The selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Audio book from Audible
Narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward
Rating- 4.5/5 for the book as such and 4/5 for the narration which is pretty smooth but when there is a change between the two narrators, there happens a stop in the flow of thoughts for a while!
Running length is around 16 hours which can be reduced to less than 13 hours or so with the narration speed of around 1.2 without any change in clarity or diction. In fact I would suggest you to do this since otherwise the narration is slow and the topic can be dull especially on the long drive home after a meal which has a big chance of putting you to sleep!
Since this is a fairly old book written in 1976, you can imagine the new discoveries which would have happened. This is why we have two narrators who alternate between the original book and the extended second edition and the end notes which tries to incorporate the new discoveries and findings! In that way this is a very challenging and praiseworthy task indeed!
Richard is known as the fact master and how! In a non fiction book there is no place for speculation and half truths! So in every other page, Richard either quotes a paper or a proper discovery to drive his point home.
Now, the one line summary of the book would be that it is an ode to Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution which has been extended t modern times and here the centre point is the replicator which ensures how any species survives or evolves! That replicator is GENE and Richard takes us on a journey between the balance between the survival capabilities or the Selfish nature of the gene and the altruistic nature!
It starts with the story of the primordial soup which finally gives rise to the Gene and then talks about cell division namely Mitosis and Meiosis. The distribution of the genetic matter between the offspring and the sibling is discussed in detail.
The selfish nature of the gene and many animals like the Praying Mantis and seagulls is compared with the altruism of many animal such as the mother and worker bees! He talks about the natural selfish tendency and the true altruism!
Did you know that there are some bad tasting butterflies!? The full deal according to Richard Dawkins and is that these bad tasting butterfly have a specific pattern on the wings! And normally the birds or other predators avoid them! Some other butterflies understand this and though they are tasty (for birds as of now!); They mimic the pattern to match the non tasty butterfly! It’s like potato looking like bitter gourd! Another mimic is how cuckoo birds eggs are so similar to crows eggs! The crow tries to make some marking but the cuckoo does the same! And the general rule for birds such as hen or crow is that if there is an egg like object in its nest then it will be taken care just as it’s own!
Also of how birds like Cuckoo with all the sweet voice and all lay eggs in the nest of other birds and the very first act of the baby cuckoo is to push the other egg down! Or how they blackmail!
Richard Dawkins states how a particularly diabolical form of child blackmail happens! We all know of the saying, the crying child gets the milk. It’s the same for birds! The young bird which screams the loudest gets the worm or food from the mother bird! But some blackmailing birds especially if it’s a cuckoo bird in a crow’s nest, it screams in such a way as to attract predators deliberately to the nest? The child is ‘saying’ ‘Fox, fox, come and get me.’!
The only way the parent can stop it screaming is to feed it! So the child gains more than its fair share of food, but at a cost of some risk to itself. But the mother bird here has more to lose so she will comply!
He talks about penguins standing on the edge of the cliff waiting for someone to jump!
He talks about care givers and helpers which is the broad functional classification of Mother or female and Father or Male of the species.
He mentions about how the essential difference between the gametes of male and females. Then he mentions about Phenotype which is the technical term for the external manifestation of a living being and the genetic make is called the Genotype.
One of the best things which is described in the book is about a very interesting thing called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The author first explains it and then elaborates it further. Then the game is put to real life situations like the sea bass or the foster bird analogy. He even tries to quantify the contribution of each parent and the offspring. He talks about how antlers of a deer or the birds of a peacock or the fact that there was a bone in the external genitalia and the relevance of these in the modern times!
Then he mentions about Aphids and pack of lions and so many animals and insects thrown in the mix for good measure!
Prisoners dilemma is probably the best thing about this book and the way the author explains it further adding on a game taking about grudges and forgivers is simply super! All backed by research and thus there are multiple interpretations and he accepts that!
A non fiction book without any proper story is such a dull thing to read but books like this which is like a prequel to the Third chimpanzee by Jared Diamond is such a joy to listen! The author has made an earnest attempt to make it as simple as possible and he states that in the introduction.
The audio book also has a summary of his next book called the extended phenotype which is of course my next read (or more accurately; listen!)
Grab it with both hand or ears and listen one of the best audio books in this genre!
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