Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You: A Lively Tour Through the Dark Side of the Natural World Audiobook CD – Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged Author: Dr. Dan Riskin PhD | Language: English | ISBN:
1452669554 | Format: EPUB
Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You: A Lively Tour Through the Dark Side of the Natural World Audiobook CD – Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged Description
Review
"A fact-filled and amusing trek through nature's dark side that adroitly combines learning and the yuck factor." ---Kirkus
About the Author
Dan Riskin, PhD, is an evolutionary biologist who has made several television appearances in the U.S. and Canada. Dan lives in Toronto with his family.
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- Audio CD
- Publisher: Tantor; MP3 - Unabridged CD edition (March 31, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1452669554
- ISBN-13: 978-1452669557
- Product Dimensions: 0.6 x 5.3 x 7.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I found this a delightful book about how Mother Nature is not as nice as is popularly believed or advertised. Told in everyday explanations and vignettes for all to understand, with humor and personal experiences, this biologist explains through six of the seven deadly sins how every element in nature is better at committing them than we are, while trying to advance its own DNA at the expense of all others.
Doctor Riskin uses “meat robots” as the term for all living things, especially mammals (including us) because all behaviors are directed by the instinct to pass on DNA of…not the fittest, but the sneakiest, the most venomous, and the cruelest. From parasites, plants and birds, to sea creatures, insects and mammals there is no other purpose. And each does it in an amazing way evolved over time as situations changed so survival is assured.
Even man behaves according to the dictates of his DNA, rationalizing it’s natural, and if so, must be the only correct way to behave. He shows how this is absolutely not true, not in natural childbirth, not in natural foods, and certainly not in our warlike, self-serving, self-destructive behavior.
Man has, for better or worse, the ability to change Nature for his benefit, receiving the trophy for the last vice – pride. We believe, as the most advanced species, we’re different from the others, and normal rules don’t apply to us. But that has made us as short sighted as each element in nature that performs in the moment without understanding the consequences to their own future.
Even though scientists chip away at old theories and misguided, antiquated beliefs, society as a whole takes decades, even centuries, to accept the facts.
Mother Nature Is Trying To Kill You: A Lively Tour Through the Dark Side of the Natural World by Dan Riskin was an eye opening read into the more unusual and darker side of nature; a side you don’t often hear talked about in polite company or around the dinner table.
Raskin starts the book off talking about a maggot living in his scalp, a souvenir from a visit to a bat cave. That is only the beginning. Through the rest of Mother Nature Is Trying To Kill You, Dan Raskin will introduce you to a variety of animals with their own unique ways to maim, control and kill you using the Seven Deadly Sins as a road map through nature.
While working his way through the various sins of nature, Raskin describes his journey to find out if what drives us as humans is our DNA or something else. This journey began with the birth of his son and the realization that he would do anything for the offspring he helped to create. Just when he thinks he has it figured out, something comes along to prove him wrong.
I very much enjoyed learning about a different facet of nature from what I’ve studied before. My time spent reading about nature, and the animals and plants found therein, have resulted in a few discoveries of odd behaviors. Until now I thought these were oddities, rare occurrences. It seems I was wrong and that there are more disturbing and sometimes inventive ways to survive.
Take the roundworms, for example, that can hide out in your lymphatic ducts for up to thirty years without you ever knowing it. It is only once they die and your immune system “sees” them that there is a problem. Or how about the Toxoplasm parasite?
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