Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships | Hacker News Reader

Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships

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> There is a famous story along these lines told for the first time by the German biologists Ernst Haeckel and Carl Vogt. As the story goes, the fortunes of England would seem to depend on cats. By nourishing themselves on mice, cats increase the chances of survival of bumblebees, which, in turn, pollinate shamrocks, which then nourish the beef cows that provide the meat to nourish British sailors, thus permitting the British navy—which, as we all know, is the mainstay of the empire—to develop all of its power. T. H. Huxley, expanding on the joke, added that the true force of the empire was not cats but the perseverant love of English spinsters for cats, which kept the cat population so high.

As a point of curiosity, there is a similar observation found in the Buddhist Pali Canon (I think), popularized by Thich Nhat Hanh in his 1987 book "Old Path, White Clouds". It is apparently a very old text, commonly referred to as the "universe in a teacup" in certain circles.

To summarize, one can be said to discern the entire universe in a simple teacup (or bowl) in the same way that one can trace the power of the British Empire to a cat.

> Without water, the potter would not have been able to mix the clay he used to fashion the bowl....Fire was necessary to complete the bowl. Looking deeply, I can see the presence of heat and fire in the bowl...I see the air. Without air, the fire could not have burned and the potter could not have lived. I see the potter and his skillful hands. I see his consciousness. I see the kiln and the wood stacked in the kiln. I see the trees the wood came from. I see the rain, sun, and earth which enabled the trees to grow...I can see thousands of interpenetrating elements which gave rise to this bowl...Contemplating the bowl, it is possible to see the interdependent elements which gave rise to the bowl...these elements are present within and without the bowl. Your own awareness is one of the elements. If you took away heat and returned it to the sun, if you returned the clay to the earth and the water to the river, if you returned the potter to his parents and the wood to the forest trees, could the bowl still exist? [...] Look deeply at this bowl, and you can see the entire universe. This bowl contains the entire universe.

Kinda makes Milton Friedman's Lesson of the Pencil feel even more oversimplified than it already is

And Friedman in 1980 took it from Leonard Read who wrote "I, Pencil" in 1958. See, https://thenewinquiry.com/milton-friedmans-pencil/

And similarly:

  For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
  For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
  For want of a horse the rider was lost.
  For want of a rider the message was lost.
  For want of a message the battle was lost.
  For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
  And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

This formulation appears to be at least a few hundred years old. Antecedents are recorded back to the 1300s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail

I first heard this on a Todd Rundgren DVD https://youtu.be/luHRsRWSdoU

And I read it first as some nursery rhyme brought back from from Java-land, arranged in Steve Yegge's "Execution in the kingdom of nouns"

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom...

(high concentration, pure pleasure, java trolling material)

The universe in a teacup touched me deeply. Changes how I look at the world.

Thank you for sharing this story.

This reminds me of William Blake's Auguries of Innocence (~1803):

    To see a World in a Grain of Sand
    And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 
    Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
    And Eternity in an hour

> For the next 250 years, despite the best efforts of the English to free themselves from this commercial yoke, the secret of that prodigious dye remained unknown to all but a select fortunate few of Spanish producers. But no production secret can stay that way forever, and so in the closing years of the eighteenth century, British spies succeeded in spiriting away the tightly kept formula: in order to obtain the longed-for carmine, you needed cochineals, and to get cochineals you had to have prickly pears.

History makes this point again and again, spying seems to be the best way every superpower kickstarted many of their efforts.

While it did happen numerous times, it's also going to be repeated far more often than "eventually the British figured it out independently/bought the secret." Superpowers like to boast about their achievements after all.

I find it highly unlikely they couldn't solve this mystery for 250 years given that a similar insect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal was used for producing very similar dye in Central and Eastern Europe for centuries already at that point, and was one of the main exports of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (till the imported dye won over because of higher yields = cheaper price).

To this point the month June in Polish ("czerwiec") and the color red ("czerwony") are derived from the word "czerw" which means "worm".

The two insects don't seem to be that closely related, and red dye comes from a variety of sources. Besides, even if the English suspected that there was some kind of Mexican cochineal, the mystery of how to farm it would still be a problem.

>till the imported dye won over because of higher yields = cheaper price

I'd be interested to know if this is true, or if the imported dye was more valuable for being a brighter colour. Do you have a source? Wikipedia is not specific about the reason for the decline in demand of Polish cochineal.

