A lot of people in Silicon Valley—and even more down in Hollywood—owe their svelte summer bodies to a scaly lizard, the Gila monster. Let me explain: A couple decades back, a University of Maryland professor became fascinated by the creature and its unique metabolism. See, a Gila monster eats only occasionally, just a handful of times a year, first stunning its eventual supper with a venomous bite. When the professor studied how the venom interacted with the animal’s body while it digested its prey, he noticed it increased pancreatic inflammation as well as the presence of an unusual peptide. Several years later, another researcher used this initial work on the Gila monster venom to finally zero in on the health benefits of GLP-1, the peptide behind Ozempic and the other superpopular weight-loss drugs. “The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog” is filled with such stories, ones that show how much we owe to the natural world and the creatures down the food chain from us. Breeding screwflies and experimenting with cobalt-60 in the mid-20th century enabled the cattle industry to enjoy fatter profits and far healthier herds today. When the U.S. Army closely examined an oyster shell’s interior lining, it wound up developing a new plastic 14 times stronger and eight times lighter than steel. As for the book’s titular device, it’s no weapon of war: The salmon cannon is a contraption invented to fling fish into a body of water, helping to shore up an endangered species’ population. The book is more than a menagerie of history and neat science. It is a rallying cry by author Carly Anne York, an animal physiologist, to better appreciate the world’s lab-coated nerds and superthinkers. In her argument, she posits a pair of delightful questions: “How many people who enjoyed the Greek bathhouses noticed water would spill out of the tub when submerging themselves? Probably many,” she writes. “How many were curious enough to create a mathematical theorem? Just Archimedes.” #The Book Club 📚 #Science is awesome 🧬🦾🚀🤯 #Biohackers Connect