Superlative
The Biology of Extremes
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Narrated by:
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George Newbern
About this listen
Welcome to the biggest, fastest, deadliest science book you'll ever hear.
The world's largest land mammal could help us end cancer. The fastest bird is showing us how to solve a century-old engineering mystery. The oldest tree is giving us insights into climate change. The loudest whale is offering clues about the impact of solar storms.
For a long time, scientists ignored superlative life forms as outliers. Increasingly, though, researchers are coming to see great value in studying plants and animals that exist on the outermost edges of the bell curve.
As it turns out, there’s a lot of value in paying close attention to the “oddballs” nature has to offer.
Go for a swim with a ghost shark, the slowest-evolving creature known to humankind, which is teaching us new ways to think about immunity. Get to know the axolotl, which has the longest-known genome and may hold the secret to cellular regeneration. Learn about Monorhaphis chuni, the oldest discovered animal, which is providing insights into the connection between our terrestrial and aquatic worlds.
Superlative is the story of extreme evolution, and what we can learn from it about ourselves, our planet, and the cosmos. It's a tale of crazy-fast cheetahs and super-strong beetles, of microbacteria and enormous plants, of whip-smart dolphins and killer snakes.
This book will inspire you to change the way you think about the world and your relationship to everything in it.
©2018 by Matthew D. LaPlante. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing Inc., all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with BenBella Books.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Long on biography, short on advice
- By A. Mandelin on 08-02-18
By: Edward O. Wilxon
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The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
- A New History of a Lost World
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.
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"The Rise of the Scientists Who Study Dinosaurs"
- By Daniel Powell on 09-16-18
By: Steve Brusatte
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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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The Ancestor's Tale
- A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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In The Ancestor's Tale, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey, Dawkins spins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. The Ancestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionary theory and riveting in its telling.
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Please do an unabridged version!
- By MovieExpertise on 09-29-16
By: Richard Dawkins
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Parasite Rex
- Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes listeners on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life forms that are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life's diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior.
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Fascinating and Horrible
- By David A on 10-09-18
By: Carl Zimmer
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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 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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The Lives of a Cell
- Notes of a Biology Watcher
- By: Lewis Thomas
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 4 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Lives of a Cell, Dr. Lewis Thomas opens up to the listener a universe of knowledge and perception that is perhaps not wholly unfamiliar to the research scientist; but the world he explores is also one of men and women, of complex interrelationships, old ironies, peculiar powers, and intricate languages that give identity to the alienated and direction to the dependent. This remarkable work offers a subtle, bold vision of humankind and the world around us - a sense of what gives life - from a writer who seems to draw grace and strength from the very substance of his subject.
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So enlightening and enjoyable!
- By Flora on 03-15-18
By: Lewis Thomas
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Written in Stone
- Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
- By: Brian Switek
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Spectacular fossil finds make today's headlines; new technology unlocks secrets of skeletons unearthed 100 years ago. Still, evolution is often poorly represented by the media and misunderstood by the public. A potent antidote to pseudoscience, Written in Stone is an engrossing history of evolutionary discovery for anyone who has marveled at the variety and richness of life.
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Very good but has some weaknesses
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-19
By: Brian Switek
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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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Evolution
- What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters: Adapted for Audio
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: John Bishop
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Abridged
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Over the past 20 years, paleontologists have made tremendous fossil discoveries, including fossils that mark the growth of whales, manatees, and seals from land mammals and the origins of elephants, horses, and rhinos. Today there exists an amazing diversity of fossil humans, suggesting we walked upright long before we acquired large brains, and new evidence from molecules that enable scientists to decipher the tree of life as never before.
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NOT WORTH THE PRICE OF ADDMISSION
- By CRAIG on 12-25-14
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Intelligence in Nature
- An Inquiry into Knowledge
- By: Jeremy Narby
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Anthropologist Jeremy Narby has altered how we understand the Shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, in one of his most extraordinary journeys, Narby travels the globe - from the Amazon Basin to the Far East - to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers understand about the intelligence present in all forms of life. Intelligence in Nature presents overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity alone.
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Favorite part was untrue :(
- By Al A'scgh on 08-13-18
By: Jeremy Narby
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The Blind Watchmaker
- Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.
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Challenging textbook more than an enjoyable listen
- By Eric on 01-15-12
By: Richard Dawkins
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Feathers
- The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: Aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
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Fantastic Science and Fun
- By Chris Reich on 12-28-14
By: Thor Hanson
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Amazing! Must listen!
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Tales from the Ant World
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"Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony.... Their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg", writes Edward O. Wilson in his most finely observed work in decades. In a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations as Mozambique and New Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico's Dauphin Island and even his parents' overgrown yard back in Alabama, Wilson thrillingly evokes his nine-decade-long scientific obsession with more than 15,000 ant species.
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Terrible narration, pointless rambling writing.
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What listeners say about Superlative
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- Nerd's-eye view
- 12-06-19
Fascinating survey of amazing biology
The narrative was great, but the narrator kept mispronouncing words and putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable in various terms. Mispronounced terms like "amigdala" and "cyclopamine" and "cnidarian" and several others grated my ears.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Henrik
- 04-15-21
Gret insight
Great book, with a lot of interesting insights, and crazy discoveries. So seems there is still a lot of things that we need to discover
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2 people found this helpful
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- Stephen Rooney
- 01-30-23
excellent, entertaining and fascinating!
Really enjoyable book jammed packed with fascinating stories, random facts, detailed science. Some words/ names are painfully mispronounced, but considering how full of Latin it is I think the narrator did a pretty good job. This might be a little too jargon-y for those completely unfamiliar with modern life science terminology, but most of it is explained enough to make it accessible to the non-scientist. And for the scientists, a delightful range of details are provided from studies across the globe so that surely there is something new for everyone.
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- Anonymous User
- 06-02-19
Fascinating and fun
If you have any sort of curiosity about the living world around us and how we fit in, this is a must read. LaPlante uses extremes as a platform to guide us to a better realization of what’s going on right under our feet and out the door. He instills the enthusiasm of a child with solid scientific backing to take us on the journey.
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- Patricia King
- 05-22-22
Enlightening, funny
I enjoyed this book very much. To learn about a species becoming extinct has always been a fascination of mine. I loved hearing about the science of that.
More so I think this book opens the hard conversations about things as simple as humans being not being the “most intelligent” creatures on the planet. And even deeper how sentient are our planet mates. And still further how much empathy and compassion do they possess and is their memory based and driven by genes or like humans based only on that individuals experience.
Wonderful book I will recommend to many. FYI the narrator was great.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-05-19
Awesome book
I dont consider myself an environmentalist, but after reading this, I am more environmentally conscious.
it is also a great book on exploring how science is being applied for developing new products, medicines through the study of extreme animals and plants.
One of my new favorite books.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Aaron
- 06-16-20
Very entertaining book of biology!
This book was very entertaining and wonderfully written. Full of fun facts and funny quips. If you are looking for a detailed explanation of how superlative biology comes to exist, this may leave you wanting a little more. But if you want to learn some things you never knew in a fun and light hearted way, this is a great read/listen!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Hayley
- 06-21-24
Reasonably interesting
Reasonably interesting book. It gives tidbits of information about a lot of animals but doesn’t give in depth information about anything. If you’re very knowledgeable about animals and like to learn about things in depth, this isn’t the book for you if you any some really interesting facts, give it a listen.
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