the future of this bird of prey that firmly hooked its talons in me and did not let go.

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Book review – The Inside Out of Flies

6-minute read

Flies do not get a lot of love. Their culinary choices, from cow-pats to corpses, do not endear them to us. Add to that that the order Diptera also hosts mosquitoes, called our deadliest predator by some authors, and you can begin to see why. Entomologist Erica McAlister, the senior curator for Diptera at the Natural History Museum, London, is on a mission to change your mind. Chances are you never have been able to admire a fly close-up.

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Book review – The Secret Life of Flies

5-minute read

Few people would count flies as their favourite animal, but, luckily for you and me, there are exceptions. Erica McAlister, the senior curator for Diptera at the Natural History Museum, London, has been enamoured with them since childhood and in 2017 wrote the very successful The Secret Life of Flies. In preparation for reviewing her new book The Inside Out of Flies, I (finally) read the book that started it all to see what the buzz was all about.

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Book review – Volcanotectonics: Understanding the Structure, Deformation and Dynamics of Volcanoes

7-minute read

We all have a pretty good idea of what a volcanic eruption looks like, but they are only the surface expression of a much larger and longer underground process that is hidden from view. The internal workings of a volcano, its plumbing if you will, are studied by the relatively new scientific discipline of volcanotectonics. Icelandic volcanologist Agust Gudmundsson has been researching and teaching this topic for two decades and here delivers the field’s first textbook. In preparation, I beefed up my knowledge base by first reviewing a introductory volcanology textbook, but it almost was not necessary—Volcanotectonics turned out to be exceptionally instructive and accessible.

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Book review – Volcanoes (Second Edition)

7-minute read

Volcanoes are some of the most awe-inspiring natural spectacles on our planet. There is much more to them, though, than the stereotypical image of a conical fire-spitting mountain, and I have been keen to learn more. As I searched for serious introductory books on volcanology, this was one title that kept coming up. But wait, why is a biologist reviewing geology textbooks?

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Book review – COVID-19: The Pandemic that Never Should Have Happened, and How to Stop the Next One

7-minute read

Saying that the COVID-19 pandemic should not have happened will likely elicit one of two responses. Blaming China for initially trying to cover it up, or saying: “shit happens, this is speaking with the benefit of hindsight”. Appealing as these may sound, they are missing the bigger picture. The awful truth is that we have had this one coming for a long time.

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Book review – Natural: The Seductive Myth of Nature’s Goodness

7-minute read

I will come right out and say this: if the subtitle turned you off, give this book a chance. Yes, this is a sceptical take on the subject, but without the typical mockery and ridicule. Natural sees religious scholar Alan Levinovitz critically but thoughtfully examine the appeal to nature fallacy*: the idea that just because something is natural it is good. For a biologist, the “natural goodness” myth is particularly grating as it requires some exceptional cherry-picking to come to this conclusion. As far as logical fallacies go, this is a big personal bug-bear. Why is it so compelling?

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Book review – On the Prowl: In Search of Big Cat Origins

7-minute read

Charismatic as big cats might be, their origins and evolutionary history are still not fully understood. In a mind-bogglingly beautiful marriage of art and science, On the Prowl provides a current overview of big cat evolution that will have many a book lover purring with pleasure.

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Book review – Becoming Wild: How Animals Learn to be Animals

7-minute read

In his previous book, Beyond Words, ecologist Carl Safina convinced his readers of the rich inner lives of animals. Just like we do, they have thoughts, feelings, and emotions. But the similarities do not stop there. Becoming Wild focuses on animal culture, the social knowledge that is transmitted between individuals and generations through sharing and learning. The more we look, the more animals seem less different from us—or we from them. On top of that, Safina puts forward several eye-opening and previously-overlooked implications of animal culture.

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