Weird Biology

From split-gill mushrooms to duck-billed platypuses, the spectacular science of sexual reproduction and creation of biodiversity on Earth. Let’s talk about sex. Not boring, human sex, but the endlessly fascinating, varied, and complex forms of reproduction in the rest of the natural world...

A rollicking, myth-busting history of sex that moves from historical attempts at birth control to Hildegard von Bingen’s treatise on the female orgasm, demystifying plenty of urban legends along the way. Roman physicians told female patients they should sneeze out as much semen as possible...

From entomologist Barrett Klein comes a buzz-worthy exploration of the many ways insects have affected human society, history, and culture Insects surround us. They fuel life on Earth through their roles as pollinators, predators, and prey, but rarely do we consider the outsize influence they...

Book # 5 in the Strangest Animals series. Describes some of the most unusual mammals from around the globe.

“Craig Pittman has a remarkable talent for telling stories set in the Sunshine State that never fail to fascinate and entertain. Sure, Cat Tale has plenty of laughs and Florida weirdness, but Pittman has written a truly inspirational story about the panther’s brush with extinction, and the...

In recent years, scientists have hypothesized life-forms that can only be called "weird": organisms that live off acid rather than water, microbes that thrive at temperatures and pressure levels so extreme that their cellular structures should break down, perhaps even organisms that reproduce without DNA. Some of these strange life-forms, unrelated to all life we know, might be nearby: on rock surfaces in the American southwest, hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, or even in our own bodies. Some, stranger still, might live in Martian permafrost, swim in the dark oceans of Jupiter's moons, or survive in the exotic ices on comets.

What do a desert lizard, a Beijing field hamster, a horseshoe crab older than the dinosaurs, and a cone snail at the bottom of the Pacific have in common? They all knew something we didn't. And their secrets are keeping you alive. In this book, biochemist and former Ringling Bros. clown Maria Merlino takes you behind the scenes of the most astonishing pharmacy on earth: the natural world. Every chapter reveals one creature, one accident, one ignored scientist, and one discovery that changed medicine forever. You will meet the Gila monster whose venom became Ozempic. The hamster caught in a ...