Judith Hooper
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Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale
Judith Hooper
Mutant moths and feuding scientists—the real story behind the most famous experiment in twentieth-century evolutionary biology.
As almost every high school biology student once learned, the peppered moths of England were the most renowned insects in the world. Featured in nearly every science textbook, they acquired their fame through the pioneering work of H. B. D. Kettlewell, a British physician and amateur lepidopterist who went into the woods in the 1950s to use this population of moths to capture “evolution in action.” He wanted—needed—to prove that the moths were evolving to a darker color in response to industrial pollution, for this would put the finishing touches on Darwin’s theory. As Judith Hooper reveals in this groundbreaking work, Kettlewell’s ambitions would exceed the strength of his science and the story of the “peppered moth” would became one of the most pervasive myths in the history of evolutionary biology.
About a century earlier, when a dark (“melanic”) form of the peppered moth appeared in the smoky industrial towns of the British Isles,…
