Matin Durrani - Science Journalist

Spotify playlist - Furry Logic: Forces

Posted by Matin Durrani on 29 September 2016

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Right, so here's the next Spotify playlist featuring animals covered in my and Liz Kalaugher's new popular-science book Furry Logic: The Physics of Animal Life, published by Bloomsbury.

As I mentioned in creating a playlist for the book's opening chapter on "heat", I'm picking songs linked to some of the animals in the book. The only criterion for which songs go in is that I like them.

I have to admit that choosing music for this chapter wasn't easy; there was some absolute garbage on Spotify that made me wonder about the creative future of mankind.

In the end, though, I found some that passed my taste threshold, though one or two only just scraped in.

* Botamanga by Dragones de Komode - nope never heard of this lot until a couple of hours ago, but a band going under the French translation of "komodo dragons" is spot on for the first animal in this chapter of Furry Logic. They're remarkable creatures for being able to kill a water buffalo despite having a bite that's only as strong as a domestic cat's.

* Mosquito Bite by Emma Hallin - I'm not entirely sure who Emma Hallin is but this song is an absolute corker, or bostin' as we say in Birmingham. Mosquitoes feature in Furry Logic for their ability to avoid death when being struck by a raindrop despite being, weight for weight, like us getting hit by a five-tonne truck.

* Colors of the Mantis Shrimp by Tron Sepia - again, this track is pretty obscure but you have to admire the artist's interest in the harlequin mantis shrimp, which snaps out its elbows with one of the fastest accelerations in nature to bash holes in the shells of the crabs and snails it preys on.

* Get Up by Gecko - this north London musician is in my playlist for being named after the Spiderman-style lizard that uses fleshy folds on its feet that are covered in tiny hairs to walk upside down on the ceiling. I guess that attribute could have led me to pick Lionel Ritchie's Walking on the Ceiling but that would have been far too cheesy, even for me. Get Up is far better and my favourite song on this playlist as it can't fail to put a smile on your face. I've also included another song by Gecko called Pigeon, which goes in a) as it's about an animal and b) it rhymes "pigeon" with "kitchen", which is brilliant.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any songs linked to the trap-jaw ant, which also features in this chapter. This animal uses "power amplification" to release its blow faster than the animal's muscles could without it. But if you know anything suitable, let me know.

And don't forget - for more information on Furry Logic, do check out our website.