Matin Durrani - Science Journalist

With the publication of Furry Logic just days away - Thursday 6 October 2016 to be precise - my co-author Liz Kalaugher and I have been the lucky recipients of several advance copies of our book sent to us by the lovely people at Bloomsbury in central London.

Naturally, we've been delighted to give various special people in our lives one of these limited pre-publication books. In my case, I presented a copy to my parents Inge and Saeed Durrani during a visit to Birmingham, where they live, the other week.

My mum has read the book from start to finish, which is great. So that's at least one satisfied reader. I know she has read it because she's phoned me to talk about various of the animals in the book - her favourites being our stories about the colour-changing octopus and the squid with the dinner-plate-sized eyes as well as the sex-swapping red-sided garter snakes, the mosquitoes that survive raindrop collisions and the electric eels.

In fact, Inge was inspired to write a short poem about the book, which I include below.

Heat, fluids, sound,

Forces, electricity and magnetism,

And let there be light shed on some issues

So totally unconnected

As animals and physics.

The heat is on:

Should physics and biology combine

Into a new subject and

Use the same linguistic description?

It would simplify the learning process

For our very stressed

High-school students!

So much easier for them

To be using crockery analogy!

Danke Zil and Nitam

For your erudite and thoughtful entertainment;

And now it is clear

Why bending a football

Can be such an inspiration to a scientist!

If you get your hands on a copy of Furry Logic, you'll get some of the references, especially if you read the final chapter. And if you're wondering who the mysterious Zil and Natim are, just think backwards.