Katrina van Grouw’s illustration of a display in the Natural History Museum: a testimony to the human-canine bond
Is your schnoodle (a schnauzer-poodle cross) an example of evolutionary success? If it appears to have the necessary traits for survival in the company of humans, the answer is yes. And it didn’t take eons to happen. While wild animal species undergo changes too slowly to be easily observed, domesticated animals provide a more visible model of evolution in action. But even if we can point to evidence of evolution, its mechanics are often hard to explain.
Katrina van Grouw, natural science illustrator and author of The Unfeathered Bird, has found a way through that problem, fusing science and art in her beautifully illustrated new book, Unnatural Selection, which illuminates evolutionary patterns. Following the analogy drawn by Charles Darwin 150 years ago comparing selective breeding in domesticated animals to natural selection, van Grouw maintains that identical traits can occur in both wild and domestic animals and are governed by the same evolutionary principles. Unnatural Selection is a tribute to what Darwin might have achieved had he possessed that elusive missing piece to the evolutionary puzzle—the knowledge of how individual traits are passed from one generation to the next.
Unnatural Selection (Princeton University Press) is available for sale and signing.