It could be they knew it was an insect but couldn't discern which one. There are after all tens to hundreds of thousands of new world insect species.

It also could be a Gladwellian over fancification.

The prosaic reality is that bumblebees don't have any particular feelings about cats. Not more that they would feel about other carnivores. Using the same argument we could easily link being rich in England with the presence of rats in their house (that also eat lots of mice); or other similar nonsense.

(But, yep. I agree that this old histories full of literary licenses feel warm inside and are entertaining as long as we take in mind that literature is not the same as science).

I disagree, I have cat mint at my house and my cat would sleeps under the shade of the plant while at least a hundred bumble bees collect nector and pollen from the bright purple flowers. My cat eats insects like grasshoppers and moths but was not scared of the bees, or tried to catch any, and many landed on her. Sometimes nature is stranger than reality, cat mint has similar to properties to catnip.

The cats appear to understand the bumblebees, the bumblebees do not pay much attention to people or cats. The mint has direct relationships with both animals and insects. Unless of course if you start rooting around in their underground nests, at which point the will fly toward your head like a mimi drone and force you to stop with their persistent dive bombs. I've never been stung but they get aggressive when protecting brood.

This was at least a 3 way simbiotic relationship.

My cat passed away November 2019, mice live under the cat mint plant now.

I have kittens planned in preparation fo next year's gardening season.

Video is related (shut off audio, it's poor quality):

https://youtu.be/cLm7nBy7M9g

I can't explain the relationships but yet they still persist and can be witnessed in real time.

Agreed, although it would be interesting if it turned out that bumblebee queens are attracted to the smell of cat urine when choosing where to establish a hive. Seems like that, or something similar, would be a possible evolutionary adaptation. Then you could say they have a "feeling" for cats.

Whenever we over-anthropomorphize animals, we are disappointed; but, whenever we under-anthropomorphize them, we tend to be surprised.

The truth is somewhere in the middle, probably closer to us humans than not in their emotional complexity, for many, many more animals than we give credit.

I think you are right.

Bumblebees are bumblebees and alien, but they sometimes bond with mammals.

There's also the story of the man who decided the USA needed to have all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, so he imported and released them, with similarly disastrous results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin#Starling_re...

It seems odd to recount a historical anecdote while simultenously linking to a source that casts considerable doubt over it.

I think there’s some doubt over why he did it, but it seemed like he did still do it?

>Mice, argues Darwin, are among the principal enemies of bumblebees. They eat their larvae and destroy their nests. On the other hand, as everyone knows, mice are the favorite prey of cats. One consequence of this is that, in proximity to those villages with the most cats, one finds fewer mice and more bumblebees.

the same with birds - rats are able to eat eggs, so having a bunch of cats on a farm/village naturally results in having a booming bird population.

The example, taken from the Origin of Species, of the OP is interesting, but then it goes on to list multiple inter-dependencies.

It does not address one question: are these inter-dependencies required, strict and essential to the survival of the affected species.

IOW, are not the species flexible enough and adaptable enough that any change would be fixed by a substitute or a change in behaviour?

There are many claims, both around ecology and climate changes, that hinge on the idea that the current state of the world as a whole is desirable, good and fragile.

That is the main thing that always irks me. Life survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, multiple glaciations, etc. But it is always portrayed as a fragile system. That always seemed to me a bit hypocritical.

We do know with reasonable certainty that life is adaptable and likely to survive any man made catastrophe: as humans go extinct if they don't do much to prevent their effects on the ecosystem, Earth and life will likely find a new equillibrium for the mid-term future (millions of years).

But we are worried about short term future that directly affects the human species, and even knowing what environment we'd be living in for that short term (thousands of years).

If humans want to go past those thousands of years, or tens of thousands of years, it seems some change of behaviour is needed, and a better understanding of the inter-relations between species.

Today no one would chose an introduced species like cats as an example of symbiosis. Outdoor cats are an invasive species which are destroying the native bird populations, and as a result the larger food chain. They are a huge problem for ecosystems.

I’ve heard this many times but do not know enough to say how big of a problem it is ecologically.

I walk my cat on a leash (am on a walk now) and he is the first cat I’ve not allowed outside on his own.

Cat walking and the belief you’ve espoused is extremely decisive, but not for the reason you’ve said.

