Description

Life innovates constantly producing perfectly adapted speciesbut theres a catch

Many animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives Passive constrained modest threatened Then in a blink of evolutionary time they flourish spectacularly Once we start to look these sleeping beauties crop up everywhere But why

Looking at the book of life from apex predators to keystone crops and informed by his own cuttingedge experiments renowned scientist Andreas Wagner demonstrates that innovations can come frequently and cheaply to nature well before they are needed We have found prehistoric bacteria that harbor the remarkable ability to fight off twentyfirstcentury antibiotics And human history fits the pattern too as lifechanging technologies are invented only to be forgotten languishing in the shadows before they finally take off

In probing the mysteries of these sleeping beauties Wagner reveals a crucial part of natures rich and strange tapestry