“Taking Flight” by Lev Parikian (2023)

“Take yourself, if you can, to a stretch of clean, fresh, flowing water.”

One of the most requested superpowers of all is flight. Humans look to the skies with jealousy, and have turned to technology to conquer them. But other species didn’t need that. They worked it out themselves. In this book, Lev Parikian explores the animals that took flight, how they did it and why they’re such biological geniuses.

Flight, we learn, has appeared four times in evolution. First it was the insects, then the p...