Letting your cat roam free is a tacit acknowledgment that one doesn’t really care that much for the animal, because they will make time to monitor it.

I’m certain it makes no sense that cats are allowed to roam free, no more than dogs.

But it has taken many years for me to get to this position.

> I’ve heard this many times but do not know enough to say how big of a problem it is ecologically.

https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/...

Thanks for this. I suspect that much of the idea of “outdoor” cats as a thing has to do with tolerance of feral cat populations to begin with.

Whereas wild dogs are too large and aggressive to tolerate.

> Letting your cat roam free is a tacit acknowledgment that one doesn’t really care that much for the animal

This is untrue. I've owned both indoor cats and indoor/outdoor cats. Anyone who has seen the joy that a cat experiences while outdoors would never claim that a cat owner who wants their cat to experience this joy, "doesn't really care that much for the animal".

Maybe an outdoor cat will live a shorter life than an indoor cat, but that hasn't been my personal experience. In fact, I had an outdoor cat that lived for 22 years. In any case, a shorter but happier life is not without its merits.

The cat I currently have is an indoor-only cat, but she only rarely displays the kind of joy that my outdoor cats would routinely. As for walking her on a leash, I have tried, but she will not tolerate the harness, and will manage to escape from it if I persist.

You are right that my phrasing was incorrect. I have rephrased this with more context in a reply to a sibling comment.

I think you should reconsider harness training. It is normal for the cat to “act dead” at first and it takes time to get them used to a leash. Like months.

But once they associate the harness with trips outside, the cat can have many of the experiences of “outdoor” cats without the territorial disputes, wildlife impact, pooping in your vegetable garden and not getting hit by a car. (Which is traumatic for the driver and passengers as well)

I moderate /r/adventurecats on Reddit, I encourage you to look into training regimens people have there and see the joy people and their cat companions experience with outdoor experiences.

The "outdoor experiences" my cats enjoy are not experiences they could have on a leash.

Yes, they sometimes kill things; most commonly mice and shrews. The local rodent population seems resilient enough to cope.

But the joy Catastrophe takes in racing up his favourite tree to look out over the neighbourhood, and chasing his tail around its branches, would rapidly end in a tangled mess if I tried to harness him.

He's devoted and affectionate, strongly bonded with his humans. He also relishes his freedom, and I won't take it away from him.

It may sound strange but my cat does climb trees with his leash on. https://imgur.com/a/QMrC6d9

He’ll start running, and I’ll run with him, and he’ll scale it to the smallest branch that will support him.

Sometimes he gets a bit tangled on the way down and I’ll have to unthread a bit. One time I had to toss the handle end over a branch. But most of the time he comes down the exact way he came up.

He’s yet to fall from a tree but the harnesses he’s grown through are either breakaway or loose enough for him to pull out.

In the unusual event of him pulling out of the harness, he will sometimes sprint around but is patient to let me approach and put it back on. It is very strange but a great connection with the animal.

In general, “walking” a cat you do have to be deft with the leash, as they’ll weave more than dogs and don’t go in a straight line at all. I often find myself getting closer than I’d like to people’s parked cars but it’s not a big deal.

They still get to play in bushes and do cat stuff hanging out. Mine is literally chilling in the depths rain garden right now. https://imgur.com/gallery/ETZ1KLt

My cat does have a hunting instinct, and there are specific play activities we do to provide an outlet for that.

It isn’t the life of a free roaming cat, it’s a compromise and it takes more time and energy. But it is really fun and long after the novelty has worn off people never get over seeing a cat walking down the street on a leash.

I can see that it would be not easy to turn a free-folk cat into an “adventure cat,” though I know a person in the neighborhood who had to do this with an older cat because the vet said another fight and he’d be a goner. That brings up the question of protection and in this case he has kept the cat inside. The cat has adjusted.

I’m glad for what you have with that cat.

The point of my post is that I believe there are broad misconceptions of what is possible with cats.

People don’t realize a lot of great life is out there when they are leash trained, (like dogs experience), and that this can limit the life of cats and have other impacts.

> Letting your cat roam free is a tacit acknowledgment that one doesn’t really care that much for the animal, because they will make time to monitor it.

I would never be able to walk my cat on a leash. No chance at all. I got her from a shelter and she's around 10-11 years of age (nobody quite knows, actually), I strongly suspect she's been without an owner for at least a few years. Meaning, she's a loner in general, incredibly stubborn, a little bit shy and very cautious when it comes to just me touching her outside of petting (and even that took months of getting used to me).

