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Despite the overwhelming diversity of life on earth, one theme has dominated its evolution: the apparently simple act of moving from one place to another. Restless Creatures is the first book for a general audience telling the incredible story of locomotion in human and animal evolution.
Evolutionary biologist Matt Wilkinson shows why our ancestors became two-legged, why we have opposable thumbs, why the backbone appeared, how fish fins became limbs, how even trees are locomotion-obsessed, and how movement has shaped our minds as well as our bodies. He explains why there are no flying monkeys or biological wheels, how dinosaurs took to the air, how Mexican waves began in the animal kingdom, and why moving can make us feel good. Restless Creatures opens up an astonishing new perspective - that nothing in life makes sense except in the light of movement.
Despite the overwhelming diversity of life on earth, one theme has dominated its evolution: the apparently simple act of moving from one place to another. Restless Creatures is the first book for a general audience telling the incredible story of locomotion in human and animal evolution.
Evolutionary biologist Matt Wilkinson shows why our ancestors became two-legged, why we have opposable thumbs, why the backbone appeared, how fish fins became limbs, how even trees are locomotion-obsessed, and how movement has shaped our minds as well as our bodies. He explains why there are no flying monkeys or biological wheels, how dinosaurs took to the air, how Mexican waves began in the animal kingdom, and why moving can make us feel good. Restless Creatures opens up an astonishing new perspective - that nothing in life makes sense except in the light of movement.
Matt Wilkinson is a zoologist and science communicator at the University of Cambridge. His work has been covered in the Telegraph, Metro, New Scientist and Nature. He has been a runner-up in the Daily Telegraph/BASF science writer competition, and reached second place in the first Cheltenham Science Festival FameLab competition. In 2007 he went to drama school, and he wrote a play about T.H. Huxley that was premiered at the 2009 Darwin Festival. Restless Creatures is his first book.
It would be hard to find a more companionable guide to the marvels
of locomotory evolution than Matt Wilkinson. In Restless Creatures,
the zoologist and writer rehearses twice-told tales of animals
becoming bilateral, exiting the sea for the land and evolving
flight, but makes them fresh. These are wonderfully adept and
informed explanations of locomotory modes - whether in birds,
gliding snakes, eels, sharks or a host of fossil vertebrates - and
there is not a single vignette that I failed to learn something
from.
*Nature*
Packed with revelations, scholarly but clear, Restless Creatures
carries you from the kinetics of the amoeba to that of the blue
whale, from the swim-cycle of spermatozoa, to why skipping works
best on the moon. A pop-science treat.
*Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being*
If you want to know how sponges sneeze, why all large aquatic
predators have similar shapes, and how physics affects the lives of
the smallest of organisms, turning water into glue, this is the
book for you. Highly recommended!
*Matthew Cobb, Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester
and author of Life's Greatest Secret*
Like the restless creatures it describes, and their tracks through
evolutionary time, this book wanders; and it wanders wonderfully.
Its author, Matt Wilkinson, takes us on a circular trip, starting
and ending with our own species. Around the half-way marker on the
journey, he explores our enigmatic ancestor nicknamed Urbi, a
crucial stage in the evolution of animal mobility. And his grand
tour is not restricted to animals-it takes in plants and microbes
too. But animals are special in terms of movement, and Wilkinson's
conclusion is that our other special feature - the evolution of
consciousness-is linked to our wanderlust. This is a bold
hypothesis, and it might just be right.
*Wallace Arthur, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, National University
of Ireland, Galway and author of Evolving Animals*
Restless Creatures proves that the '60's song was right, everybody
is doing the locomotion. In his original and insightful book, Matt
Wilkinson explains how from whirling bacteria to wayfaring humans,
the three-billion-year journey of life has depended on the
invention of many ways of moving.
*Sean B. Carroll, author of Brave Genius and The Serengeti
Rules*
[An] ingenious but not-dumbed-down history of life's 4-billion-year
progress in getting from one place to another.... [Readers] will
come away with a deep understanding of an essential basis of
life.
*Kirkus*
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