Evolutionary Wars: A Three-Billion-Year Arms Race: The Battle of Species on Land, Sea, and Air

As a kid, I use to love watching insects. The ants impressed me the most, with their organization and ferocity. Sometimes I'd play a game to see how long I could hold my hand on the nest. Caterpillars were another curiosity, with their spines, toxic hairs, and camouflage. And what kid hasn't had the experience of picking up a lizard or snake, only to find it excreting its feces all over the place, to ward off potential predators?When I saw Levy's book in the bookstore at the University of Washington it caught my attention immediately. Reading it was like going back in time, to the woods behind our house, where my fascination with animals and their modes of attack and self-defense originated. Levy's book is for all the kids (including the ones over 30) who find something intriguing about the microscopic kingdoms hidden under a log, or in a pond, and the ferocious battles that are wage there.Evolution wouldn't exist without competition. The subtitle in Levy's book elaborates on the content: "A three-billion-year arms race." This is a book about plants and animals, and how they evolved to eat and escape from each other. The ones that are most effective in either evading or executing capture are the ones that propagate their DNA, and the result of this battle of pursuit and escape over the last 2 billion or so years has been some truly amazing life forms, employing some really interesting solutions.Like any good book, Levy begins at the beginning, describing a little about the competition that existed among the very first forms of life on earth. Throughout the book, Levy describes different dimensions of the conflict. Some dimensions lead to flight, others to eyes, some to incredible speed and agility, others to stealth, and still others to ears of great acuity. Many conflicts resulted in chemical defenses. And some of the most bizarre resulted in camouflage. A common theme throughout Levy's book is the manner in which evolution, over hundreds of millions of years, has resulted in extraordinarily complicated and refined mechanisms for both defense and attack. The discussion about bats, for example, describes how these small mammals use their acoustic sonar to track flying insects with the sort of accuracy we (who, by comparison, hardly use our ears at all) can scarcely imagine. Reading the section on bats, I had to remind myself that, while they do some incredible things with sound, animals with eyes do equally impressive feats with their eyes. Bats can decipher an incredible amount of information in an unbelievably complex mix of acoustic signals. Animals with eyes, on the other hand, manage to make sense of a bewildering barrage of electromagnetic radiation, and even discern the tiger in the grass. It's just that the difference in the evolutionary paths our ancestors took is so incredible that I cannot imagine doing with my ears what comes naturally to those bats with their ears.Levy frequently compares the evolutionarily design

The author mixes dry science with enough pizzazz to evoke the kind of wonder a child has for small insects and other creatures featured in the book. I wouldn't say that I couldn't put this book down. I enjoyed it more by reading bits and pieces at my leisure.

having been virtually unable to put the book down i can almost feel my I.Q. increasing! (not hard!) The book describes in understandable terms the fascinating realm of survival in the wild, from microscopic organisms to the largest creatures ever to have lived. A good, insightful read crafted masterly. My only negative comment was a few repeats of data, although i think the intention was to remind rather than redundant insertion.All in all a brilliant read!!