Furthermore, there's no way I could keep her in my apartment for much longer than a few days.

So I let her out on her own. Keeping her inside would make her unhappy pretty quickly - pets can and do get depressed in such cases - and probably also lead to her tearing through my furniture after a while :)

Also, it's actually work for me to do this. Because of the way my apartment is set up, I can't have a cat door installed. So, I wait for her to return, sometimes until pretty late at night, because I don't want her to have to be outside for the night. Well, at least not when it's cold or raining out, she can deal pretty well with warm summer nights, as long as I put some food out.

So, I think the assertion that owners who let their cats roam free therefore don't care about them as much...that just doesn't follow at all, imho.

Now, about the potential ecological impact on the other hand, I'm not going to argue (even though I live in Germany and as far as I know, the situation is different here than in the US - but I'm not sure about that.).

First, it’s great you took that animal in and I find no fault with the thing your doing. It is normal in this time.

> Also, it's actually work for me to do this.

This is the key point. It is work to give a cat outdoor experiences but not allow the cat to roam freely.

The same goes for having a dog.

But there is a general acceptance that the two animals should be treated completely differently.

A wild dog would also not take well to indoor only life. However, the concept of adopting a feral dog is far less familiar because dogs are generally not allowed to roam cities unattended. (In the US at least)

As for not caring about the animal, I need to clarify:

They must care differently about that animal. It is more like the relationship between a farmer and farm animals than a companion relationship you might see dramatized in a cat food commercial.

The reason I say that is because it is far more likely an “outdoor” cat will be eaten by a predator or hit by a car.

The cat “owner” accepts letting the cat live it’s best life is more important than protecting it against these dangers that is a choice.

So I suppose these folks care differently than other people, because the relationship is different.

> The reason I say that is because it is far more likely an “outdoor” cat will be eaten by a predator or hit by a car. > The cat “owner” accepts letting the cat live it’s best life is more important than protecting it against these dangers that is a choice.

Indeed, I agree with you on that. These risks absolutely have to be kept in mind.

As you said, it really depends on the animal in question. Whatever works for you and your pet, I'm totally fine with other approaches.

As for my cat, I don't really have a choice. She would probably rip a hole through the wall if I forced her to stay inside for more than a week :)

> So, I wait for her to return, sometimes until pretty late at night, because I don't want her to have to be outside for the night.

I've bell-trained cats that I've owned. I.e., I ring a bell every time before I give them a treat. When I've wanted them to come indoors, I ring the bell, and they've always come running.

That seems like a smart idea!

Probably wouldn't work for my cat, though. For some reason, she isn't interested in treats at all. She eats normally, but only out of her bowl and only when it suits her.

Very hard to train a pet to do even the simplest things when you don't have a simple mechanism for rewards. Luckily, she doesn't really need training.

> Outdoor cats are an invasive species which are destroying the native bird populations

This is certainly true for feral cats, but I'm highly skeptical about this claim being true for owned indoor/outdoor cats.

You’re right that it’s much worse for feral cats, but pets are also a problem. Here’s a good study that tracked house cats specifically https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/world/pet-cats-disrupt-wildli...

> On average, the study found that house cats killed anywhere between 14.2 to 38.9 prey per 100 acres, per year. That averages out to about 3.5 prey each month per cat. The researchers believe this large number is due to the fact that neighborhoods can include a high density of cats -- more so than wild predators living in the wild.

The RSPB in the UK found no evidence of cats causing the decline and attributes it to a decline in habitat.

[1] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-...

The RSPB still recommends keeping cats indoor during times of avian vulnerability, and that study does not estimate dead birds that are not specifically brought home by cats or those that might have been injured.

I have seen more claims of negative impact, or that it impacts ecological systems negatively.

But I still think the bird angle is the wrong one to focus on in discouraging free range household cats.

https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/seven-simple-actions-to-h...

"Prey". Well that's a pretty generic term. Perhaps much of this "prey" are the mice that are a danger to bumblebees.

The challenge is that so long as “indoor / outdoor” or “outdoor” cats as pets is a normalized and common concept, it will be difficult to limit the populations of stray and feral cats.

You can see a similar impact in cities / countries that allow unsupervised dogs to run around. There are many strays.

