The title should really be _Evolutionary Wars: The Billion Generation Battle.._. The book is a description of various defenses and offenses animals have developed through evolution to aid them in the great natural selection. However, he didn't go into as much detail as I'd hoped for about those specific defenses/offenses, and exactly what species they have possibly made obsolete. It was more of a listing it seemed. Snakes have venom. That is cool. Salamanders can change color. That is cool.

The author mixes dry science with enough pizzazz to evoke the kind of wonder a child has for small insects and other creatures featured in the book. I wouldn't say that I couldn't put this book down. I enjoyed it more by reading bits and pieces at my leisure.

As a kid, I use to love watching insects. The ants impressed me the most, with their organization and ferocity. Sometimes I'd play a game to see how long I could hold my hand on the nest. Caterpillars were another curiosity, with their spines, toxic hairs, and camouflage. And what kid hasn't had the experience of picking up a lizard or snake, only to find it excreting its feces all over the place, to ward off potential predators?

When I saw Levy's book in the bookstore at the University of Washington it caught my attention immediately. Reading it was like going back in time, to the woods behind our house, where my fascination with animals and their modes of attack and self-defense originated. Levy's book is for all the kids (including the ones over 30) who find something intriguing about the microscopic kingdoms hidden under a log, or in a pond, and the ferocious battles that are wage there.

Evolution wouldn't exist without competition. The subtitle in Levy's book elaborates on the content: "A three-billion-year arms race." This is a book about plants and animals, and how they evolved to eat and escape from each other. The ones that are most effective in either evading or executing capture are the ones that propagate their DNA, and the result of this battle of pursuit and escape over the last 2 billion or so years has been some truly amazing life forms, employing some really interesting solutions.

Like any good book, Levy begins at the beginning, describing a little about the competition that existed among the very first forms of life on earth. Throughout the book, Levy describes different dimensions of the conflict. Some dimensions lead to flight, others to eyes, some to incredible speed and agility, others to stealth, and still others to ears of great acuity. Many conflicts resulted in chemical defenses. And some of the most bizarre resulted in camouflage.

A common theme throughout Levy's book is the manner in which evolution, over hundreds of millions of years, has resulted in extraordinarily complicated and refined mechanisms for both defense and attack. The discussion about bats, for example, describes how these small mammals use their acoustic sonar to track flying insects with the sort of accuracy we (who, by comparison, hardly use our ears at all) can scarcely imagine. Reading the section on bats, I had to remind myself that, while they do some incredible things with sound, animals with eyes do equally impressive feats with their eyes. Bats can decipher an incredible amount of information in an unbelievably complex mix of acoustic signals. Animals with eyes, on the other hand, manage to make sense of a bewildering barrage of electromagnetic radiation, and even discern the tiger in the grass. It's just that the difference in the evolutionary paths our ancestors took is so incredible that I cannot imagine doing with my ears what comes naturally to those bats with their ears.

Levy frequently compares the evolutionarily designed characteristics of animals with what we see in modern war machines. The flying bat, for example, hones in on its prey with far greater efficiency and accuracy than any guided missile. The chemical sensors in the noses of many animals are sensitive to an extraordinary degree. Some fish bring down flying insects by spitting water at them. To make the kill, they have to account for relative motion, and parabolic flight of the water drops. Other fish (the Anableps dowi) spend a lot of time near the surface of the water. To search for objects in both the water and the air, they have to account for the difference in the index of refraction in the air, and under water. The solution? They have evolved two eyes: one for seeing above water, and one for seeing below.

Of the many features in this book, some of the best are the many excellent black-and-white line drawings. The book is full of them (they average about every other page). It's also well written, and has a generous index. The subject matter is what captured me, though. If you are someone who finds fascination in the incredible, but possibly little-known facts about animals, especially insects, then I think you will enjoy this book as much as I did. It certainly kept my attention. It's one of those books I had difficulty putting down.