★Foreign sales: German (Bertelsmann / Random House)
★Why does the spiny anteater have a four-headed penis, the snake two hemipenes and the gorilla only one? Do homosexual animals exist? Why are there only two sexes, male and female? How do sharks go courting?
★By the author of “The short-sighted watchmaker”, a new collection of curious facts and strange stories from the animal kingdom.

Passing on one’s genes has always been the greatest (often unconscious) aspiration of every living being. Besides, it could not be otherwise: in the last half billion years, those that have not dedicated their energies to reproduction have simply become extinct. We are the descendants of those who wanted to hand down their genes. Evolution has perfected this tendency and has made it an inexorable urge as well as an (almost) perfect machine, developing imaginative stratagems in the behaviour and anatomy of animals. With the grace, scientific rigour and humour we became used to with The short-sighted watchmaker, Lisa Signorile gives us a round-up of the strangest reproductive mechanisms developed by fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds... and naturally mammals.

After her studies in biology, Lisa Signorile moved to England, where she took a PhD in population genetics. Since 2007 she has had a very popular blog, L’orologiaio miope, on which The short-sighted watchmaker, published by Codice Edizioni, is based. Since 2012, she has written for “National Geographic Italia”, and in 2013 she published Il viaggio e la necessità for Scienza Express.