Sophia Kimmigs Buch „Move!“ | HE DOES | EUROtoday

The undeniable fact that eels start their life within the Sargasso Sea and swim 5,000 to six,000 kilometers throughout the Atlantic to spend their grownup lives within the rivers and lakes of Europe is one among nature’s nice wonders. In her new work “Move!” The biologist and writer Sophia Kimmig lets readers turn out to be journey companions because the nonetheless clear larvae of the eel discover their means from the black water world of their start, as if guided by an invisible hand, in the fitting route, solely to reach off the coast of Europe three years later after which migrate up a river.

“He knew that this would be the path that would lead him to his unknown destination,” writes Kimmig, as if an eel had been the hero of her novel. This private strategy to her topics is pleasantly mixed with scientific experience within the guide. The writer contrasts the life cycle of the eel with the idea of dwelling, which for us people normally means a set place. “With this change between fresh water and salt water, between lake and ocean, where is home?” asks Kimmig, arriving at one of many important messages of her guide: with out motion there can be no complicated life on earth – and no dwelling as a counterpoint to being away.

The truth that almost all animals can transfer looks as if an unmentionable truth till science guide like this retains you hooked with 330 pages of fabric. How numerous creatures akin to arctic foxes, wildebeests, white storks and even butterflies handle to beat monumental distances with out a map or GPS, navigate in the fitting instructions and exactly discover their distant locations is awe-inspiring, particularly as a result of science is just simply starting to grasp these mechanisms.

But the open questions and the nonetheless unknown aren’t uncared for both. Scientific strategies and their growth play a task in “Move!” an essential position, from the invention of chicken migration utilizing an arrow lodged in a white stork to trendy strategies utilizing small transmitters and satellites.

One of the various strengths of the guide is that Kimmig all the time provides extra attention-grabbing, astonishing twists when you might have already been amazed: within the case of the eels, for instance, that they comply with the chemical traces of their conspecifics throughout the vastness of the Atlantic with a extremely delicate sense of scent and are in a position to do “spatial smelling”. The undeniable fact that in addition they use a “mental, geomagnetic map” makes one wonder if we people are maybe extra restricted in our senses in comparison with many animals.

You may learn concerning the speculation that the migrations of those fish arose at a time when America and Europe had been geologically a lot nearer collectively and the swimming distance was considerably shorter. “It is only over the course of millions of years that the paths have become wider, so each new generation of eels would only have had to travel a few centimeters longer,” writes Kimmig.

The writer presents spectacular data for operating speeds and chicken migration distances, however she would not dwell on them for lengthy. Rather, it’s about selling a way of how locomotion has essentially revolutionized evolution, as a result of an infinitely massive variety of doable constellations of the smallest to largest animals in relation to one another in time and area improve the dynamics of life immensely. Theoretically, a planet of purely sedentary, multicellular creatures would even be conceivable – Earth was one for a really very long time. But when you began transferring, there was no stopping you.

Kimmig condenses the plenty of operating, leaping, swimming and flying across the planet into the vibration of the biosphere and repeatedly zooms sensitively into the dwelling environments and existence of particular person animals: for instance the arctic fox that on the primary pages of the guide roams over the island of Spitsbergen, the place it was born. Its unbelievable migration leads via white expanses the place starvation awaits, via temperatures that may kill most different animals, throughout the Arctic Ocean – all the best way to northern Canada, the place the animal arrives 76 days after the journey started. Scientists who outfitted the feminine with a monitoring system had been in a position to observe the mammoth migration.

The guide doesn’t strategy the phenomenon of motion and animal migration systematically like a textbook, however moderately within the type of ten tales which can be moderately loosely related to one another. This is just irritating when readers wish to have extra textbooks. After the primary cell single-celled organisms, which use small tails to steer via aqueous options, and the primary multicellular organisms, which “initially just stood around”, the historical past of evolution ought to result in the emergence and functioning of muscle tissues and the basics of physiology. In the guide, nonetheless, you abruptly find yourself on a distinct matter.

A stricter editor may have fished out a number of the repetitions. Overall, Kimmig has created a guide that makes use of refined language to convey complicated scientific points in an comprehensible means and captivates with full of life representations.

By the best way, the eels have one thing like a house. After an usually very lengthy grownup life in Europe, they ultimately return to the Sargasso Sea. They have gathered massive reserves of fats, which they put money into the expansion of sexual organs alongside the best way, and navigate sure ocean currents with a view to attain their vacation spot extra rapidly. After copy, the adults die. A brand new cycle begins.

Sophia Kimmig: “Move!” How motion determines the lives of animals. Hanser Verlag, Munich 2025. 384 pages, illustrations, hardcover, €26.