Philip > Books: 5-stars‎ (321)

• Butterfly wings are brilliant on top and dull on the bottom, because when they land on plants and trees they fold their wings up, so that the dull undersides serve as camouflage. Meanwhile, moth wings are dull on top, as they DON'T fold their wings and so it is that top surface that hides them at rest.

• Hermaphrodites vs. gynandromorphs—the first just have the sexual organs of both sexes, while the latter have a greater diversity of both male and female characteristics (seen mainly in insects, crustaceans and butterflies).

• Vestigial vs. exapted—i.e., structures like the human appendix and snake legs that were once functional but which through evolution have totally lost their purpose or even disappeared altogether; vs. structures whose original purpose has evolved into something that now fulfills a new role, such as bird feathers (changing from a warming feature to a flight function) or penguin wings (changing from flight to underwater navigation).

• Beavers are the world's second-most “adept adapters,” manipulating their environments and creating entire new ecosystems to levels only surpassed by humans. ALSO, beavers are so well adapted to aquatic life that in the 18th century, they were classified as "fish" and could be eaten by Catholics on fasting days!

• Most insects have four wings, but beetles only have two, as the top wings have evolved into hard protective coverings to allow them to burrow—thereby exploiting a previously ignored ecological niche; ALSO, beetles alone account for 25% of all animals on earth (while all arthropods account for a full 90% of living creatures); ALSO,, insects are the only truly winged animals, as everything else—birds, bats, dinosaurs—evolved wings from other limbs.

• Convergence (kind of knew this before, but better explained here)—how similar traits evolve separately in unrelated species. Examples are how birds, bats, insects, gliding mammals and pterosaurs all independently evolved flight mechanisms; while eels, snakes, earthworms and caecilians (bizarre snakelike mammals—look 'em up) have evolved into whatever the hell they are.

• Sand dollars are WAY cooler than I ever realized, knowing them only as beach relics. However, living sand dollars play a crucial role in ocean maintenance, and are just bizarre little creatures—there are various YouTube videos you can watch, most of which (like much good science, since we grownups have "more important things to think about") are aimed at children.

• And a huge shout-out here to my boy Alfred Russel Wallace, who has always been more of a footnote in the story of evolution, running a close second behind Darwin, (and we rarely focus on who came in second right?). However, as the global biosphere suffers more and more from climate change, habitat loss and invasive species, Wallace is belatedly receiving the full recognition he deserves as the father of 'biogeography," which in its relatively shorter term impacts is becoming more relevant than Darwin's really long term evolutionary changes. Indeed, while Wallace is best known for his Malay Archipelago, it's actually his The Geographical Distribution of Animals that is more important/relevant today.

• Phylogenetics, clades/cladistics, biogeography, polyphyletic/paraphyletic/monophyletic, accessioning, thixotrophy, "genetic drift," "holotype specimens," "adaptive radiation," "evo devo" (i.e., evolutionary development)

- The book does a great job highlighting how the war influenced - or was influenced by - other events around the world, including the Armenian Genocide (with 600,000 to a million deaths), the Easter Rising in Ireland, the Great Influenza (usually but erroneously called the "Spanish flu," and which ultimately killed between 50-100 million worldwide), the fight for Arab independence, etc. And while I knew a bit about the Bolshevik Revolution that pulled Russia out of the war, I'd never even heard of the subsequent Russian Civil War, where the "White" Russians fought the "Reds" to the tune of yet another 10 million casualties, most of whom were civilians, (and yes, the numbers throughout this book - whether casualties, length-in-days of specific battles, amount of munitions fired in a given period, or pretty much ANYTHING - are just staggering to the point of becoming almost meaningless).

- Aside from Milunka, there was a whole bunch of other people I had never (or only slightly) heard of before - big names like Ataturk, Haig and Luttendorf; but also "minor" figures like New Zealand's Harold Gillies, the father of modern plastic surgery; Daniel Daly, the Marine most famous for his "come on you bastards, do you want to live forever?" line at Belleau Woods (see page photo above)- but who by that time had already won TWO Medals of Honor for his earlier actions in China and Haiti (and who then received a third nomination for Belleau Woods); and Flora Sandes, a British ambulance driver who rather than return to England also joined the Serbian army, and became the only British female uniformed combatant to serve in WWI.

- Fun with terminology: WWI saw the first stormtroopers ("Sturmtruppen" - and why are Germans the best at coming up with new words: this one, "blitzkrieg," "schadenfreude…"?), as well as the first tanks - so called because they were nicknamed "water tanks" during development, so as to keep them a secret from the enemy, (their original, official name at the time was the totally lame "landships;" also, early tanks were considered "male" or "female," based on whether they were armed with a full-sized cannon or just a machine gun).

- Speaking of tanks: The war not only saw the world's final large cavalry charges, but the spring of 1918 saw the first tank-on-tank combat, which later played such a big role in WWII. The same period also saw the introduction of the Paris Gun, an absolute beast of a cannon (256 tons, 69 ft. barrel) that shelled Paris from a full 35 miles away, launching 234-lb. shells so high (26 miles) that they had to take the spin of the earth into account when plotting their trajectory; and which being fired from so far away fell silently if inaccurately on an unsuspecting Paris, causing more psychological than physical damage.

- Underground warfare: Endless miles of tunnels were dug by both sides, largely for mining purposes; not only did many collapsed, but they occasionally dug into enemy shafts where they engaged in hand-to-hand underground combat - pretty much the worse thing a claustrophobe like me can imagine.

"Done," Jillian said, the single syllable sharp and hard as a thrown rock.

Her crew were being pressed back into their couches like God had his palm on their chests.