Body Hot Spots

In his recent book, Body Hot Spots, University of Alaska biologist, R. Dale Guthrie, advances a fascinating set of hypotheses to account for many of the perplexing and often intimate details of human appearance and behavior. Why do men have beards? Why do women generally neither go bald nor have beards? How is the social stare enhanced by oversized spectacles or eye coloring of certain patterns?

In formulating his novel hypotheses, Dr. Guthrie has drawn on various specialty areas in biology including embryology and histology, evolution, paleontology (the study of fossils) and behavioral biology. He also has drawn on his wide experience as a hunter and observer of sheep, caribou, and other big game, and the book features drawings and quotations from everything from comic books to poetry.

Both serious biologists and casual readers are finding the book's conclusions revolutionary. Of these, perhaps the most important conclusion is that the human species is rapidly evolving. Dr. Guthrie's suggestion of rapid evolution stems from the observation that women with certain combinations of social and physical characteristics, and men with a different set, tend to produce more offspring than others, thus contributing a larger share of these features to the next generation. Graying of hair, weak chins, the attractiveness imparted to women by high-heeled shoes, women's liberation movement, changes in dress fashions--all of these topics are dealt with in Body Hot Spots.