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
Kpo the Leopard Kpo the Leopard Kpo the Leopard is an African wildlife story about a female leopard-cub written by French children's writer René Guillot (1900–1969), who lived, worked and travelled for much of his life in French Africa. Set initially in the African jungle, the story moves, after Kpo and her mother escape from a forest fire, to new hunting-grounds in the African Plain, and tells the story of Kpo's adventures as she matures into a full-grown leopard. "Kpo the Leopard" was published in 1955 and, twenty years later, was included in "The Hamish Hamilton Book of Wise Animals", together with pieces