The Beauty of the Beastly by Natalie Angier

The Beauty of the Beastly Reviews

• 
  Quirkyreader

  As many of you know I am way into Science, so reading this book was a real treat.
  
  In this book I got to read about one of my favourite subjects, lower primates. There is a whole chapter about aye-ayes.
  
  While I was reading this I could see Richard Attenborough in my mind doing a documentary on every creature mentioned. Which for some he already has.
  
  Granted this book came out 1995, some of it is still relevant. So give this one time and see if any of the creatures interest you and inspire you to learn more.
• 
  Malbadeen

  Some of the parts of this book seemed incongruous (either in content or writing style)but it was easy enough to skim what I wasn't interested in and enjoy the parts I was. I don't feel like I've exactly converted to the science side yet, but I did learn some interesting things, for example
  
  1. Sheep (and farmers from Australia and New Zealand) are sick perverts, as evidenced by pg.14, "...as sheep farmers in New Zealand and Australia have long know, they can encourage a ewe to bond normally with a lamb, even when they have been separated for days, simply by stimulating the mother sheep's genitals for five minutes."
  
  while it upsets me to think about how this truth was discovered, I have to admit it's a new and interesting fact I had not known previous to this reading.
  
  2. Some species of male Dolphins are jerks that work in groups to date rape their female counter-parts.
  
  
  3. Cheetahs are rich snobs.
  
  okay it's true that Angier didn't directly state this but she did go on and on about how their "genetic homogeneity" and I remember when I was sociology major (right before "art history major" and sometime after "communications major") learning that people of high socio-economic status have a high rate of genetic issues because they don't breed outside their pool enough or something like that. Therefore this must be what is happening with Cheetahs, they need to stop worrying so much a bout status and get it on at at a skeezy bar every now and again. Mix it up a little, that's all I'm sayin.
  
  4. Menstruation is gross no matter the reason for it.
  
  Anglier does a bang up job of presenting a new more empowering (less related to pregnancy) theory of why menstruation occurs. And while that may get the feminists all fired up, fact of the matter still is that blood comes from an orifice for a week and it's gross.
  
  Then there is some stuff about some other stuff and she talks about people dying which I didn't think really fit the tone of the book but which I enjoyed almost more than the other parts. I mean I didn't enjoy them dying but I enjoyed the personal perspective.
  
  and I thought the introduction was really interesting. I think it's a great example of the changing role of non-fiction writers and the how maybe popularization of fact ingestion is melding with high expectation for entertainment.
  
  Plus I think the jacket photo is hilarious. The author is wearing a timeless outfit of pearls and a simple black dress, her hair is immaculately brushed and she's in a position at her type writer/computer (the most dated thing in the phots) that would suggest she just sat down to type up a quick note to the servants before she steps out to a cocktail party (with cheetahs of course).
  
  and finally: I like peonies, documentaries, Strangers With Candy, and oatmeal with raisins.
• 
  Elisa

  This is a collection of articles previously published. I loved the ones about animals, understood little about the ones that focus on biology and didn't care for the ones about my least favorite animals, the ugliest primates. It's very uneven.
• 
  Huyen

  How should I call this gem? a feast for my imagination? verbalized Animal Planet? David Attenborough's genius? Natalie Angier is such a charming, witty and imaginative writer that I both envy her and would probably kiss the ground she walks on if I was a guy. The way she anthropomorphizes these animal stories makes it a sheer delight to read and leaves me giggling for hours (how do I draw a smiley face here?). I learn so much random stuff about scorpions, bees, dolphins, hyenas, cockroaches, worms, swans, prairie voles that it’s probably an invaluable source of party jokes for the next 10 years of my life.
  
  I have to agree with her that given animal behaviours such as child rearing or ritualized mating, it’s hard to imagine that mammals or even insects don’t have any emotions or consciousness. Interestingly, many behaviours are distorted by human sentiment rather than based on any sort of reality. For example, humans probably put most birds to shame with their promiscuity because there is almost no such thing as loyalty and monogamy in the animal kingdom. And the debauchery is mostly sneakily committed by females. Barn swallows sneak off to mate with a male with longer and more symmetrical tail or a honeybee queen can have an orgy with up to 20 zealous drones nearby. So to win the battle, a male often retaliates by reducing his attention to her babies/ humiliating or increasing his fearsome manliness by growing massive testicles.
  
  And altruistic behaviours in many social species aren’t really that altruistic at all. Nonbreading adults have subplots of their own, viewing the season helping out with their relatives raise kids as some sort of internship in human term, so some day they will fly away and raise their own family with much more experience. Or they can turn some of the kids into their underlings to wage wars with other birds and protect their homes.
  
  And alas, now I can finally forgive the women in the UK study that preferred men with flash cars because rampant female shallowness or obsession with looks isn’t that bad at all, in fact it serves very reasonable evolutionary functions. Many birds choose their mates based on the shape of the tail because that gives an inkling of how hygienic he is (well actually I just made that up) or many parasites he’s bearing . Or stickleback fish choose their mates based on color, same reason. Frogs base their choice on the opera skill of the suitor. Scorpion flies put symmetrical wings on top of their list. All this ensures females their offspring can have better parasite resistance and healthy genes.
  
