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Sex On Six Legs: Lessons On Life, Love, And Language From The Insect World (2011)

by Marlene Zuk(Favorite Author)

3.39 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

015101373X (ISBN13: 9780151013739)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: I heard about this book on NPR. Marlene Zuk writes in a very readable style for a book of such a technical nature. I will never look at insects in the same way after this informative and anecdotal book. This book contains fascinating stories, such as the one about the Masai of Africa using army ants as sutures on wounds (holding it shut even after the ants are discarded), and descriptions, such as the "waggle dance" of honeybees ("a straight run followed by a semicircle first to one side and then another, in a rough figure eight, with the bee waggling her abdomen energetically during the straight run"). Zuk's wit shines through in chapter titles such as "So Two Fruit Flies Go Into a Bar. . . , "Parenting and the Rotten Corpse," and others but she also delves deeply into ... moregenetics, mating, parenting, and many scientific discoveries that are marvelous to behold. How could one not respect the scientists who work so intently on insects as small as a fruit fly to bring to life discoveries of such complexity and diversity?
review 2: This is a really great promo for a book about insects, but not quite that book. Zuk creates vivid images of the crazy things insects do and lovingly recounts the grunt work of entomologists. But the reporting is shallow, usually several paragraphs shorter on any given point than would be needed to make the point fully. And the writing style -- full of peppy references to such matters as birth announcements and Coca Cola -- seems to target a dim-witted and attention-challenged audience that accidentally stumbled into the book, not a reader who picked up the book with some interest in the subject. Worse, Zuk gets several facts wrong. She says, for example, that birds and humans last shared a common ancestor less than 200 million years ago, but in fact reptiles and mammals split off more than 300 million years ago. This may be a minor point, but it makes me suspicious of the scientific rigor behind everything else she says. less

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