"Animals are not cars, and a more recently evolved species is not an improvement on one that has not changed in millions of years. By that token, microbes and viruses, which evolve rapidly, should be the pinnacle of evolution, because they have changed into new forms literally in our lifetimes. But evolution does not have a goal or try to improve anything. Yes, those individuals with characteristics better suited to the environment leave more copies of their genes to future generations, but everything that is alive now is just as evolved as everything else. Some animals, such as cockroaches and crocodiles, look more like their ancestors than others, but evolution has been acting on them just the same. And just as your brain does not have a tiny lizard inside, the brains of birds do not represent more primitive versions of mammal brains that were improved upon when mammals, or humans, came on the scene."
Aside from wonderful anecdotes, there is little here that is new in Zuk's repetoire. Once again, she writes amusingly and provokingly about how we need to abandon a simplistic view of nature vs nuture, with the focus here on the evolution of animal behaviours and how environment, genes and social interaction all influence the results. I honestly didn't really care about the absence of new materials, or even that, as usual, I could take issue with her on a few points because this is just so wonderfully, wittily grumpy I could hang out with her words all day.