''Almost like a Whale'' by Steve Jones is a modern introduction to

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

's ''

Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...

'' and closely follows its structure. It won the 1999 BP Natural World Book Prize. An American version was published as ''Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated'' (). The title refers to Darwin's observation that a bear, swimming in a lake and catching

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s in its mouth, might conceivably evolve over time into a creature "almost like a

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

". This statement attracted much ridicule at the time.

References

1999 non-fiction books Biology books Books by Steve Jones (biologist) Evolutionary biology literature 1999 in biology {{zoology-book-stub