Skip to main content

I, Mammal - Liam Drew *****

It's rare that a straightforward biology book (with a fair amount of palaeontology thrown in) really grabs my attention, but this one did. Liam Drew really piles in the surprising facts (often surprising to him too) and draws us a wonderful picture of the various aspects of mammals that make them different from other animals. 

 More on this in a moment, but I ought to mention the introduction, as you have to get past it to get to the rest, and it might put you off. I'm not sure why many books have an introduction - they often just get in the way of the writing, and this one seemed to go on for ever. So bear with it before you get to the good stuff, starting with the strange puzzle of why some mammals have external testes.

 It seems bizarre to have such an important thing for passing on the genes so precariously posed - and it's not that they have to be, as it's not the case with all mammals. Drew mixes his own attempts to think through this intriguing issue with the historical debates over it, leading up to the latest thinking.

 This is the broad approach Drew tends to take in most of the chapters, whether we're looking at the jaw bone (apparently the most distinctive aspect of mammals), the senses, being warm blooded (but we're not allowed to call it that), hairiness or lactation. That last item had one of the most striking statistics amongst the 'Wow!' facts Drew gives us - that one species of whale when suckling young produces about a quarter of a tonne of milk a day.

 Another delightful feature that recurs through the book is the duck billed platypus. After diving into this weird and wonderful creature in some detail early on, they keep cropping as their odd position on the mammalian family tree makes them an inevitable recurring reference point. And the more you read about the platypus, the more you love it.

 Only two things were less than perfect. A couple of chapters fell into the Feynman Trap by  spending too much time naming things and losing steam a little on the narrative, but these weren't too much of an issue. The other problem for me is a personal one. Drew uses his children and details of family life, particularly of the premature birth of his first child, far too much for me. I know some people (and publishers) love all these personal details, but I found it mildly nauseating - however, I'm sure that's just me.

 Overall, this is a brilliant book, particularly if, like me, you know relatively little of biology or what makes mammals, erm, mammals. It's light enough to be enjoyable but detailed enough to satisfy the most fact-driven reader. Recommended.

Hardback:  
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later. This is very much in the same vein,  but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT te...
Post a Comment
Read more