Ten Million Aliens: A Journey Through the Entire Animal Kingdom

by Simon Barnes

Overview

This fascinating 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 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 real marvels of the planet we live on.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476730356
Publisher:	Atria Books/Marble Arch Press
Publication date:	02/17/2015
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Simon Barnes is the multi-award-winning chief sportswriter for The Times (London). He is also a nature writer, horseman, and the author of a dozen books, including the bestselling How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher and The Meaning of Sport (Short Books). He lives in Suffolk with his family.

Read an Excerpt

Ten Million Aliens

endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. Final words of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. It is a thought that has had me enthralled all my life. We are not alone in the universe: the idea that launched a million works of science fiction. Fact is we are not alone on our own planet. Far from it. We could hardly be less alone. We are one of a crowd, part of a teeming throng. We are not alone even when we are alone: whether we are counting the great garden of bacteria in our guts – alien life forms that keep us alive – or the tiny arthropods called Demodex mites that live in the follicles of our eyelashes.

Because we are one of many. Life is not about the creation of a single perfect being. An ape is not a failed human: it is a perfectly valid and fully evolved creature in its own right. A monkey is not a failed ape, a lemur is not a failed monkey, a mouse is not a failed primate, a fish is not a failed mammal (and as I shall show you later, there is no such thing as a fish) and insects, nematode worms, corals and priapulids are not failed vertebrates. The meaning of life is life and the purpose of life is to become an ancestor. All forms of life are equally valid: the beautiful, the bizarre, the horrific, the obscure and the glorious.

We humans are different from the rest in some ways, but only in some ways. One of these ways is our need for a myth to get us through the night: a myth to carry us through the vast distances of interstellar space: a myth to transport us through the endless aeons of time in which life has been lived on earth, a myth to reconcile us to our true evolutionary position. Which is a cosmic afterthought.

We used to cherish the myth that we are made of quite different stuff from the animals: there are animals, and then there’s us. Darwin exploded that one, of course. He showed us that we are all animals, but that is too difficult a truth for us to face in its rawness and reality. So we have created another myth. Benjamin Disraeli, speechifying about Darwin’s horrifying truth, said: “The question is this: is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new-fangled theories.”

But evolution is a fact and we humans – let’s dispense with Disraeli’s “man” nonsense; we’re all in it together, men, women and children – needed to come to terms with our apeness, our primateness, our mammalness, our vertebrateness, our animalness. So we came up with perfectibility: the idea that evolution had a goal, that goal was to make a perfect creature, and that perfect creature is lucky old us. The famous image of evolution – monkey, ape, hunched proto-hominid, fully evolved and upright modern man – encapsulates the myth as vividly as a cross, a crescent and a seated Buddha encapsulate the great world religions. The whole process of the Animal Kingdom, starting with unicellular blobs and passing through insects, “fish”, amphibians, reptiles and birds, culminates in mammals, and mammals carry us through primitive egg-layers and marsupials, to creatures of ever-greater magnificence and complexity, to the primates and then the apes, until the ladder finally ascends to wonderful, glorious, magical us.

Which is great. Except of course that it doesn’t.

The mite that lives in the follicles of your eyelashes is as fully, as exquisitely, as perfectly evolved as you are. And on that thought, I shall set out to describe the endless forms of the Animal Kingdom,I to encounter the ten million alien species with which we share our planet. To do so righteously, I must write a book that has no beginning and no end, but like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, simply continues.

