Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places

From scorching deserts to frozen seabeds, from the highest peaks of the Himalaya to the hadal depths of the oceans, there are habitats on this Earth that appear hostile to life—yet where, nevertheless, life flourishes. In North American forests, wood frogs awaken each spring from solid blocks of ice. Under the Saharan sun, shielded by silvery hairs, desert ants sprint through the midday heat that is lethal to any other animal. At the bottom of ice-covered lakes, painted turtles pass months without breathing oxygen. Transporting readers to far-flung environments we could never call home, in Super Natural, award-winning science writer Alex Riley paints an awe-inspiring portrait of life’s remarkable resilience even under the harshest circumstances.

Riley illuminates ecosystems on every continent to tell the stories of creatures exquisitely adapted to endure unimaginable deprivations—of water, oxygen, food, sunlight—and extremes of heat and cold, of pressure and altitude. To survive half a year without food on barren islands, snakes will shrink and regrow their digestive systems—even their hearts. At the site of the Chernobyl disaster, fungi harness radiation to thrive. Evolution, we see, can and will carve out a niche just about anywhere.

Super Natural shows us how, at nature’s furthest limits, the rules of biology as we know them are rewritten—and how, in life’s astonishing ingenuity and persistence even in the face of calamity and change, we can find hope for the future of life on Earth.