Flaws of Nature av Andy Dobson

199,-

Kjøp

<p><b>Species evolve over time to become perfectly adapted to their environments, right?</b><b>Well, sometimes.</b><br>Consider that an elephant will not grow a seventh set of teeth, even though wearing down the sixth will condemn it to starvation; that hosts of the European cuckoo seem unable to tell that the overgrown monster in their nest is not their own chick; and that whales are fully aquatic mammals who, millions of years after first abandoning the land, still cannot breathe underwater.<br><br>This book is about evolution, but not its greatest hits. Instead, it explores everything in the animal kingdom that is self-defeating, ill-made, uneconomical, or downright weird ¿ and explains how natural selection has favoured it. In the grand struggle for survival, some surprising patterns emerge: animals are always slightly out-of-date; inefficiency tends to increase over time; predators usually lose, and parasites usually win. With equal parts humour and scientific insight, Andy Dobson