Table of Contents

Endlessness Demodex mites, humans 15

Sex and the single slug Slugs 19

2, 8,10,12,13,18: Mammals and Mammaries 22

Champagne Lifestyle New species 25

Allspice, ant-killer Taxonomy and Systematics 28

Orang orang Orang-utan and other primates 33

My family and other family Classification 36

Below the drop-off Carol 39

Lemurs and archbishops Spineless Primates 42

Introduction to invertebrates 45

Long-jump gold medal Bushbaby 48

Architects of human culture Wasps 50

The lion, the glitch and the glove compartment Lion 53

Brother sponge Sponges 58

The profile of Winnie-the-Pooh Bears 61

Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish Glass Sponge 65

Il buono, il brutto e il cattivo Hyena 68

Sod the rainforest Moral coral 72

The Half-and-halfters seals 76

Walking plants Sea anemones 81

Wimbledon champion Bovids 84

Infernal agony of gelatinous zooplankton Jellyfish 89

Walking with Jechwe Lechwe and genenuk 92

Life in the round starfish 98

Do I know you? Naked more rat 101

Flatworm, flatworm, buring bright Flatworm 104

The elephant in the corridor Elephant 108

The holiness of tapeworms Tampworm 113

Plan A for aardvark Aardvark 116

Unkillable bears Tardigrades 119

Flying flashers Idiuris 123

Cans and cans of worms Nematodes 127

Self-sharpening chisels Rodents 130

Tipping the velvet worm Velvet worm 134

Dirty rats Rats 138

Another can of worms Anniled Worm 142

Good old Ratty Water-vole and dormouse 145

Trio for piano, bassoon and earthworm Earthworm 142

Night-leaper Spring - hare 153

The daughters or Doris Ribbon Worms 155

Flashin' sunshine children Shrews 158

Because I am many Bryozons 160

That breathtaking breath Whales 161

Getting silly Lampshells 166

Song of the sea 168

Dirty beasts Penis worms 171

Gnomes of the river River dolphins 173

Us alone Placazoatts 176

Disgustingly upside down Bats 178

Lacing Venus's girdle Comb jellies 182

The altruistic vampire Vampire bats I84

Here be mud dragons Mud dragons 187

Pocket dynamo Nematnniorphs 193

The Hamlet worm Marsupials 193

Death comes for the Elephant's Child Afore elephants 195

Who needs oxygen? Loricifera 200

Epiphany Even more elephants 202

A bit samey Arrow worms 205

Time for transition Platypus 207

The peanut trick Peanut worms 210

Fearher Kestrel 212

No sex please, we're bdelloids Rotifers 216

The nausea of Charles Darwin Peacock 219

Evolution in reverse? Thorny-headed worms 222

How many ways of catching a fish? Toucan, river birds 224

****! Hairy-backs 227

Look, no stabilizers Batcleur 229

The crypto-bums Goblet worms 234

Same bat time, same bat hawk Bat bowk 236

Lobsterisimus bumakissimus Symbions 241

The dark side Owls 243

Is-ness Jaw worms 247

Crisis relocation Terns 250

The Quaker worm Xenoturbellids 254

Swift scramming frenzy Swifts 257

Gutless, brainless Acoelomorphs 260

Jewels that breathe Hummingbirds 262

Just one more thing Phoronids 266

The wardrobe bird Flamingos 269

James Bond and the kraken Giant squid 273

Instant birder Lilac-breasted roller 277

Superslug Octopus 280

The Clever Club Crows 284

Nautilus but nice Nautilus 288

Bell-bear of their wings Swans 291

She sells seashells Shell-wearing molluscs 295

22:1 Albatross 298

Fearful the death of the diver must be Giant clam 302

No flying, please, we're birds Flightless birds 305

Valuing oysters Oysters 309

Do I contradict myself? Penguins 311

One more twist Gastropods 314

Hijoputido Passerines 317

Creeping like snail Giant African, land, snail 321

Wild thing Marsh warbler 325

On our last legs Arthropods 329

Blood-chilling Crocodile 333

A suit of armour Japanese, spider crab 337

Snakes, unclad humans and a garden Snakes 340

Beloved barnacles Barnacles 344

Secret snakes Adder 348

The silk route Spiders 351

Disgusting clumsy lizards Lizards 354

The Kalahari Ferrari Solifygids 357

Good luck, little metaphor Turtles 360

Twenty centimetres! Centipedes 364

Shape-shifters Amphibians 367

Second innings Large blue butterfly 371

When I was a rain god Frogs 375

Laser epiphany Blue, morpbo 379

Death by frog Golden poison frog 383

Les demoiselles du Waveney Dragonflies 387

A miraculous draught of newts Newts 392

Cannibal sex Praying mantis 395

Beautiful shirts Gaecilians 398

Unreal city Termites 401

"Fish" Fish 405

True bugs suck Bugs 408

The stillness of salmon

Salmon 411

Let copulation thrive Flies 414

The Eden fish Clear Fish 418

Prostitutes and clients Bees 423

That's no parasite: that's my husband Anglerfish 427

The wasp and the devil's chaplain Wasps 430

The sinking fish Sharks 434

The best butter Butterflies and months 438

No bones about it Cartilaginous, fish 442

Inordinate fondness and all that Beetles 445

Ray of Sunshine Manta ray 451

Axis of weevil Weevils 454

Epilogue The beginning Jawless fish, lobe-finned fish 457

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/08/2014
