“My hope is that this reads like a nature detective story,” writes Davies. He has achieved his goal and more in this...
Davies (Behavioral Ecology/Univ. of Cambridge; Cambridge Cuckoos, Cowbirds and Other Cheats, 2000, etc.) chronicles his 30-year attempt to solve what he calls “an enduring puzzle: how does the cuckoo get away with such outrageous behavior?”
During his years at Cambridge as a student and a faculty member, the author became fascinated by the cuckoos that frequented a nearby wetland during nesting season. This is an account of his and his collaborators’ efforts to solve the mystery. Davies’ special interest as an ornithologist has been to try to understand how they were able to trick the unwitting host species into accepting foreign eggs—particularly after the fledgling cuckoo emerged from his egg and set about to ruthlessly destroy the host's remaining eggs. One of their earliest discoveries was that the eggs laid by different subspecies of European cuckoos have evolved to closely mimic those of different host species (warblers, pipits and wagtails) in size, color and markings. Not only do they foist their eggs on other species; they also ruthlessly destroy the host eggs to make a place for their own. A female cuckoo will time her egg-laying to that of the host female, removing a host egg and replacing it with her own. The faster-maturing cuckoo will hatch first and destroy nest mates that are potential rivals and then mimic their calls begging to be fed. Relieved of parenting duties, the adult cuckoos conserve energy for an early return to their winter habitat. While host birds do attempt to destroy the intruder’s eggs, they are confused due to the variability of their own eggs. A battle for survival ensues between the aggressor cuckoos and the defending hosts, involving genetic and behavioral shifts.
“My hope is that this reads like a nature detective story,” writes Davies. He has achieved his goal and more in this fascinating study of “an evolutionary arms race.”Pub Date: March 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-1408856567
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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