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The Everyday Darwinist

Why Rats Laugh, Jellyfish Sleep, Earthworms Socialize, and Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution

Contributors

By David Stipp

Formats and Prices

Price

$30.00

Price

$40.00 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Hardcover $30.00 $40.00 CAD
  2. ebook $14.99 $19.99 CAD

For fans of accessible, fun popular science comes an exploration of evolution’s quirkiest puzzles and most enduring mysteries

Why do cats live longer than dogs? Why do many different kinds of bees have yellow stripes? Why can we smell a skunk a mile away, much farther than we can detect the strongest perfume? Such questions can be seen as puzzles about creatures’ evolved traits. Besides offering standing invitations to the joys of curiosity, they focus our attention on beguiling designs that have been millions of years in the making. Indeed, looking at the living world through a Darwinian lens reveals its colossal depth in a way that’s all too easy to miss in the age of endless distractions. And you need only summon up your inner 7-year-old—the kid spilling over with naive / brilliant why questions—to notice such puzzles, and to find yourself slowing down and looking deeper while considering possible solutions. 

In this lively, lucid book, science writer David Stipp ponders Darwinian puzzles about nine familiar creatures and things—bumblebees, dogs, sparrows, caffeine, earthworms, and sleep, among others—to show how rewarding it can be to look at nature in this deeper way. By revealing hidden depths of the ordinary, The Everyday Darwinist shows not only that fascinating intricacies lie just beneath the natural world’s familiar surfaces, but also that noticing them lets us connect dots that in many cases we didn’t realize existed. This is backyard biophilia at its most entertaining and enlightening. 

On Sale
Sep 23, 2025
Page Count
272 pages
Publisher
Timber Press
ISBN-13
9781643264875

David Stipp

About the Author

David Stipp was a science writer for the national media for over thirty years, as a staff reporter at the Wall Street Journal and as a senior writer at Fortune, and then as a freelancer for Scientific American, the New York Times, and other publications. He is the author of two previous books, The Youth Pill and, most recently, A Most Elegant Equation.
 

Learn more about this author