Life Changing

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING ON GLOBAL CONSERVATION

''Pilcher is both very funny and very, very clever.'' Gillian Burke

''Richly entertaining throughout.'' Sunday Times

For the last three billion years or so, life on Earth was shaped by natural forces. Evolution tended to happen slowly, with species crafted across millennia. Then, a few hundred thousand years ago, along came a bolshie, big-brained, bipedal primate we now call Homo sapiens, and with that, the Earth''s natural history came to an abrupt end. We are now living through the post-natural phase, where humans have become the leading force shaping evolution.

This thought-provoking book considers the many ways that we''ve altered the DNA of living things and changed the fate of life on earth. We have carved chihuahuas from wolves and fancy chickens from jungle fowl. We''ve added spider genes to goats and coral genes to tropical fish. It''s possible to