Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Animal Beauty: On the Evolution of Biological Aesthetics, illustrated by Suse Grützmacher; translated by Jonathan Howard (The MIT Press, 2019), 116 pp. $14.95 Hb. ISBN: 9780262039949.
‘Nature offers herself to us in many guises; what she hides, she at least hints at; she provides rich material for both the scientist and the philosopher, and we would do well not to scorn any means that may help us to observe her more closely and study her inner mechanisms.’
This 1832 passage by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of the most influential German writers of the eighteenth century, serves as the perfect opening for Animal Beauty and sets the stage for all that is to come. What makes something beautiful? Is it just the subjective perception of the receiver, or is there something more to it? How does beautiful biological ornamentation and patterns arise? Who are they there for? In this beautifully illustrated book of just over 100 pages, developmental biologist Christianne Nüsslein Volhard, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for her work on early embryonic development, tries to answer these questions. The result is a two-part documentation of how colour patterns develop in animals, and how they aid their social life.
The book has twelve chapters divided equally into two parts. The first part, ‘Evolution and Aesthetics’ is a short commentary on the evolutionary and behavioural implications of colour patterns, while the second part, ‘Development of Colors and Patterns’, goes into the molecular and developmental basis of these colourations. Goethe’s ideas quoted above actually form the epigraph for the first part, while an excerpt from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species leads into the second. Throughout the book, scientific concepts are made much more accessible with the use of pertinent examples. The case of fish colonies that form ordered shoals, and that of the complex bowerbird nests ornamented with coloured objects are instances that help contextualise the fact that colour patterns ‘contribute to social contracts between individuals of same species’ (36). This ample usage of examples must also be an attempt to make the concepts relatable to someone who’s not an embryologist. The final two chapters of the book focus on the development of zebrafish patterning, the model organism that garnered the author her accolades.
While Nüsslein-Volhard tries to give a bird’s-eye view of both the mechanisms and function of pattern formation, with chapters on Darwinism (chapters 1 and 2), the culture of self-decoration in humans (chapter 3), and the molecular underpinnings of pattern formation in organisms (chapters 9 and 11), the chapters do not flow naturally from one to another and the book feels somewhat disjointed. The last two chapters of each part effectively summarise the central theme of the book, and hence, I couldn’t help wondering if, perhaps, combining both these parts and omitting some other sections would have created a more cohesive narrative. These shortcomings notwithstanding, Nüsslein-Volhard does make a point to thread all the chapters together to challenge the argument that biological beauty and aesthetics are ‘uneconomical’ and that ‘they have no obvious life-supporting role’ (18). As Animal Beauty progresses, the reader is presented with sufficient reasons and examples to recognise that beauty is not merely a ‘nonessential luxury’ (3) but rather a key player in partner choice and social communication. I should also take a moment here to appreciate the illustrator Suse Grützmacher, who has played a critical role in making this book a lot more appealing than it would have been otherwise. Her illustrations hold up the central theme of the book.
It is rather difficult to categorise Animal Beauty in the conventional genre of scientific writing. It is clearly not a textbook, an exposition of a concept, or a memoir. One might consider it to be a popular science text, but it contains too much technical information to sit comfortably in that genre, either. It also does not deliver what its subtitle seems to promise, namely an account of how animals came to perceive and respond to beauty, colouration, patterns, and other visual traits. Rather it talks about the science behind the formation of these colours and patterns, and the reason why they’re useful to these animals.
If the book’s genre is difficult to pinpoint, its intended readership is even more so. For one, it covers basic concepts very familiar to biologists, and may therefore fail to excite them. For instance, Nüsslein-Volhard takes considerable care to explain words as simple as ‘species’ (6), ‘pigments’ (51), and ‘stem cells’ (91), an indication that she is writing with a layperson in mind. But, if that were indeed the case, then she fell somewhat short of her goal in other parts. It is difficult to approach the book without some prior knowledge about evolution and development. The second part gets even more technical than the first, with entire chapters on embryogenesis (chapters 9 and 11) and pattern formation (chapter 9). The free use of jargon, for example, ‘the localised signal that serves as the source of the morphogen gradient is the messenger RNA that codes for the Bicoid protein…’ (74), and a detailed account of how neural crests develop in the penultimate chapter seem rather difficult for the general reader.
I think that the audience most likely to appreciate this book would fall somewhere between the specialist and the layperson. Some acquaintance with the subject is clearly essential for navigating one’s way through the book, and I can see how this book could be a good read for anyone who has a basic grasp of developmental biology. Readers, including students in the field or people with an interest in learning more developmental biology, would surely enjoy this book.
Indulekha M. Santosh, Indian Society of Developmental Biologists (InSDB), Bangalore, India
