Lixing Sun's "The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars"

Lixing Sun is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Central Washington University. He is the author of The Fairness Instinct: The Robin Hood Mentality and Our Biological Nature and the coauthor of The Beaver: Natural History of a Wetlands Engineer.

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars: Cheating and Deception in the Living World, and reported the following:

The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars is a concise book about the behavior, evolution, and natural history of cheating from viruses and bacteria to fungi, plants, and animals, including humans. It uncovers two hidden rules in all forms of cheating: One is lying, by which cheaters exploit honest messages in communication and use them to serve their own interests. The other is deceiving, by which cheaters exploit the biases and loopholes in the cognitive systems of other animals. Considering such a wide range of topics covered, the book could easily have run over 400 pages. So, every page matters.

Page 99 of the book is about one of nature’s most spectacular scams: brood parasitism, by which the Eurasian cuckoo attempts to sneak her egg into the nest of the reed warbler and make use of the latter as a free nanny. So, the page reflects the central theme of the book very well. In it, you can see some delicious details about the cuckoo and the warbler locked in a heated battle with one trying to outsmart the other. Specifically, the cuckoo concocts an intricate scheme to fool the warbler whereas the warbler fights back to counter the cuckoo’s exploitation. While you enjoy the fascinating evolutionary arms race between the cheating and the cheated, please do not miss out on many other wonders in nature and deep evolutionary wisdom unveiled in other pages. I hope the book will give you an entertaining, enriching, and empowering experience.

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--Marshal Zeringue