Barnes (How to Be a Birdwatcher), an English sports writer, nature writer, and novelist, embarks on a vast survey of the animal kingdom. The 460 pages of descriptions of various phyla are a joy to read: funny, thoughtful, informative, and wise. Barnes divides the world’s creatures into vertebrates and invertebrates, alternating his 130 short chapters between the two. A superb writer, he packs an amazing amount of material into each brief chapter, and makes stories about tiny velvet worms, giant squid, peripatetic albatrosses, and sessile barnacles equally captivating. His scientific facts are well chosen and creatively mixed with firsthand descriptions of his travels across Africa, Great Britain, and beyond. Barnes is as comfortable discussing crickets as cricket and weaves literature with natural history. Without moralizing, Barnes also situates Homo sapiens as just one species within the animal kingdom, forcing readers to think about the damage we are doing to so many of our fellow species. The book is all but impossible to put down, and for good measure, Barnes explains the process of evolution as well as any popular science writer. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Always with keen wit, the author shows how animals evolve to survive... A great update for readers who took biology classes long ago."

Booklist

Reading Barnes’ prose is a bit like peeling a rather elegant onion, as he gradually reveals secrets about his life through the medium of the natural world."

BBC Wildlife Magazine

Barnes is a unique voice, always willing to challenge conventional wisdom and look for deeper meanings.

The Sunday Telegraph

An excellent book from the irrepressible Simon Barnes.

The Times (UK)

Barnes brings the animal kingdom to life.

The Independent (UK)

"Mr. Barnes’s writing resembles that of one of his heroes, the naturalist Gerald Durrell. It also harks back to an earlier naturalist tradition of connecting the wonders of nature to the mysteries of the spirit."

Wall Street Journal

Barnes’s tone…makes for an immensely readable narrative. TenMillion Aliens is sure to impress anyone with interest in the natural worldwho wants to learn more about the more obscure creatures we share our planetwith. But it is also important for all readers because of its ultimate message:We should take care not to destroy and squander the life that we share ourworld with, both for their sake, and for ours.

Christian Science Monitor

01/01/2015
Sports, nature, and travel writer Barnes (formerly Times of London and Bird Watching with Your Eyes Closed) aims to teach that humans are related to all animals and to "the planet that supports us." Unfortunately, one can't teach without respecting readers' diverse attitudes or providing useful information, and Barnes does little of either. He claims that those who appreciate flies' acrobatics have at best "a rare passion," or at worst are children or on drugs, and titles a chapter about an intricate marine worm with the bleeped-out f-word. The author also fails to mention that parasitic wasps and mantids prey on garden pests, white nose syndrome is decimating U.S. bats, and medical maggots clean infected wounds. He suggests that readers learn butterfly identification but offers no other advice for observing or aiding wildlife. VERDICT Barnes fans will enjoy this work. For everyone else, better choices for nurturing a love of all creatures are the field guides for every part of the country, Nancy Knowlton's Citizens of the Sea, Ellen Prager's Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime, and Kelly Lambert's The Lab Rat Chronicles.—Eileen H. Kramer, Georgia Perimeter Coll. Lib., Clarkston

Library Journal

2014-12-06
British sportswriter Barnes (The Meaning of Sport, 2005, etc.) takes a stretch to write about the 10 million species, more or less, that share the world with humankind. The figure is debatable, but no matter; there's a certain inviting quality to any natural history text that asserts that the so-called lesser creatures are not so much lesser than we and that "the mite that lives in the follicles of your eyelashes is as fully, as exquisitely, as perfectly evolved as you are." Barnes follows with a description of slug sex, which is not a matter for the squeamish. Taking the opportunity to introduce the technical term "apophallation," he notes that the culmination of a bout of slug love is for one of the parties involved to chew off the penis of the sort-of male, because slugs are hermaphroditic up to then, after which the slug, now without, continues life as a female. "A backbone isn't essential to an interesting life," he sagely observes. Sadly, some of that charm wears off quickly as Barnes indulges. For one thing, he overwrites startlingly, sometimes with an eye to establishing street cred: "I've experienced quite a lot…wildebeest in the Serengeti, dolphins breaching in front of the boat, eye contact with a bear, a colony of bee-eaters, a stooping falcon, a gathering of crocodiles, a horizon-filling chorus of frogs, leaping salmons, being within touching distance of 12-foot basking sharks, watching the passeggiata in the Piazza Navona." The tendency to overstate runs strong throughout, although there are some useful pointers that help make up for it, including how to bluff your way out of being eaten by a lion. Barnes' tour of life is entertaining and informative, though it doesn't hold a candle to the likes of Ackerman, Durrell and Attenborough.

Kirkus Reviews