What is it, summer 2006?
I apologize for plumbing the depths of my funny-chasm and coming back with nothing but a weak J.T. joke, but whatever, it's Monday, what have you done that's so great?
Whoops! Sorry again. Early-week-snarliness aside, I want to give a shout out to Nasty Brutish and Short - the new book from the beautiful weirdos at CBC's Quirks and Quarks. Growing up in Toronto before the internet, my family listened to a little device called the radio. It's true, the buttons and knobs confused our underdeveloped peanut brains something awful, but after a few bashes with our clubs and a frustrated chest beating or two, we would find 91.1 and listen in silent awe to the mind-bending stories, theories and facts that make up science's number one radio show, Quirks and Quarks.
Nasty, Brutish and Short is the latest addition to their growing library, and as far as I know, their first foray into insect and animal biology. The book is sectioned into a small range of topics from animal and insect sexual behavior to strange survival techniques. The first section discusses the evolutionary biology of sex and is arguably the superstar of the book. Highlights include a rinky-dink male spider with a not-so-rinky-dick, sea slug orgies (need I say more?), the answer to the age old question, "why do ducks have corkscrew penises?" And a range of wonderfully weird natural adaptions critters make to well, make whoopee; like exoskeleton body armor, grappling hooks, and even labyrintian vaginas. Basically, you don't have to be an owl to find the entire book a hoot - oh yeah, nearly every creature feature ends with a pun, some good, most bad, but entirely forgivable in a book filled with fascinating sexual and survival practices you'll never see coming. The best part -aside from the mystifying behaviors, is that the author nearly always finds the evolutionary logic behind them and explains it in a way any pop-science aficionado can easily understand. Hands down, a terrific summer read that's so painless, it hardly feels educational.
I really loved it, and like the coitus of nearly all the species in Nasty Brutish and Short, it was over far too quickly.
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