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Super Fly
- The Unexpected Lives of the World's Most Successful Insects
- Narrated by: Jonathan Balcombe
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
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Publisher's summary
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.
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Critic reviews
“Flies! Those irritating insects that settle on your food when you eat outside in summer, cluster round the eyes of horses, and carry diseases on their little tickling feet. How can someone write a whole book on flies! The best thing I can say is 'Read Super Fly!' It is utterly fascinating, written with clear prose, a delightful sense of humour, and by a gifted naturalist and story teller. And Jonathan Balcombe not only writes with authority about the incredible diversity of fly species, but with a real love for these fascinating winged beings that play such an important role in the tapestry of life.” (Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace)
"Ogden Nash wrote, 'God in His wisdom made the fly, and then forgot to tell us why.' Now Jonathan Balcombe's witty book enlightens us, advising of the fly's, and other insects', surprising role in preserving our ecosystem and far more. In my view, the first thoroughly readable, enjoyable and scholarly work on the subject." (Ingrid Newkirk, president and cofounder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA))
"Balcombe has done it again. He’s peeled back our assumptions about a class of maligned creature and shown us there is wonder, majesty, and even poetry to find inside flies. I left this book hypnotized by the celestial blues Balcombe illuminated in flies’ eyes; I was delighted to learn of flies’ status as unsung pollinators, as forensic tools, as secret codes in fine art. This book has so many gifts for nature lovers, engineers, poets, and tired old souls hoping to rekindle their love of the world." (Lulu Miller, author of Why Fish Don’t Exist and cohost of Radiolab)
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What's Eating You?
- People and Parasites
- By: Eugene H. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In What's Eating You? Eugene Kaplan recounts the true and harrowing tales of his adventures with parasites, and in the process introduces readers to the intimately interwoven lives of host and parasite.
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Squirm-inducing, horribly fascinating stories
- By Karin W. on 04-03-12
By: Eugene H. Kaplan
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The Most Perfect Thing
- By: Tim Birkhead
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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How are eggs of different shapes made, and why are they the shapes they are? When does the shell of an egg harden? Why do some eggs contain two yolks? How are the colours and patterns of eggshells created, and why do they vary? And which end of an egg is laid first - the blunt end or the pointy end?
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Great book about eggs!!
- By Timothy on 03-24-21
By: Tim Birkhead
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Nature's Nether Regions
- What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves
- By: Menno Schithuizen
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of evolution as you’ve never heard it before. What’s the easiest way to tell species apart? Check their genitals. Researching private parts was long considered taboo, but scientists are now beginning to understand that the wild diversity of sex organs across species can tell us a lot about evolution. Menno Schilthuizen invites listeners to join him as he uncovers the ways the shapes and functions of genitalia have been molded by complex Darwinian struggles.
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A New Favorite
- By S. Pepper on 05-15-15
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The Wonder of Birds
- What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future
- By: Jim Robbins
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.
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Stories about birds with something for everyone
- By D on 07-24-17
By: Jim Robbins
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Cannibalism
- By: Bill Schutt
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Eating one's own kind is a completely natural behavior in thousands of species, including humans. Throughout history we have engaged in cannibalism for reasons related to famine, burial rites, and medicine. Cannibalism has also been used as a form of terrorism and as the ultimate expression of filial piety. With unexpected wit and a wealth of knowledge, Bill Schutt takes us on a tour of the field, exploring exciting new avenues of research and investigating questions like why so many fish eat their offspring and some amphibians consume their mothers' skin.
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Ruined it at the end
- By Kimberly Ames on 12-07-17
By: Bill Schutt
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Why Evolution Is True
- By: Jerry A. Coyne
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact. In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design", there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned: the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection.
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As great as everyone says it is
- By Joseph on 12-01-10
By: Jerry A. Coyne
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The Thing with Feathers
- The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
- By: Noah Strycker
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. The Thing with Feathers explores the astonishing homing abilities of pigeons, the good deeds of fairy-wrens, the influential flocking abilities of starlings, the deft artistry of bowerbirds, the extraordinary memories of nutcrackers, and other mysteries.
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Interesting book, terrible reader
- By MGM123 on 03-16-18
By: Noah Strycker
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Silent Earth
- Averting the Insect Apocalypse
- By: Dave Goulson
- Narrated by: Dave Goulson
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making.
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Important book for all
- By Wren Jen on 03-24-24
By: Dave Goulson
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I, Mammal
- By: Liam Drew
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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A list of the attributes that define a mammal is a ragbag of things - fur, live birth, three bones in the middle ear, a brain whose two halves are robustly joined together.... But this curious collection of features contain the roots of all the biology that makes us what we are: monkeys with massive brains who parent extensively, enjoy sport and think lots. Which is to say, what makes us mammals makes us human.
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Who knew?
- By Fitmen on 04-25-18
By: Liam Drew
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The Triumph of Seeds
- How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses & Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life, supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and the humble peppercorn drove the Age of Discovery, so did coffee beans help fuel the Enlightenment and cottonseed help spark the Industrial Revolution. And from the fall of Rome to the Arab Spring, the fate of nations continues to hinge on the seeds of a Middle Eastern grass known as wheat.
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Delightfully simplistic!
- By Adrian on 03-30-16
By: Thor Hanson
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The Beak of the Finch
- A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend 20 years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos, studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are 400 at the time of the author's visit or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about 20 generations of finches - continuously.Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
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Fascinating in-depth look at evolution in action
- By Philip on 05-15-11
By: Jonathan Weiner
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Fruitless Fall
- The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis
- By: Rowan Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Rowell Gormon
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Many people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time with no pollination and no fruit. The fruitless fall nearly became a reality when, in 2007, beekeepers watched 30 billion bees mysteriously die. And they continue to disappear. The remaining pollinators, essential to the cultivation of a third of American crops, are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse.
