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Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love and Language from the Insect World, by Marlene Zuk, is a non-fiction book reviewing recent scientific knowledge on bugs, aimed at a popular audience. My guilty secret is that I *love* to read popular books on bugs and weird animals and bizarre diseases, books like 'Parasite Rex' and Bitten and Panic in Level 4. The problem, however, is that if you read more than one or two such books, you quickly start to notice that it's the same information, being repeated over and over again. Not a problem here! Sex on Six Legs has all sorts of new and fascinating facts: for instance, did you know honeybees can recognize individual human faces? Or that ants can teach other ants?

Unlike most in the genre, this book's focus is not on weird and little-known species but on the insects everyone is familiar with. Ants, bees, and fruit flies probably get the most text. Zuk clearly knows her stuff, and is herself a scientist studying crickets, a big advantage when most similar books are written by journalists or other non-specialists. She's great at explaining dense scientific articles in easily-understandable ways. I particularly liked her explanation of the study that appeared in mainstream media a few years ago, proclaiming that scientists could turn fruit flies gay (remember all that excitement? Here's an example, if you don't.) Unsurprisingly, the actual study is quite a bit more complicated than politic discussions made it seem.

Despite the title, the book is not all on bug sex. There's also chapters on insect parenting, communication, food acquisition, intelligence, and other topics. She uses insects to get at humans; for instance, do individual ants have personalities? And if so, where do these personalities come from: genes or the environment? If it's genes, do the same genes code for boldness in ants as in humans? Why would personalities evolve? What is the benefit of individuals having different personalities? What do we even mean by the concept 'personality': is it a random collection of traits, or is it multiple tendencies somehow linked together? All of this makes for an interesting and thoughtful book, even if you don't care that much about bugs. And as a bonus, unlike 'Parasite Rex', this book is very much not gross or hypochondria-inducing, so even squeamish people can enjoy it.

Highly recommended, although unfortunately it's not coming out until August 2011. But hopefully you will remember this post if you stumble across it in a bookstore next year!