Kenneth Catania - Great Adaptations: Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales of Evolution’s Mysteries Solved

GREAT ADAPTATIONS

Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales
of Evolutions Mysteries Solved

Kenneth Catania

Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2020 by Princeton University Press

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ISBN 978-0-691-19525-4

ISBN (e-book) 978-0-691-20955-5
Version 1.0

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Editorial: Alison Kalett and Abigail Johnson
Production Editorial: Brigitte Pelner
Jacket Designer: Amanda Weiss
Production: Jacqueline Poirier

Publicity: Sara Henning-Stout (US) and Katie Lewis (UK)

Jacket Images: (Top) Tentacled snake, Erpeton tentaculatum, illustration from Proceedings
of the Zoological Society of London, 1860. (Left) Conger eel (Murna conger), illustration
from The Natural History of British Fishes(1802), by Edward Donovan / The New York
Public Library Digital Collections. (Bottom) Star-nosed mole, condylura cristata,
illustration from The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America(1845), by John James
Audubon / The New York Public Library Digital Collections

To Liz
My ideal reader, best friend, co-conspirator,
and mother of wolves

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If you ask me why I love my job as a scientist, I cant help but think of the first scene in The Princess Bride. The movie opens with a grandfather (Peter Falk) about to read a book to his sick grandson (Fred Savage), and the skeptical kid asks, Has it got any sports in it? The grandfather replies, Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles. I might say as much about the biology covered in this book. In fact, Id have to add a few words, like electrocution, zombification, deception, and centuries-old legends. Although true love may be absent, Id argue its made up for by the beauty of the animals, which I have made a special effort to photograph so you can judge for yourself. Id have to stop at miraclesI am a scientist, after all. That said, if theres one word that best captures my own recurrent feeling about the process of discovery and the things Im going to describe, it would be: inconceivable.

That may seem like an overly dramatic viewpoint for a scientist. But Ive spent thousands of hours studying the brains and behaviors of unusual animals; Im supposed to be an expert. Still, every time I investigate a new species, my best guess about what the animal can do and how it can do it is wrong. And Im wrong in the best possible way; the animals are always able to do something unexpected and more interesting than Id imagined.

This book is my personal account of those unexpected and interesting things discovered during a career spent investigating biological mysteries. These discoveries are presented much as they happened, as a chronological series of case studies, beginning with my first forays into research as an undergraduate working at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, where I was tasked with collecting and studying the famously enigmatic star-nosed mole, a small mammal with pink, fleshy tentacles surrounding its nose. Like any good mystery, there were many false starts and blind alleys along the way, but that only made me more curious.