Super Fly
The Unexpected Lives of the World's Most Successful Insects
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History and a New York Times Editors Choice Pick
"After reading Super Fly, you will never take a fly for granted again. Thank you, Jonathan Balcombe, for reminding us of the infinite marvels of everyday creatures."
—Sy Montgomery, Author of How to Be a Good Creature
From an expert in animal consciousness, a book that will turn the fly on the wall into the elephant in the room.
For most of us, the only thing we know about flies is that they're annoying, and our usual reaction is to try to kill them. In Super Fly, the myth-busting biologist Jonathan Balcombe shows the order Diptera in all of its diversity, illustrating the essential role that flies play in every ecosystem in the world as pollinators, waste-disposers, predators, and food source; and how flies continue to reshape our understanding of evolution. Along the way, he reintroduces us to familiar foes like the fruit fly and mosquito, and gives us the chance to meet their lesser-known cousins like the Petroleum Fly (the only animal in the world that breeds in crude oil) and the Chocolate Midge (the sole pollinator of the Cacao tree). No matter your outlook on our tiny buzzing neighbors, Super Fly will change the way you look at flies forever.
Jonathan Balcombe is the author of four books on animal sentience, including the New York Times bestselling What A Fish Knows, which was nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Science Writing. He has worked for years as a researcher and educator with the Humane society to show us the consciousness of other creatures, and here he takes us to the farthest reaches of the animal kingdom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biologist Balcombe (What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins) fascinates with this deep dive into the world of flies, which some scientists contend is the largest and most diverse order. In often humorous prose, starting with a depiction of his own discovery that his body had been infiltrated by maggots on a research trip to South Africa, Balcombe reveals the intricate hidden world of these insects, generally dismissed as buzzing, biting pests. Through oft-bizarre examples, Balcombe surveys fly life cycles (the delicate mountain midge lives only two hours), diets (another midge eats only "termites captured by one kind of Amazonian comb-footed spider"), and reproductive methods (the honeymoon fly continually copulates for 56 hours). Balcombe also looks at the multifaceted relationship between humans and flies, which are not only vectors of diseases, but can provide evidence in homicides, a forensic method first used in 10th-century China. In vivid prose, Balcombe perfectly illustrates the complexity of the natural world. Armchair naturalists will find this a stunning and welcome complement to similar volumes such as The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild or The Soul of an Octopus. Photos.
