Metamorphosis

Why does a caterpillar become a butterfly, a tadpole a frog? Metamorphosis has always been one of biology’s greatest miracles and toughest riddles.

Oren Harman takes us on an exhilarating journey through the creatures that metamorphose, from mayflies flitting above lazy summer rivers, to sea squirts in frigid ocean depths, to poison dart frogs on the steaming rainforest floor, exploring why it happens and what it means for us.

Travelling across two millennia, from Aristotle to Darwin to today, Oren Harman tells the untold story of metamorphosis, asking why it has obsessed and inspired us so profoundly. Along the way we meet poets, artists, philosophers, and a cast of scientists as colourful as the animals themselves: Sigmund Freud searching in vain for eel testicles, a Japanese zoologist singing Karaoke to a baby jellyfish. More recent, and less hare-brained, investigations have begun to reveal the hormones and genetic code that control metamorphosis. But the mystery and magic of this astonishing natural phenomenon remain.

Lyrical and intellectually omnivorous, Metamorphosis gets to the heart of question: why do we yearn for change but fear it too?