On his book Feats of Strength: How Evolution Shapes Animal Athletic Abilities
Cover Interview of March 05, 2019
A close-up
I would hope that readers encounter the last chapter,
preferably because they got there through first reading the preceding nine
chapters, but I’m not picky. That last chapter is mostly about humans, and
specifically it is about how we can apply what we’ve learned about animal
performance to understand our own evolutionary history. That emerging body of
research is as good an argument as I’ve seen for why we should conduct basic
research, and it is startling how relevant basic performance work is to humans
once you adopt the perspective that humans are just another peculiar species of
animal (which, of course, we are). Failing that, page 127 is a terrific page
that explains why you either should or shouldn’t watch the Sylvester Stallone
movie Over the Top, depending on how much you like terrible movies. If
referencing a ridiculous action movie from more than 30 years ago doesn’t bring
in the young people, then I don’t know what will!
I’d also like to briefly answer a question that you didn’t
pose to me, and that is “Is there anything that you really wanted to include in
the book but weren’t able to?” Yes, there is, and I’m glad I asked myself that.
I describe at one point an experiment performed in 1958 by a researcher named
Raymond Cowles that involved dressing lizards in tiny bespoke mink coats. The
idea was to test some hypotheses about why modern reptiles aren’t covered with
insulating furs or feathers. Cowles actually took a picture of these
fashionably dressed lizards, and it is glorious. The great performance
researcher Ray Huey told me that Cowles had given that picture to him, and Ray
in turn later passed it on to yet another scientist, Warren Porter. But
although Warren was extremely gracious and helpful, he doesn’t know what
happened to the picture. He did direct me to the only known reproduction and
gave me permission to use it but unfortunately it wasn’t of high enough quality
to be included in the book. Still, somewhere out there is a picture from 1958
of a lizard in a little fur coat (for science!), and that makes me happy.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
A close-up
I would hope that readers encounter the last chapter, preferably because they got there through first reading the preceding nine chapters, but I’m not picky. That last chapter is mostly about humans, and specifically it is about how we can apply what we’ve learned about animal performance to understand our own evolutionary history. That emerging body of research is as good an argument as I’ve seen for why we should conduct basic research, and it is startling how relevant basic performance work is to humans once you adopt the perspective that humans are just another peculiar species of animal (which, of course, we are). Failing that, page 127 is a terrific page that explains why you either should or shouldn’t watch the Sylvester Stallone movie Over the Top, depending on how much you like terrible movies. If referencing a ridiculous action movie from more than 30 years ago doesn’t bring in the young people, then I don’t know what will!
I’d also like to briefly answer a question that you didn’t pose to me, and that is “Is there anything that you really wanted to include in the book but weren’t able to?” Yes, there is, and I’m glad I asked myself that. I describe at one point an experiment performed in 1958 by a researcher named Raymond Cowles that involved dressing lizards in tiny bespoke mink coats. The idea was to test some hypotheses about why modern reptiles aren’t covered with insulating furs or feathers. Cowles actually took a picture of these fashionably dressed lizards, and it is glorious. The great performance researcher Ray Huey told me that Cowles had given that picture to him, and Ray in turn later passed it on to yet another scientist, Warren Porter. But although Warren was extremely gracious and helpful, he doesn’t know what happened to the picture. He did direct me to the only known reproduction and gave me permission to use it but unfortunately it wasn’t of high enough quality to be included in the book. Still, somewhere out there is a picture from 1958 of a lizard in a little fur coat (for science!), and that makes me happy.