If you found this interesting but don't want to dive into reading Darwin's works (as the author seems to imply we should) I highly recommend Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene". I haven't read "On the Origin of Species" but I'd bet "The Selfish Gene" will probably be a more efficacious read for most people

>"The ecological relationships that Darwin brings to our attention tell us of a world of bonds much more complex and ungraspable than had ever previously been supposed.

Relationships so complex as to connect everything to everything in a single network of the living."

>>"I am sure that many of the erudite readers of this little book know On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin inside and out. "

I can't parse that sentence. Does it make sense? (English is not my first language)

Well, I'm also not a native speaker, but it makes sense to me. Author is implying that every reader of his book knows "On the Origin of Species" very well.

looks right. You could re-write it as follows for clarity: "I am sure that many of you are familiar with Darwin's book On the Origin of Species"

I mean ... I get what he's saying but no, it's not well written and it's tautological. Since erudite literally means having a deep knowledge:

"I am sure many experts on X know X inside out"

Erudite may be referring to generally well-read. Anyway, the sentence reads ok to me fwiw.

I'd agree, except it reads to me as "many of the erudite readers _of this_ little book", it seems to imply erudites of Darwin's book.

"this little book" refers to "The Nation of Plants" - from which this piece is an excerpt. It's probably more obvious when you're holding the book, as opposed to reading an excerpt on the internet.

Well, in that case I stand corrected :) It makes sense.

It helps when you see that this article is actually an excerpt from a book, without that knowledge the sentence doesn’t really parse.

Ah, that's it, thanks! For some reason I was thinking "this little book" was Darwin book (that it's actually quite small).

Not a native speaker either but it seems like an acceptable sentence. Here is a slightly reworked version that might be easier to understand. The brackets mark where I added something or left something out:

"I am sure that many [...] readers of this [...] book know [the book] 'On the Origin of Species' (by Charles Darwin) inside and out."

Edit: "to know something inside and out" means to be very familiar with something.

The book is the book that the article is an excerpt from, not Darwin's.

From my point of view this is still clear in the shortened sentence.

> If there is someone who still has this gap in their education, you are urged to fill it without any further delay.

Maybe Origin holds up better than I would guess but honestly, I'm never going to read that thing. You've got time to read a few thousand books in your life. And I would bet there are many modern books which cover the same material with a more accessible bent and more up to date and comprehensive information.

I'm not saying this as some kind of philistine. I studied literature for several years at university. I enjoy it. I've read Dante, Ovid, Thucidydes, Chaucer, Kant, and many more. But most those books are really interesting in historical or pedagogical kind of way. They show you the development of writing as it progressed. And they demonstrate the changing of human philosophy and epistemology. But frankly, most modern people can derive the same concepts and style as they've been handed down and filtered through subsequent authors.

Despite the hullabaloo about people declining to read, we live in an amazing literary time. Really good books are being written right now on just about every subject. The writing world is so competitive that authors really have to hone their skill. Especially in the non-fiction category which for several decades has been under a deluge of well researched, focused and didactic books.

Maybe we don't all need to read the original Darwin, but I do think there is a serious gap in most peoples' knowledge of how the natural world actually functions, how all the components in an ecosystem are interdependent and necessary. There is a framework of understanding that used to be common knowledge which now only experts and enthusiasts possess. I fear that most people in positions to make decisions that impact our natural environment have insufficient understanding of the potential consequences.

Our failure to keep people educated on these matters to a base level has probably seriously contributed to the ecological catastrophe we are experiencing and digging ourselves ever deeper into. People have been taught to have more faith in industrial and technological solutions to any problems, rather than appreciating a need to be stewards of the life support systems of this world that we depend on.

> Maybe we don't all need to read the original Darwin, but I do think there is a serious gap in most peoples' knowledge of how the natural world actually functions, how all the components in an ecosystem are interdependent and necessary.

Yes and there are many great contemporary books that cover just these things, from Gould, to Dawkins, to Wilson, to Dennett, to Sagan. It is rare that the originator of an idea is also its best exponent. Though given the praise of its accessibility and interest here I'm willing to give Origin another thought.

> Our failure to keep people educated on these matters to a base level has probably seriously contributed to the ecological catastrophe we are experiencing

I'm not sure this is true. Environmentalism was basically born in the 60s. Conservation some 40-60 years before that.

