NATURE’S NETHER REGIONS (OLD NAME:DARWIN’S PEEP SHOW: WHAT NATURE’S NETHER REGIONS REVEAL ABOUT LIFE, SEX AND DEATH)

Book ID/图书代码： 13000512B52583

English Summary/英文概要： The penis has been reinvented more often than the wheel, and some of the reinventions are pretty quirky: for example, a typical damselfly penis has a balloon – an inflatable bulb – and two horns at the tip, plus long bristles down the sides. This great diversity in sexual organs illustrates one of the few rules of biology: that if two species are very similar in appearance, the way to tell them apart is invariably in the shape of the genitalia.

In the past two decades biologists have discovered that genitals – as tools for passing on genes to future generations – are at the forefront of evolution. Now, in DARWIN’S PEEP SHOW, Menno Schilthuizen describes this revolutionary work and the important new perspectives that it opens up on evolution, development and behaviour. He shows us how the amazing diversity of form and function in female and male genitalia – including human ones – is the result of the unexpected twists of evolution; why, in sex more than anything else, humans are the newbies where outlandish shapes and bizarre behaviours are concerned; and what this eye-popping sexual cornucopia reveals about human nature.

Along the way, we join Menno as he peers through an entomologist’s microscope at arrays of penises extracted from thousands of metallic dung beetles from Borneo; visits a researcher who picks up tiny stone needles strewn on the forest floor after a night of rampant snail sex; and interrogates a researcher as she makes ducks ejaculate into coiled glass tubes. All in the name of science.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 动物的阴茎在自然界中不断地进化改变着，这比齿轮转动的频率还要频繁，而且有些演变十分地怪异：比如，一种被称为豆娘的典型的蜻蜓，它的阴茎上有一种像气球一样的东西—可以充气膨胀的球状物—顶端还有两个角，下面两边还有长长的鬃毛。在性器官上的巨大差异说明了生物学中的规律之一，那就是：当两个物种在外观上非常相似的时候，这时候区分它们的方法总是可以看它们生殖器官形状的异同。

在过去的二十年里，众多生物学家都已经发现生殖器—作为将基因代代传承的工具—一直处在进化的最前沿。如今，在《透过达尔文的透视镜》这本书中，作者门诺. 斯基尔绥华森描述了这一演化的过程并介绍了一些重要的新角度，那就是从进化、发展和行为方面来展开。他向我们读者展示了包括人类在内的雄性和雌性动物们的生殖器官，它们的形式与功能多的惊人，而这些都是在进化过程中遭遇意想不到变化的结果；以及为什么鉴于自然界中有各种奇异的形状以及很多怪异的行为，人类在性方面只能算是初学者，还有这些令人瞠目结舌的丰富的性学方面的知识是怎样揭示人类本性的。

阅读本书,我们可以感觉到我们一直都和门诺一起进行着探索。他透过昆虫学家的显微镜去观察一组组的昆虫的性器官，这些都是从婆罗洲已有数千年历史的甲虫的金属化石中提取出来的；他拜访了一位研究人员，这位研究者收集了蜗牛在经过一夜凶猛的繁殖之后洒落在森林地面表层的那些微小的石制细针；他还询问了一位让鸭子朝盘绕的玻璃试管里射精用以研究的研究者。所有这一切都是以科学的名义进行的。(XMM)

Awards/获奖情况：版权已售：英国，德国

Rights sold:
English: Penguin US
German: dtv
Dutch： Atlas
Italian: Bollati Boringhieri
Atlas Contact after a heated five-way auction, and Italian rights have been sold to Bollati Boringhieri.

About the Author/作者介绍： 门诺. 斯基尔绥华森是一名四十五岁的化生物学家，他是为莱顿的荷兰生物多样性研究中心的一员。这个机构拥有一个公众博物馆，每年都有三十万的参观者，它还收集了三千七百万的标本（居世界第五）。门诺拥有莱顿大学的博士学位以及瓦赫宁根大学两个博士后的学位。他曾在马来西亚的热带生物保护和研究协会的副教授。他还定期向《新科学家》、《自然历史》、《科学》及《今日科学》投稿，也为荷兰的《新鹿特丹商业报》和《民众日报》这样的国家性报纸撰写文章。他的个人主页的网址是http://www.science.naturalist.nl/schilthuizen.

Menno Schilthuizen is a 45-year-old evolutionary biologist based at the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity ’Naturalis’ in Leiden. The institution has a public museum visited by 300,000 visitors annually and a 37-million-specimen collection (the fifth largest in the world). He obtained a PhD from Leiden University and two postdoctoral fellowships at Wageningen University, and worked for seven years as an associate professor at the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation in Malaysia. He has written regularly for New Scientist, Natural History, Science and ScienceNOW, as well as for Dutch national newspapers, including NRC Handelsblad and De Volkskrant. His homepage is at http://www.science.naturalis.nl/schilthuizen

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Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE(到期可授)

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：Viking will publish in the US next May and rights have already been sold to dtv in Germany, Bollati Boringhieri in Italy and Atlas Contact in the Netherlands. Rights have so far been sold to Flammarion in France, dtv in Germany, Bollati Boringhieri in Italy and Atlas Contact in the Netherlands.

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