Weird Biology

A brilliantly silly question-and-answer book, fact-checked by world-leading experts from across the University of Cambridge. Did you know that there's no set number of bones in the human body? Most babies are born with around 300 bones, but by the time they've grown up, they usually have between...

In recent years, scientists have hypothesized life-forms that can only be called "weird": organisms that live off acid rather than water, microbes that thrive at temperatures and pressure levels so extreme that their cellular structures should break down, perhaps even organisms that reproduce without DNA. Some of these strange life-forms, unrelated to all life we know, might be nearby: on rock surfaces in the American southwest, hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, or even in our own bodies. Some, stranger still, might live in Martian permafrost, swim in the dark oceans of Jupiter's moons, or survive in the exotic ices on comets.