CHATTO & WINDUS, JANUARY 2012
Living organisms are in motion all the time. Cells migrate in bodies; bird migration is the constant heartbeat of the planet; displaced migrants stream across the globe in search of new homes. In my new book, The Mara Crossing—named after Kenya’s Mara River, the last obstacle surmounted by wildebeest after their annual 3-month trek north for new grass—I explore parallel migrations in microbiology, animal behavior, and human history. Ever since the first self-replicating cells arrived on Earth (coming maybe from deep in the sea or from outer space, or called into being by biochemical accident), life spread in that first form of migration, permanent dispersal.
When organisms arrive in new environments they are transformed by them; but more importantly they also transform them. When the ...
