How the Snake Lost Its Legs the butterfly, the snake, and the cheetah. Each consists of three to eight sections named in the style of Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories", with titles like "How the butterfly got its spots" or "How the snake elongated its body", though a couple of sections use "Why?" rather than "How?", as in "Why the fly twirls his penis" (it rotates during embryonic development under the control of different genes). In these chapters, Held explains the mechanics of evolutionary developmental biology, complete with accounts of what genes such as hox, hedgehog, and engrailed do to shape bodies. The third part is
The Leopard and sensuality fill the subsequent days at Donnafugata. The Count dreamily, and ineffectually, pursues Concetta, while Concetta's younger sisters, Carolina and Caterina, dream romantically of Tancredi and the Count, and Tancredi and Angelica spend their time exploring the palace's many rooms, each of which contains some representation of a leopard, the family insignia. Narration describes how, on several occasions, Tancredi and Angelica are tempted to give in to their mutual sensual desire, but never do, and how this idyllic time of romantic, intimate gaming between them is a happy prelude to the miserable, unsuccessful marriage that will follow. A government