  The male-female relationship in Animalland has a wide spectrum of dominance. Deceptively cute dolphins or baboons turn out to be pretty gangsterish when it comes to raiding rival gangs to compete for females. They treat females pretty brutally as well, they chase her, bite her and terrorize her into submission. But female will power still wins occasionally. Dolphins set up their sisterhood network to protect themselves from male dominance. Beetles demand protein bribes from their mates or more extreme, female scorpions gobble their mate altogether as a postclimax snack.
  
  The chapter on parasites and sex is just WOWing. Parasites are probably one of the reasons why most species have sex, to develop resistance to them. Parasites are just cunning little gits that feed on other animals’ sanity. For instance, parasite worms can prompt a mouse to become hyperactive and scoot through the field like nuts and get eaten by a bird. The bird provides a safe haven for the parasite’s larvae. Other worms cause a mouse to become sluggish and get stalked down by some carnivorous beast, either way, the parasite wins.
  
  My favorite story is probably this one:
  “a liver fluke known as a lancet begins life as an egg laid in the intestines of a sheep. It and the other eggs are expelled when the sheep defecates and are then eaten by land snails that feed on sheep feces. Inside the snails the eggs hatch and develop into larvae, which are again voided by the host, this time wrapped in a slimy packet that ants find irresistible. Once ingested by ants, the lancet larvae divide and conquer, some moving into the ants intestines, where they develop into a new infectious stage, and a few invading the ant’s brain. These brain worms so disturb the ant that early in the morning and late in the evening, it climbs to the tip of a blade of grass just at the moment when sheep in be grazing. Safely inside the belly of a sheep, the larvae from the ant’s abdomen mature, mate, and lay eggs, starting the entire rococo cycle over again.” At this stage, if that doesn’t draw a wow on your mouth, you’re probably infested by parasites in your brain.
  
  Too many fascinating stories to quote here, like how she explains menstruation or relates all the random things to benefits to humans like learning worms’ nerve systems, female hyena’s excessive androgen level and infertility in humans, cheetah’s DNA diversity and adaptation. Now I can totally appreciate why helminthologists spend their lives studying worms, orthinologists birds, parasitologists parasites and blah-blah-blahlogists biology in general. And I must thank Natalie Angier for saving me the effort to dive in the tedious scary world of scientific journals, and describing nature so vividly and inspiringly. So definitely check out this book, amazing biology stories and an enchanting play with the English language.
  
• 
  Colleen

  a great collection of essays with something for everyone. I read it cover to cover, but there is no need to as the essays each stand alone, though they gain something from being read together. I enjoyed the ones on animals most, but there is plenty on dna, celss, women in science and even psychology for hose so inclined
• 
  Andrew Z

  The Beauty of the Beastly
  by Natalie Angier
  304 Pages
  Finished 10/17/12
  
  This book is a nonfiction book about how living organisms work and why nature chose to give certain traits to certain species. It talks about the behaviors of different animals and shows that even the most grotesque creatures also have a beauty within. In this book, the author goes over some of the most hated(and most well liked)organisms on the planet from thw villanous Hyena to the dangerous Pit Viper. The author then shows how they are just as great as other creatures. There are so many organisms on this planet, big and small, hated and loved, carnivore and herbivore, but all of them are united together in the beauty of there willpower to live on.
  
  This book has really changed the way I see the world. It gives a whole lot of insight on how the world works and why things happen in nature. The beauty of the beastly is like a whole biology textbook shrunk into the size of a chapter book sprinkled with some humour. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to understand the way that nature works.
• 
  MB (What she read)

  Read this book in concert with Sapolsky's
  A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons, Zimmer's
  Parasite Rex : Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, and,--for dessert--Judson's
  Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation and you will be a very happy reader. Your brain will expand, you will have very many interesting things to think about, and you will never again look at the world in the same way.
  
  I dare you.
• 
  Ellen

  Don't get me wrong, I love Angier's writing. I think she's intelligent, incisive, and witty but this book didn't have much of an overarching theme or narrative thread that entices the reader to keep reading. Or rather, I often thought that Angier was setting us up to learn something new or a continuation of the past chapter's theme only to find that the subject had changed completely. This is a barrier I have quite often with anthologies but in this case it took me *months* to finish this book. It also took me about halfway through to realize that it was written in the 1990s and so many of the chapters (particularly regarding AIDS, cancer, and gene sequencing) were out of date.
• 
  John Fredrickson

  I really enjoyed this collection of essays. The subjects range across a wide variety: cellular functions, DNA, aging, mating, primates, and lots of others. These are accessible and independent essays, and well worth reading.
• 
  Thomas Rosenthal

  Interesting but superficial overview of life biology.
  
