Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test: How Behavior Evolves and Why It Matters
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
A lively exploration of animal behavior in all its glorious complexity, whether in tiny wasps, lumbering elephants, or ourselves.
For centuries, people have been returning to the same tired nature-versus-nurture debate, trying to determine what we learn and what we inherit. In Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test, biologist Marlene Zuk goes beyond the binary and instead focuses on interaction, or the way that genes and environment work together. Driving her investigation is a simple but essential question: How does behavior evolve?
Drawing from a wealth of research, including her own on insects, Zuk answers this question by turning to a wide range of animals and animal behavior. There are stories of cockatoos that dance to rock music, ants that heal their injured companions, dogs that exhibit signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and so much more.
For insights into animal intelligence, mating behavior, and an organism’s ability to fight disease, she explores the behavior of smart spiders, silent crickets, and crafty crows. In each example, she clearly demonstrates how these traits were produced by the complex and diverse interactions of genes and the environment and urges us to consider how that same process evolves behavior in us humans.
Filled with delightful anecdotes and fresh insights, Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test helps us see both other animals and ourselves more clearly, demonstrating that animal behavior can be remarkably similar to human behavior, and wonderfully complicated in its own right.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Evolutionary biologist Zuk (Paleofantasy) explores the complex basis of animal activity in this entertaining road show covering the sex lives of fruit flies, mental health disorders in dogs, and the intelligence of ravens, among other traits and behaviors. Zuk writes that the "question of whether nature or nurture is more important" to animal behavior "is impossible to answer," and that "genes don't single-handedly determine anything"—a creature's environment is crucial to how they act, too. This thesis, though somewhat unsurprising, provides a nice basis for a wide range of examples: there's the eccentric spider-tailed viper, a snake that attracts its prey with a tail that functions as a lure, and slime molds, which "can solve problems and predict the future even though they look like blobs of gulp." Flying squirrels and sugar gliders, meanwhile, both look similarly "adorable" "not because of a mutual gliding ancestor, but because of convergent evolution," and octopuses "illustrate the perils of reverse-engineering an explanation in evolution" when people measure their intelligence against humans'. Zuk has a knack for weaving in complex scientific theories without ever slowing down the pace, and her vivid descriptions render her wonder contagious: "Even a humble slug," she writes, "is capable of feats that humans cannot achieve." This one's full of fun.
