Why Rats Laugh and Jellyfish Sleep: And Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution

Why do cats live longer than dogs? Why do many different kinds of bees have yellow stripes? Why can we smell a skunk a mile away, much farther than we can detect the strongest perfume? Such questions can be seen as puzzles about creatures' evolved traits. Besides offering standing invitations to the joys of curiosity, they focus our attention on beguiling designs that have been millions of years in the making. Indeed, looking at the living world through a Darwinian lens reveals its colossal depth in a way that's all too easy to miss in the age of endless distractions. And you need only summon up your inner 7-year-old--the kid spilling over with naive / brilliant why questions--to notice such puzzles, and to find yourself slowing down and looking deeper while considering possible solutions.

In this lively, lucid book, science writer David Stipp ponders Darwinian puzzles about nine familiar creatures and things--bumblebees, dogs, sparrows, caffeine, earthworms, and sleep, among others--to show how rewarding it can be to look at nature in this deeper way. By revealing hidden depths of the ordinary, The Everyday Darwinist shows not only that fascinating intricacies lie just beneath the natural world's familiar surfaces, but also that noticing them lets us connect dots that in many cases we didn't realize existed. This is backyard biophilia at its most entertaining and enlightening.