People used to believe all kinds of ridiculous things about the health benefits of smoke, heavy metals and oil. Americans nearly extincted the buffalo for its industrial uses. An Australian tycoon almost extinct an island chain of penguins and seals by reducing them down to oil which was sold round the world. I could go on as there are many stories of human exploitation of the natural world that go back to ancient times (read about how Roman silver mines in Spain reshaped the Earth into a hell hole there) and beyond.

We are honestly probably at peak -people caring about the environment-. It obviously has to go a lot further if we are to avert disaster and stop the extinction event humans have been driving for 15,000 years. But we are hardly at a nadir for people's understanding and love of the natural world.

> I'm never going to read that thing.

Is surprisingly accesible and easy to follow in fact. Such way to write science using logic and linking obvious facts instead to trying to wrap all in math glitter couldn't happen today.

You get bonus points for the term "math glitter"!

Heck no! We are in a golden age of accessible science communication. You have to avoid the Gladwells and his ilk but there are people out there like Bill Bryson and Siddhartha Mukherjee that take really complex science, research it well and explain it in clear and practical language.

> couldn’t happen today

Well, except for Basic Economics ;)

But is it as easily accessible as "Seeing Nature: Deliberate Encounters with the Visible World"?

The bar of accessible is much much lower than the Origin of Species.

But 'Seing Nature' didn't made the same revolution on our knowledge as 'the Origin of the species'. Neither has the same historical or cultural impact in our society. There are still a lot of people releasing fake news about Darwin for promoting some religious agenda, so educate ourselves in his work to be able to disclose those liars is even more relevant now than ever.

Why not read both books in a row starting with the origin?. Is a reasonable goal, will be intellectually rewarding, and everybody could do it in a month.

s/for promoting /with the purpose of promoting /

It actually holds up really well. Not long, and easy to read. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember being surprised at its simplicity.

The claim “you’ve only got time to read a few thousand books” surprised me, but some back of the napkin math strongly supports it. Assuming it takes a week to read a book and 70 years of literacy only gives you time for around 3500 books. A more avid reader might average, say, 3 books a week—-but then you only get to around 10,000 books. Now, a monk might be able to read 30 books in a week and get to 100,000, but pragmatically “a few thousand” seems to be an accurate accounting for a person who doesn’t dedicate a large portion of their life towards reading.

I recommend “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler. In short, not every sentence, paragraph, chapter, or even book is of equal informative importance. To read all literature as if everything is equally important is really a mistake. Once one recognizes this, it is then ideal to read only at the level of detail and focus as is required for the particular work.

What does it mean to have read a book? To read every single word and symbol? To understand the key ideas and points?

Is every book going to be one hundred percent new ideas to you or are there thematic riffs that allow you to shortcut portions of it without loss of understanding of the entire work?

> What does it mean to have read a book? To read every single word and symbol? To understand the key ideas and points?

To understand what the author thought at the time, what he was trying to say, what he had said really, how he came to his ideas, ... One cannot predict what he'll find in a book before book will be finished. You cannot know what you do not know. The only way is to read it through.

Sometimes I read books twice in a row. From the title to the last page. With all the "thanks", with the contents section, even leafing through a section of literature. Because you never know what you might find.

When I need just key ideas from a book I could find them in internet, because someone have them written in her blog. It would take, probably, 10 minutes to read, and why to bother myself with the book?

Agreed. I would not find this kind of life hack approach to reading satisfying. On occasion certainly but I pick up a book explicitly to inhabit it. I don't pick up books I don't wish to become apart of and have become apart of me. The first 200 pages of Moby Dick were phenomenal to me. The book really drops off when the chapters atomize into non-fiction and lose the story. But I was not going to miss one word of what happened to the Pequod or the friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg. It doesn't really pick that story up as I'd like but I wasn't going to risk it. Parts of 'Les Miserables' felt like a slog but it was worth it to truly inhabit the world. I'll probably never read a 1,000+ novel ever again but I wouldn't have read it any other way.

For a reference book sure. They are often best digested out of order.

+1 For recommending Origin as surprisingly enjoyable and worthwhile. The theory itself is explained clearly and quite interesting, but I think that's more of a bonus, and actually the best part is witnessing an early application of the scientific method, and getting the historical context for how the scientific method was developed. Very helpful context for understanding and thinking critically about modern science.

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