Evolution got a little too toasted on holiday beverages before it made the gharial. Cheers, everyone.

Source: Flickr / ZeePack / licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 / cropped to remove border

Evolution got a little too toasted on holiday beverages before it made the gharial. Cheers, everyone.

Source: Flickr / ZeePack / licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 / cropped to remove border

wtfevolution:

Need a holiday gift for your nerdy best friend, precocious teenage offspring, or fundamentalist aunt?* Consider the WTF, Evolution?! book. Charles Darwin would have liked it, probably.

Here’s what some living people are saying:

“Mara Grunbaum’s book highlights the amazing, truly strange side of evolution. Nature’s a funny thing.” —The Verge

"In addition to being entertaining, the combined photos and commentary are extremely educational. They are also a constant reminder of what evolution is and how it really works.” —Huffington Post

"Although many of the species profiled here have downright disgusting quirks (such as baby toads that crawl through their mother’s skin), readers can’t help but be awed by them.” —Scientific American

Pssst! If you’re in the U.S., then from now until Sunday you can get 25% off the WTF, Evolution?! book on Amazon. That makes it just $7.13, which is about the same as a fancy sandwich. (Note: Book is not edible.) Use the promo code BOOKDEAL25 at checkout.

You could also use that code to get 25% off any other book. I won’t be mad. Everyone should buy books even if I didn’t write them. Another great place to buy them is at independent bookstores, where WTF, Evolution?! made the national indie bestsellers list this week. Thanks, independent bookstores, you’re the best.

“Okay, okay, I’ve got one. ‘Sloths.’”

“Sloths?”

“Sloths! They’ll live in trees and climb around and eat leaves.”

“That sounds pretty cute, evolution. But leaves aren’t all that nutritious, are they? How are they going to get enough energy to climb around?”

“Oh, I thought of that! They’ll supplement their diets with algae that they grow in their own fur. I even put special channels in their hairs to collect rainwater and keep the algae moist.”

“Huh, okay… but then what are the algae going to feed on?”

“Thought of that too. They’ll be fertilized by all the moths that also live in the sloth’s fur.”

“Wait, what? Seriously? Moths? And how are the moths going to reproduce? Their larvae need to eat something too, you know.”

“Yup, thought of that. Once a week, when the sloth needs to poop, it’ll climb down from the tree and poop on the ground. Then the moths can lay their eggs in the dung, and the larvae will eat that.”

“Okay, this is ridiculous. I mean, doesn’t climbing down to poop defeat the whole purpose of living in a tree? Won’t that make it stupidly easy for a jaguar or something to come along and eat them?”

“Well, yeah, that does happen. Kind of a lot, actually.”

“And?”

“Look, no system’s perfect.”

Source: Flickr / Scott Aaron / licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

“So I’m working on a new concept. It’s called ‘parental care.’”

“What does that mean, evolution?”

“It means that instead of just laying her eggs and then leaving them to fend for themselves, like most amphibians do, this caecilian is going to stick around and feed them after they hatch.”

“Oh, that’s nice! What’s she going to do, bring them termites and stuff?”

“What? No. I didn’t even give her arms.”

“Okay, but maybe she could—”

“No, no. What she’s going to do is grow an extra layer of skin that’s super-fatty and nutritious, and then she’s going to sit there while her young tear the skin off her with their tiny, shredding teeth.”

“I… I’m sorry? They’re going to eat their mother’s skin?”

“I prefer the term ‘graze on.’”

“That’s horrifying.”

“Like that’s ever stopped me before.”

Source: Wilkinson et al., 2013 / licensed under CC BY 2.5
Meet another species of caecilian in the WTF, Evolution?! book!