The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy

The book crawls with curious facts . . . [Kershenbaum] is fascinating on how aliens might communicate -- James McConnachie * The Sunday Times * This is no mere frivolous exercise in arm-waving (or tentacle-waving) and baseless speculation. Instead, what emerges is a fascinating plunge into the deep-time history of life on Earth and animal evolution in all its glorious diversity . . . To comprehend the alien is to know thyself * The Times * Evolutionary theory helps us explain patterns in the past, and combined with a rich understanding of natural history and biodiversity, predict what might be discovered in the future. Arik Kershenbaum takes us on a joyous voyage of animal diversity and illustrates the singular importance of natural selection in explaining life - here on Earth - and what will likely be discovered throughout the galaxy. A stimulating read! -- Daniel T. Blumstein, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles When we search for aliens, what are we searching for? If life exists on other worlds, it might look very different to life 'as we know it', but Arik Kershenbaum makes a persuasive and entertaining case that we needn't be completely in the dark. There are some rules that all beings with a claim to be alive must observe, and for which life on our planet can serve as a guide. This is an eye-opening and, above all, a hopeful view of what - or who - might be out there in the cosmos -- Philip Ball, author of Nature's Patterns Surveying the deep-time of evolution on Earth and his own cutting-edge research into animal communication, Kershenbaum provides a fascinating insight into the deepest of questions: what might an alien actually look like -- Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins A fun, and thoroughly biological, exploration of possible and impossible alien beings. If you'd love to know what real aliens from other planets might really be like, this is the book for you -- Susan Blackmore, author of Seeing Myself If you don't want to be surprised by extraterrestrial life, look no further than this lively overview of the laws of evolution that have produced life on earth. Assuming these laws to be universal, Arik Kershenbaum predicts what alien organisms might look like -- Frans de Waal, author of Mama's Last Hug - Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves Very good. We can't know what alien life is like, but can make strong inferences from Earthly life, Universal Darwinism and the power of convergent evolution . . . I hope it's not just for the purely personal, idiosyncratic reason that he writes like me that I love The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy by Arik Kershenbaum. Although it sets out to be (and is) about alien life, what emerges is a wonderfully insightful sidelong look at Earthly biology -- Richard Dawkins, via Twitter