page_title: How the Snake Lost Its Legs
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: How the Snake Lost Its Legs / Reception
caption_attribution_description: Vipera ammodytes
context_page_description: How the Snake Lost Its Legs: Curious Tales from the Frontier of Evo-Devo is a 2014 book on evolutionary developmental biology by Lewis I. Held, Jr. The title pays homage to Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, but the "tales" are strictly scientific, explaining how a wide range of animal features evolved, in molecular detail. The book has been admired by other biologists as both accurate and accessible.
context_section_description: The taxonomist Marc Srour writes that Held must be commended for not oversimplifying evo-devo, since, "The need to combine precise genetic and developmental labwork with phylogenetic systematics and homology inference means that simplifying the whole ordeal for a lay audience is extremely tricky." Srour sets the book alongside those of Stephen Jay Gould and Sean B. Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful as a showcase of evo-devo. He writes that Held has "give[n] us a readable, in-depth look at evo-devo and all the questions it can answer, from the important, to the fascinating, to the weird/cool facts you can repeat whenever you're at the pub. It's accessible to non-biologists and laymen, useful for teachers and undergrads, and ... researcher[s]."
  The evolutionary biologist Larry Flammer "warns" readers that when they look at the pictures or study Held's diagrams, they, "will be captivated by the full-page captions, and probably drawn into the effort to really understand what is happening. The graphics do, indeed, help immensely to do this." Flammer notes, too, that many of the, "nuts and bolts of evolution, deeper than just natural selection," are on display in the book, revealing, "precisely what genetic/physiological mechanisms are being selected for."
  The molecular biologist Arnaud Martin observes that, "As children, we have all wondered about 'the How and the Why' of animal features, and if you are reading this it is in fact quite possible that a similar inquisitiveness still burns within you. The tone of How the Snake Lost its Legs finds its roots in the famous Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling by tickling this curiosity with the formulaic How the leopard/elephant/camel got its spots/trunk/hump. Held's ability to captivate the reader's imagination compares to the mischievousness of Kipling's pourquoi stories," but the reader, "is also encouraged to extrapolate from general principles by the constant reminder that animals use a conserved set of developmental genes to construct their bodies." Martin finds evo-devo fascinating, "inherently colorful and well placed to fulfill the dual goal of etiological myths: explaining origins and causes while also stirring imagination and awe. Overall, the latest opus by Lewis Held Jr. fits that niche nicely, and shines by its ability to span essential concepts and empirical work with enough rhetoric[al] punch. It is accessible to most readers with a light background in biology," though not as suitable for, "the [university] classroom as Held's Quirks of Human Anatomy."
caption: Held discusses how snakes such as Vipera ammodytes generate asymmetric patterns along their backs.
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