Category: Opinions

While I really enjoyed this book, I think I’m part of a certain demographic that would inherently be inclined to like this book. I like science, I love evolution, I’m not particularly religious, I’ve received great education, and I like reading science-based or non-fiction books the best. I’m fully aware that not everyone shares those opinions though, which is where I get into the green bean metaphor.

The way I see it is this: people like me are the people who like vegetables. We’ll eat carrots, broccoli, asparagus, and definitely green beans, and green beans in particular are a very popular, well-liked veggie that doesn’t challenge you too much. But there are people who don’t like vegetables at all. For whatever reason, it’s not their scene. Maybe they taste bad, they prefer fruit, etc. However, on occasion, you can probably get someone to have some green beans that have been cooked up real nice, or introduce someone to veggies with a plate of green beans. They may not always turn to them, but green beans a good option if they’re in the mood for some greens.

Zoobiquity is green beans. For people who like science, it’s a light and interesting read that exposes you to some new information but doesn’t make you work too hard to get it. For people who maybe prefer works of fiction or don’t like science all that much, I think Zoobiquity is the kind of book that they could end up liking should they decide to pick up a *nerdier* book or want to dip their toe in the water.

 

However, I don’t think this book would ever go over well with someone extremely religious as it challenges a lot of the concepts held by some people in those groups. At least in any religion that’s a fan of the New Testament, members may struggle to accept a book that claims they’re not entirely separated from the rest of God’s creation, much as people oppose to the concept of evolution.

In all honesty, one of my favorite takeaways from this book was the validation it provides a ton of people with. Every day people are faced with harassment, cruelty, and judgement for things that are out of their control, such as their body weight, their mental health, their sexual preferences, their addictions, their anxieties, their overall strength, etc. And for a lot of these, you hear people say “It’s all in your control,” or “That doesn’t exist in nature,” or any number of ignorant things. This book puts a lot of those things to bed.

 

As someone who has struggled with a good number of the conditions described in this book, it gives me a great sense of comfort knowing that there are solutions and connections being made. It’s nice to know that my mental health issues aren’t just some strange complication of being an *intelligent being* to aid in a forever growing existential crisis. I’ve literally had malignant melanoma more than once and I hate talking about cancer because it’s so real to me, and yet this book gave me unique angles on my exact experiences that were previously never mentioned to me- and honestly I don’t know why they weren’t.

 

I understand that this doesn’t apply to everything; I’m not going to excuse bullying just because some primates do it somewhere. But this knowledge provides an opportunity for improvement. Even if knowing that these conditions exist in a higher quantity complicates the dataset, it’s still more data, and when has that ever been a bad thing for science?

My entire life I’ve struggled to justify my supposed superiority as a human being in this world. I was a church-goer (for a time), and aside from trying to understand how Jonah was supposed to survive being in a whale, I didn’t get why people were so separated from the rest of God’s creatures. I know that’s a very controversial opinion to have at a school like Notre Dame, but whenever classes would try to thoroughly distinguish human rights versus animal rights, or human love versus animal love (etc.), I’m at a loss. I can’t think of any unbiased reason as to why my version of life is better or different. At the beginning of my bio-anthropology class this year, this same question was posted and I had the same answer: I don’t know.

 

Zoobiquity as a book kind of confirmed my hesitations and ideas which was genuinely exciting- and not even a “I’m right your wrong” kind of exciting which is when you know it’s real. There were finally concrete connections between animals and things people perceive to be *uniquely human*. It makes a ton of sense if you look at any evolutionary tree because yes, even though there’s more than one solution to any problem, there are only so many ways to get to the answer, and we all started at the same place.

Something I struggle with when reading accessible science books is occasionally getting frustrated that a concept has been simplified so greatly that you lose track of it entirely. I get that it’s a really hard balance to strike, but I think the best examples of how to do it well are The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee and Zoobiquity. Both strike a great balance between accuracy, accessibility, and entertainment. I can tell because when I read these books, I’m not annoyed. Instead, I just feel incredibly flattered because I know the information put in front of me, and who doesn’t like to feel smart every once in a while?

 

Not to mention, both of these books put a lot of effort into setting the scene for their points. Neither author just spills out their facts in a controlled but lack-luster manner. Rather, there’s some literary build up, some personal anecdotes, or a healthy dose of humor to keep their readers engaged in the material. It’s sort of like a teacher intentionally using multiple Expo marker colors to make sure the kids in their AP Bio class are paying attention.

 

At the end of the day though, a lot of the smaller details in this book were new facts to me, like ladybugs getting STDs (wtf), daylight affecting eating disorders (relating a lot to Seasonal Affective Disorder, if you ask me), or rowdy zebra finches tempting fate by sitting on a human’s finger. That means that even for a college student studying pre-med, anthropology, and biology, there’s valuable and interesting information to get out of the book. Not to mention, as a pre-med student, I was really taught the value of inter-species study/medicine to better understand human conditions (which is something I really don’t expect to be covered in med school). So now, I get to walk around spilling even more random facts to people who never asked for them- WHOOP WHOOP!

At college, I have my own research project that works on the microbiome in macaque monkeys. I personally look at how human influence over diet items can affect the microbiome dynamics of the macaques at different locations. I’ve been working on this for over a year now, so I’m pretty familiar with the microbiome, its metrics, and the focuses…. So I damn near flipped out when this book had a section almost entirely on the microbiome. Granted, it’s a slightly different version and the microbiome isn’t my favorite thing in the world, but Dr. NH and Bowers included a field of study that almost entirely hinges on connecting animals to humans.

 

While human microbiome research is very well funded (because people like to know about people), microbiome research for other animals or other systems does not get the same consideration. And, microbiology as a field does not have the most stable metrics, so research labs really have to get their stats and significance DOWN. In order to do that, almost everyone links their research to possible human benefits. So yeah, it’s very accurate that this field in particular relies on this inter-species collaboration, and I felt really in-the-know to read about a topic I’m literally contributing to.

 

That said, the one instance that I knew there was slightly incorrect information in this book was in this section on Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. Dr. NH says that those are the two dominant groups in the gut microbiome, but that’s not entirely true. In reality, those two groups are in high abundance, but their dominance can fluctuate across species and across ages. Instead, their most valuable asset these phyla offer is the ratio between them (which is alluded to). Still, the value of the F/B Ratio as it’s called is still debated, although it is widely used in research.

(PS the contribution thing was particularly strong when Dr. NH brought up manipulated food items being the main reason for weird human microbiomes made me very happy because it was basically the human version of my own research.)

In case none of my other posts are clear, I really enjoyed this book. I think it had such great content, well-utilized personal stories, accurate information, and good underlying intentions throughout. I only have a singular complaint to put in the complaint box…

 

The one thing I wish Zoobiquity talked a bit more about was the intersection of physical health. Yes, heart troubles, cancer, and fainting were all examples of connected physical ailments, but I was really hoping for a bit of evolutionary anatomy. One of my favorite things of all time is the progression of rear jaw bones into ear bones over millions of years as jaw flexibility wasn’t as necessary (thanks, Neil Shubin!). I’m a huge sucker for those kinds of facts and although I obviously enjoyed the more obscure *connections between human and animal health*, I would’ve loved a quick bit on how physical structures of human/animal bodies are connected (just to immediately school the nay-sayers).