Ten Million Aliens: A Journey Through the Entire Animal Kingdom

Funny, thoughtful, informative, and wise (Publishers Weekly, starred review), this scientific foray into the animal kingdom examines how the world’s creatures–weird, wonderful, and everything in between–are inextricably linked. Life on planet earth is not weirder than we imagine. It’s weirder than we are capable of imagining. And we’re all in it together: humans, blue whales, rats, birds of paradise, beetles, mollusks the size of buses, gladiator slugs, bdelloid rotifers that haven’t had sex for millions of years, and water bears–creatures that can be boiled, frozen, and fired off into space without dying. We’re all part of the animal kingdom, appearing in what Darwin called endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful. In this audacious book, Simon Barnes brings together all of the world’s creatures, seeking not what sets them all apart but what unites them all. He explores arcane knowledge from the works of Darwin to James Joyce and David Attenborough to Sherlock Holmes, in addition to telling his own wild, don’t-try-this-at-home adventures in humorous and compulsively readable prose. Fascinating, entertaining, and perfect for Discovery Channel enthusiasts, Ten Million Aliens will open your eyes to the animal world through Barnes’s unique voice, always willing to challenge conventional wisdom and look for deeper meanings (The Sunday Telegraph).