Restless Creatures - 9780465065721

Wilkinson offers this natural history of movement, beginning with a chapter in marvel of our own bipedal motion and the the comparative flexible precision of our bodies compared to even our closest ape relatives. The book then reaches gradually backwards in time, discussing how bipedalism moved us out of the trees and onto the savannahs; convergent evolution of different classes of flying animals; the influence of swimming on the development of vertebrate organization and fins-to-limbs; how animals' needs for movement logically produced a head-to-tail axis and widespread bilateral symmetry; and even how the advent of a complex centralized nervous system developed in service to locomotion. Toward the end, the book begins to explore the selection by forces of movement even on ostensibly static organisms, such as pollen dispersal, and the impact of mere luck on developing specific types of locomotion depending on habitat and its associated pressures. The book draws to a conclusion with single-celled organisms and the advent of any controlled movement at all, gesturing backward in narrative and forward in time toward the massive consequences of that evolutionary step. Finally it snaps back to humans, highlighting the influence of locomotor abilities and locomotor pressures on a wide variety of the aspects of our lives including consciousness, pleasure from exercise, technological innovation, and other psychological phenomena. Annotation ©2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)