Need a holiday gift for your nerdy best friend, precocious teenage offspring, or fundamentalist aunt?* Consider the WTF, Evolution?! book. Charles Darwin would have liked it, probably.

Here’s what some living people are saying:

“Mara Grunbaum’s book highlights the amazing, truly strange side of evolution. Nature’s a funny thing.” —The Verge

"In addition to being entertaining, the combined photos and commentary are extremely educational. They are also a constant reminder of what evolution is and how it really works.” —Huffington Post

"Although many of the species profiled here have downright disgusting quirks (such as baby toads that crawl through their mother’s skin), readers can’t help but be awed by them.” —Scientific American

Available at:
Amazon
Powell’s Books
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound
and bookstores near you.

*WTF, Evolution? cannot be held responsible for the reaction of your fundamentalist aunt.

Sure, evolution could have given the velvet worm fearsome claws or deadly venom to catch prey. Instead it gave it multidirectional face-mounted slime cannons. Sometimes you just have to follow your heart.

Source: Nat Geo WILD

“Hey, evolution! What are you—oh. Whoa. What’s, um—what’s the deal with this helmeted friarbird? It looks kind of… well… I guess it looks kind of grim.”

“Hmm.”

“I mean, I’m sure you know what you’re doing and everything, but…”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“But don’t you think it’s a little ominous? Maybe you could add a bit more color.”

“Hmm.”

“Or some fancy tail feathers!”

“Mmm.”

“Just something to liven it up a bit, you know?”

“Hmm.”

“Somehow it doesn’t seem like you’re into that idea.”

“Death is coming.”

Source: Wikimedia Commons / Aviceda / licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Evolution may have gotten a little too into the detailing on the Port Jackson shark. It’s a fish, not a Baroque cathedral, okay?

Source: Flickr / John Turnbull / licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

“What if these barnacle geese could build their nests on cliffs? Then nobody would bother their chicks.”

“Decent idea, evolution. But what are they going to eat up there?”

“Well, the food is on the ground. Marsh grass and stuff. I mean, they’re geese.”

“Okay, but how are the goslings going to get down to find food before they learn how to fly? They’re like 400 feet up.”

“Oh, I’ll figure something out.”