Question: What impact will your book have on younger scientists?

Tiffany Taylor answered on 15 Jun 2012:

Hi tsandhu. I hope my book will give young children a good basis on which to build on ideas about evolution. The book is written as a short poem and tells the story of “The Rinkidinks” which live deep in the forest. A natural disaster separates them and they must use their natural abilities to find food. They end up in different environments so the skills they use are different. The ones who are best at finding food can have more babies and pass on the genes which make them skilled to their children. Over a long time this makes the Rinkidinks appear very different, and when the two groups meet again in the forest a LONG time in the future, they have changed so much they no longer recognise each other.

It’s supposed to teach children that evolution is about things changing overtime, it never stands still. I think this understanding makes you look at the world differently. You can look at anything which is alive and think “I wonder why it looks like that?”, and if you think about where it lives, you can probably come up with a very clever answer.