Sex on Six Legs

" ... One of the most readable books about insect behavior ... Zuk has the uncanny ability to take what most of us consider just plain creepy and turn it into the fascinating and the revelatory."--Booklist, starred review.

Insects have inspired fear, fascination, and enlightenment for centuries. They are capable of incredibly complex behavior, even with brains often the size of a poppy seed. How do they accomplish feats that look like human activity such as personality, language, childcare, with completely different pathways from our own? What is going on inside the mind of those ants that march like boot-camp graduates across your kitchen floor? How does the lead ant know exactly where to take his colony, to that one bread crumb that your nightly sweep missed? Can insects be taught new skills as easily as your new puppy? This book provides answers to these questions and many more. In it the author not only examines the bedroom lives of creepy crawlies but also calls into question some of our own longheld assumptions about learning, the nature of personality, and what our own large brains might be for.