  The author has assembled a great number of facts, some of which surprise and fascinate. She ficuses as much on individuals doing the science as she does on the science. It is a quick read, designed for the non-scientist.
• 
  Tara

  The science is outdated now, but the writing is great and of course some science has not changed.
• 
  JJ

  Took forever to read. Some chapters way more interesting than others. Much information was likely dated material.
• 
  lola

  My mother-in-law is crazy about Natalie Angier and I hope she never reads this because I have never disagreed with her on anything in almost 2.5 years, but I dunno guys, I felt this book was a bunch of evolutionary bio/sociobiological bullshit so 90s that I actually had futurechills from, you know, now. This is written pre-Craig Venter, pre-genome, pre-babies in jars.
  
  But I liked the part about parasites! Did you guys know that there are these certain parasites that infect the brains of mice so that they act very hyper, making them stand out and become more susceptible to being spotted and eaten by predators, thusly ensuring that the parasite finds a new host in the predator? And then there's ones that make the mouse do the exact opposite, making it really sluggish, so that the predator has an easier time catching it with the same outcome for the parasite? That's some shit.
  
  Anyway, skim it.
• 
  Dale

  Not only did I enjoy this collection of science essays by Angier, but in reading it I came to realize that there is in fact an entire "collection of science essays" genre of books out there; and now that I've read Angier as well as Oliver Sachs and David Quammen and others, I realize I am a pretty big fan of the whole genre. I always thought science as a cool, even as a kid (occasionally entertaining thoughts of growing up to be a astrophysicist and studying wormholes) but years of high school science classes and the bare-minimum three I took as required in class made me feel like the interesting bits were few and far between, with a lot of grinding out observations making up the majority. The Beauty of the Beastly, like other science essay collections, highlights the few and far between interesting bits, spends just enough time on them to be engaging, and then moves on to a new topic. Which works beautifully for me.
• 
  Christine L

  Unfortunately, this book was written in 1994- much has changed in the scientific world in the last 19 years. The introduction explains that each of the chapters was originally a newspaper/journal entry meant to stand alone. As a result, the chapters don't flow well. The same facts and themes (THE HUMAN GENOME WILL SAVE US) repeat throughout the book.
  
  Based on the cover and the title, I assumed that the book would be about cockroaches and worms and the nasty creatures of the world. The book does talk about scorpions and dung beetles a bit, here and there. However, a huge portion of the book is about DNA (out of date), the human genome project (out of date), menstruation, and bibliographic tales of famous scientists that the author interviewed.
  
  Nothing was terribly beastly in this book, to be honest. Maybe 1994 was more squeamish.
• 
  Valeria Wicker

  I picked up this book after Angier's WOMAN: An Intimate Geography became one of my favorites the previous year. The author's humor and vivid descriptions of biological topics from DNA transciption and protein translation to animal behavior to evolution brings the understanding of science within reach for the general reader.
  
  The book is a collection of articles published in the New York Times in the early- to mid-nineties. My favorite chapters were the one about scorpions (made my skin crawl!), all of Part II titled "Dancing" and is mainly about biochemistry, and the bio piece about geneticist Mary-Claire King.
  
  I would recommend this book to any high school student (but especially girls) and to anyone who wants to give biology a second chance.
• 
  Mitch

  This book is composed of many short articles now adjusted and collected thematically. The author is a scientific journalist with a fascination particularly focussed on the convolutions of evolution. I didn't find some of it very interesting, but since the articles were short, I could move along quickly and there were plenty of interesting bits coming along shortly. Interjected are moments of humor; Natalie is no Mary Roach but she has done her homework and I think she's standing in Ms. Roach's shadow...if you like one, you'll appreciate the other.
• 
  Goge (BARRONS) le Moning Maniac,

  "the power of symmetry in sexual relations, about the brutal courting habits of dolphins, about the grand deceit of orchids, about the impact of female and male preferences on evolution. She knows how scientists go about their work, and she describes their ways, their visions, and their arguments. Perhaps most poignantly, she understands the complexities and the sad necessity of death. "The beauty of the natural world lies in the details, and most of those details are not the stuff of calendar art,"
• 
  Pamela Mishra

  Natalie Angier has a charming way to write about the the most neglected and not so "cute" wildlife. I especially liked the hyena chapter. i thought it was fascinated. I picked up a copy of this book after reading it from the library.
• 
  Jennifer

  I need to reread this one, as it doesn't figure as prominently in my memory as Woman and The Canon, but I'm quite sure it was an equally enjoyable gem of science meets wit.
• 
  Kate Hasenbank

  New perspectives on creatures generally regarded as ugly or terrifying.
• 
  Sps

  She's always so quotable.
• 
  Shasta

  I really liked this book, although I could have done without the DNA section (or at least placed it first) and the scientists at work section.
• 
  Jane

  borrowed this from Alice - thoroughly enjoyed.
• 
  Lori

  Cool science. Gross bugs. Life!
• 
  Biogeek

  Natalie Angier is the New York Times science writer, and she writes with insight and wit and knowledge.
• 
  aldo zirsov

  hasil hunting ke Pamulang Sabtu 30 Mei 2009