Beyond Primates: New Essays on Darwin and Evolution

BEYOND PRIMATES: New Essays on Darwin and Evolution is for readers prone to marvel at the wonders of the natural world. They don’t need to know a thing about Charles Darwin or his theories to understand and enjoy this book. Science journalist Rebecca Coffey’s fourteen essays look at Darwin’s most important ideas in light of modern animal and human behavior research.

This book tells tales of his exploits and of the experiments of modern scientists were inspired by Darwin. Do baby animals know mother love? Darwin’s ideas help reason out an answer. Why do some male spiders try to be cannibalized by their mates immediately after sex? One good answer might be that want to serve as nutrition for just-fertilized eggs and the female that will keep them safe until they hatch. What about yeast procreation would have surprised Darwin? What does the fact that some wasps quickly evolved the ability to recognize each other’s faces suggest about human cognitive evolution? Are human couples who claim to be monogamous but “cheat” acting … hmmm … like ducks? How might Darwin’s own love life have tripped him up a bit in his scientific reasoning? BEYOND PRIMATES re-examines many aspects of evolutionary theory, some of them long forgotten but all of them fascinating and even fun.

By the way, after all these years later, have Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution held up?

Largely, yes. And that debate about whether Darwin’s theories are religious heresy? Hogwash. When he died, he was buried with full religious ceremony in Westminster Abbey, right next to Sir Isaac Newton.

Essays:

— Wasps’ Ability to Recognize Faces May Clarify a Key Mystery of Human Evolution

— Male Brown Spiders May Prefer a Little Death with their Sex

— Wind Creates Evolutionary Changes in Insects, Depriving Them of Flight

— Why Charles Darwin Delayed for Decades before Publishing His Bold Ideas on Evolution

— Humans and Animals Share Non-Verbal Expressions and Gestures

— Every Sperm Is Sacred (Sing It, People!)

— Do Animals Know Mother Love?

— How Some Songbirds Have Evolved to Play their Terrible ‘Darwinian’ Cards

— Monogamy in New World Monkeys … and In Humans

— Long, ‘Homo Stupidus.’ Hello, Intelligent, Compassionate Neanderthals

— A Scientist’s Baker’s Yeast Showed How Quickly Evolution Can Happen

— ‘Dear Enemies’ Are Made When a Song Sparrow Learns to Sing

— Mole-Rats Have More Luck Being Partially Deaf than Fully Hearing

— Darwin in Love

Reviews

“Coffey is known for teasing out the wonder and humor to be found in scientific discoveries, and there is no exception in these informative and entertaining essays. The detailed but clear writing is lively, intellectually stimulating, and accessible to both curious armchair scientists who enjoy popular science and seasoned scientists who require salient, provable facts and academic discussion. The material is well-researched and cited, with endnotes provided with each essay. Coffey begins this collection with an article about a wasp’s ability to recognize different wasp faces, a phenomenon that underscores their social abilities, and why this may clarify the mystery of how early humans’ social needs also fostered their intellectual development.” — US Review of Books

“In more than a dozen essays, the author, a science journalist, explores the sometimes quirky terrain of contemporary evolutionary theory (maybe the partial deafness of naked mole-rats provides a survival advantage?) in light of the foundational work of Charles Darwin. The issues broached here raise questions about the continued applicability of Darwin’s findings while also acknowledging the extraordinary impact his theory continues to assert over scientific investigation. For example, Darwin was wrong when he hypothesized that winged insects on the island of Madeira were swept away by high winds, resulting in a larger population of wingless bugs, but not entirely so; the current hypothesis is that the high winds exerted a pressure on the insects to “invest energetically in the machinery of reproduction” rather than in the development of flight, which would be of little advantage in the windy climate. Coffey offers a wide range of similar discussions, all lucidly presented with a touch of light humor—at one point, she wonders if the preference of some male spiders to mate with a female who will likely devour them is evidence supporting Freud’s theory of the death drive, a fateful instinct for obliteration…. Her peripatetic tour of all things Darwinian is a delightful one and enjoyably instructive.[Beyond Primates is] a companionable assemblage of essays on evolution, breezily fascinating.” — Kirkus Reviews

“A bracing gallop through some of the central issues of evolution. It will leave you exhilarated and wiser, and will reignite your wonder at this extraordinary wild world.”— Charles Foster, author of the books Being a Human and Being a Beast

“In Beyond Primates: New Essays on Darwin and Evolution, Rebecca Coffey has produced a fascinating and useful introduction to Darwin’s notion of evolution by natural selection. The writing is lively, concise and each chapter presents a brief story or vignette that illuminates an intriguing example of evolution at work. Although useful for anyone interested in how nature operates, Beyond Primates is particularly important reading for those uncertain about the reality of evolutionary processes in nature. Coffey provides several outstanding examples that show how evolution is not just some fantasy dreamed up by scientists, but a fact that has been frequently observed in nature and is well-understood in the scientific community. I highly recommend the book.” — J. W. Traphagan, Professor of Anthropology, Center for International Education, Waseda University and Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin

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Beck & Branch, 2023