Just so
How did we end up the way we are? Just So looks at the ways the animal world has addressed the fundamental questions of life: How do I tell which foods are good to eat? How do I avoid becoming someone else’s meal? What will impress the ladies… or my fellow hermaphrodites?
Why can’t I taste with my feet?
Fish taste with their fins. Butterflies taste with their legs. Octopuses taste with everything. Cats can’t taste sugar. So, why do humans taste only with their tongues, when there are taste receptors all over the human body?
How to be invisible
Moths, sharks, seahorses, stick insects, crab spiders and spider crabs all use different forms of disguise to hide from those who want to eat them—or to better ambush their prey. What can we learn from them?
Shocked!
Electric eels are living batteries that taser their prey with 860-volt jolts. Sharks use electricity like an extra sense to see fish and sneak up on them. Spiders fly using the atmosphere’s electric charge, and bumblebees and flowers communicate through their personal electric fields. How else does the natural world use electricity?
The Wildest dreams
Almost all animals sleep—insects, mammals, even jellyfish and sponges. Some of them even dream. But what is sleep for, and how has it shaped us?
What’s the point of all that singing?
What does birdsong mean? Do other animals also sing? Or is song a uniquely human invention?