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Compulsory Reading - Share with Everyone!
- By Charles Koenen on 04-12-20
By: Rowan Jacobsen
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The Galápagos
- A Natural History
- By: Henry Nicholls
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The Galapagos were once known to the sailors and pirates who encountered them as Las Encantadas: the enchanted islands, home to exotic creatures and dramatic volcanic scenery. In The Galapagos, science writer Henry Nicholls offers a lively natural and human history of the archipelago, charting its evolution from deserted wilderness to scientific resource (made famous by Charles Darwin) and global ecotourism hot spot.
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Thought-Provoking
- By Jean on 10-23-18
By: Henry Nicholls
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In the fall of 1909, a pair of bitter contests captured the world’s attention. The American explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook both claimed to have discovered the North Pole, sparking a vicious feud that was unprecedented in international scientific and geographic circles. At the same time, the rivalry between two powerful New York City newspapers—the storied Herald and the ascendant Times—fanned the flames of the so-called polar controversy, as each paper financially and reputationally committed itself to an opposing explorer and fought desperately to defend him.
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Planning the invasion of Normandy, the Allies knew that decoding the communications of the Nazi high command was imperative for its success. But standing in their way was an encryption machine they called Tunny (British English for “tuna”), which was vastly more difficult to crack than the infamous Enigma cipher.
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Four Fifths a Grizzly
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Hidden gem
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Ex Libris
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“Books can connect people across time zones and zip codes, across cultures, national boundaries, and historical eras”, Kakutani writes in her introduction to Ex Libris. Here listeners will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth listening or relistening; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation.
By: Michiko Kakutani
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The Great White Bard
- How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race
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Professor Farah Karim-Cooper has dedicated her career to the Bard, which is why she wants to take the playwright down from his pedestal to unveil a Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. If we persist in reading Shakespeare as representative of only one group, as the very pinnacle of the white Western canon, then he will truly be in peril.
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So enlightening!
- By eric lewis on 02-12-24
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The Book Collectors
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Daraya is a town outside Damascus, the very spot where the Syrian Civil War began. Long a site of peaceful resistance to the Assad regimes, Daraya fell under siege in 2012. For four years, no one entered or left, and aid was blocked. Every single day, bombs fell on this place - a place of homes and families. And then a group searching for survivors stumbled upon a cache of books in the rubble. In a week, they had 6,000 volumes; in a month, 15,000. A sanctuary was born: a library where people could escape the blockade, a paper fortress to protect their humanity.
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Amazing
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What listeners say about Super Fly
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Performance
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- Kiwipharaoh
- 10-15-23
Bought this on a whim
I always knew we had undervalue the importance of insects which is why I bought this book. I was fascinated by the diversity of flies and their importance to our lives.
This type of reading should be mandatory at school level, before children become insect exterminators, just because they are bugs.
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- Travis
- 08-05-21
Passed with fly-ing colors!
Excellent book on an often irritating order of insects. Really, everyone would benefit from this book. I'm a beekeeper, so naturally I'm more of a fan of bees and wasps, but flies are just as diverse and at times bizarre. Buy this now!
The author also does a great job with the narration.
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- Damon E.
- 10-14-23
Awesome!
Learned so much about the value of flies! I never knew and now have respect
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- R. Klein
- 08-11-21
Highly informative and engaging!
This was a terrific read. Very informative and entertaining. The book contains some nice, detailed descriptions of the amazing diversity, both in type and behavior, of one the planet's most plentiful life forms, served in a story-telling format.
Balcombe creates engaging chapters that explore what and how flies eat, how they reproduce, and their importance to the ecosystem and to science. And some interesting thoughts and on whether insects, and flies in particular, are sentient beings, and the experiments that test the hypothesis that they, indeed, may be.
And there are a few cute jokes interspersed into the narrative.
I've read or listened to books about the lives (and secret lives) of other animals and plants. I enjoyed the factual, yet breezy air of this book more than most. And I enjoyed listening to the author's voice and cadence. Straight forward, factual, but warm and engaging. The work is fact-based, and where the author raises questions, he carefully presents his opinion and facts that support it, but he does not try to convince you one way or another.
If you have a healthy interest in the creatures with whom we share our planet, I'd recommend you GET THIS BOOK.
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- Chris
- 02-13-22
Wonderful
Balcombe lyrically combines reverence for life, scientific rigor, and top-flight storytelling in this book. He left me much more respectful of flies and eager to pass along what I'd learned.
He has flexibility of mind and moral courage. In one place, he tells about how, as a high-school student, he engaged in what he smilingly calls an act of animal liberation, setting the fruit flies he'd been assigned to study in biology class free instead of euthanizing them at the conclusion of the lesson, as he'd been directed to do. A less skillful writer might forget to mention that act, or another might exaggerate it in a boast. Bolcombe describes what he did and why, and makes a modest point about practical kindness. He connects his act to an exploration of fly sentience.
He writes economically, eloquently, forcefully.
I'm really glad I read this book. It changed the way I think.
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- Logan Jones
- 10-14-24
touching,
Empathetic look at flies, their importance, and what’s cool about them. which is a lot!
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- G V
- 05-04-23
Interesting material, but delivery is lacking
The source material is (probably) fascinating. However, the writing is not engaging, and the voice talent does not improve upon it. Made me loose all interest in the book.
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