How the Snake Lost Its Legs fly embryo. His books on evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) include "Imaginal Discs: The Genetic and Cellular Logic of Pattern Formation" (2002), "Quirks of Human Anatomy: An Evo-Devo Look at the Human Body" (2009), and "Deep Homology? Uncanny Similarities of Humans and Flies Uncovered by Evo-Devo" (2017). In Held's view, "Quirks", "Snake", and "Deep Homology" form a trilogy on evo-devo. "How the Snake Lost Its Legs" is ostensibly organised into six chapters, but in effect into three parts. The first chapter serves as an introduction and overview. The next four chapters provide what Held calls "the meatier aspects of evo-devo" with
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