Restless Creatures

This brilliantly written and engaging book tells the story of evolution through locomotion, opening up a new perspective and relating this to the extraordinary capacities of our bodies, which we take for granted. Getting from place to place is critical for both survival and reproduction and enables the application of selective pressures. The fitness of an organism in relation to its environment depends on both form and behaviour in their mutual adaptation. Propulsion interweaves with natural selection in a long series of steps described in the various chapters of this book. This includes the origin of bipedalism, flight, underwater wriggling in relation to the development of vertebrates, the unlikely exodus from the sea and the development of our mental faculties related to movement. The author also invites the reader to conduct a number of thought experiments that make one more aware of the complexities of movements, adjustments and dynamic decision-making. We realise the influence of our ancestors' wanderings on our own living embodiment – an expression of the dance of life.