Super Natural: How Life Thrives in Impossible Places

by Alex Riley

Journey through Earth’s most extreme, seemingly hostile environments—and marvel at the remarkable creatures that call them home.


From scorching deserts to frozen seabeds, from the highest peaks of the Himalaya to the hadal depths of the oceans, there are habitats on this Earth that appear hostile to life—yet where, nevertheless, life flourishes. In North American forests, wood frogs awaken each spring from solid blocks of ice. Under the Saharan sun, shielded by silvery hairs, desert ants sprint through the midday heat that is lethal to any other animal. At the bottom of ice-covered lakes, painted turtles pass months without breathing oxygen. Transporting readers to far-flung environments we could never call home, in Super Natural, award-winning science writer Alex Riley paints an awe-inspiring portrait of life’s remarkable resilience even under the harshest circumstances.


Riley illuminates ecosystems on every continent to tell the stories of creatures exquisitely adapted to endure unimaginable deprivations—of water, oxygen, food, sunlight—and extremes of heat and cold, of pressure and altitude. To survive half a year without food on barren islands, snakes will shrink and regrow their digestive systems—even their hearts. At the site of the Chernobyl disaster, fungi harness radiation to thrive. Evolution, we see, can and will carve out a niche just about anywhere.


Super Natural shows us how, at nature’s furthest limits, the rules of biology as we know them are rewritten—and how, in life’s astonishing ingenuity and persistence even in the face of calamity and change, we can find hope for the future of life on Earth.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Animals, Biology, Audiobook, Environment

365 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 23, 2025

About the author

Alex Riley is an award-winning science writer and the author of Super Natural and A Cure for Darkness. A former research scientist at the Natural History Museum in London, he has coauthored peer-reviewed scientific research and published his popular science reporting in New Scientist, PBS’s NOVA Next, the BBC, Aeon, and Nautilus Magazine, among others. He lives in Devon, UK, with his family.

Reviews

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alex Riley is a British science writer; 2025's Super Natural is his second popular science book (after 2021's A Cure for Darkness: The Story of Depression and How We Treat It). Super Natural explores extreme adaptations by various organisms that have made them resilient to extreme environmental factors like cold, heat, radiation, etc. Though Riley isn't the first to write a book on these themes, and isn't a researcher in his own right scientifically studying these phenomena, I think he does a respectable job of covering these topics in a way that'll be of interest to generally science-curious audiences. I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author, which I found to be unfortunately read in a somniferous manner, though YMMV.

Further reading: biology in the extremes
Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future by Neil Shubin
Below the Edge of Darkness: A Memoir of Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea by Edith Widder
Water, Ice, And Stone: Science and Memory on the Antarctic Lakes by Bill Green
Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb

My statistics:
Book 342 for 2025
Book 2268 cumulatively

[Susan Tweit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing about the extraordinary qualities of living beings can easily turn into a sort of gee-whiz litany of astonishments akin to an 18th-Century cabinet of curiosities, a collection of marvels displayed without the context that gives them meaning. Science writer Alex Riley neatly avoids this problem in his new book Super Natural by organizing the stories of these fantastic lives by how they respond to extreme conditions—surviving near-complete desiccation, for instance, or oxygen deprivation, or temperatures that would boil any other life to death. Within each section, Riley describes how different plants and animals cope, weaving in science, history, and environment, how they fit into their communities, and what their lives mean to the larger picture of nature on Earth. Riley is a master storyteller, bringing these unique and sometimes bizarre beings to vivid life, along with the creative research and idiosyncratic scientists who study them. Super Natural is a great read, an epic journey through the extremes of life on this amazing planet.

[Zana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Alex Riley’s Super Natural felt like revisiting my childhood obsession with National Geographic and animal documentaries! It’s packed with mind-blowing stories e.g. tardigrades (aka “moss piglets”) that can survive in all manner of extreme conditions almost unscathed (even when being flung into space and back), horses thriving in Chernobyl exclusion zone (despite the high radioactive levels that can alter DNA), deep-sea snailfish living (and thriving being “left alone”) at depths equal to Everest, and turtles in Canada that can hibernate underwater for months without breathing, and many more. It’s strangely comforting to learn how tough and adaptable life can be, and maybe this can be a lesson for all of us too. As Riley says, “Life, once it has emerged on a planet, is very hard to destroy.”

[Anshuman Swain · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down to 3.

The book has super interesting case studies about how love survives in extreme conditions - no oxygen, high and low temperatures, no food - and what can we learn from these examples. The text could have been better written- that is my only complaint - the author has sprinkled a little bit of unrequired jargon in a few places, isn't connecting enough threads etc. but the book is well researched.

[Onceinabluemoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Serene]

DNF at 58%

There's nothing wrong with this content wise, but I just didn't find it very engaging of a read for whatever reason-- something stylistically isn't clicking for me. Maybe I would have powered through but unfortunately I had multiple libby holds come in at once and some of those are. Long. So. I kinda just wanna move on. Maybe I'll come back one day

[sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

i enjoyed this book but i think my expectations were too high

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging writing full of interesting facts about various organisms and their adaptations to survive in extreme conditions. I think the author does a good job of really delving into exploring how these adaptations work, at least as far as a layperson can understand (I think reading about each and every oddly-designated protein involved in an adaptation would be a distraction). I do feel like there are some missteps along the way, especially when the author writes teasers about upcoming organisms at the ends of chapters or sometimes sections, since they don't always live up to the hype, and the effort seems a bit forced. In particular, he breathlessly (ha) promotes the idea that certain Loriciferans may exist in completely anoxic environments, but then immediately afterwards reveals that there are serious question about the legitimacy of those findings. I also felt like the later chapters were for some reason less interesting; like the first several chapters were just packed full of interesting examples of creatures with the relevant adaptations, while some of the later ones struggled to provide a cohesive vision exploring the topic, or only focused on a few organisms in ways that weren't especially engaging.

[Steph De Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book evoked in me a sense of wonder and curiosity that has strong echoes of the many hours I spent poring over colourful Dorling Kindersley volumes in my childhood.

Riley does a great job of making his subject-matter interesting and insightful, and as each chapter essentially stands alone as a vignette about a specific group of animals and animal behaviours, this made for ideal commute reading.

I particularly enjoy the way in which Riley draws out the applications of various discoveries about animal adaptations to various harsh environments to other scientific fields, notably medicine and technology. I also like that he doesn’t attempt to pad the book out with extraneous material: together with Riley’s enthusiastic narrative voice, the book’s succinctness and clarity make this an excellent (and highly accessible) book for a non-specialist audience.

[Ben Goldfarb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had the honor of blurbing this one for the jacket; here's what I wrote:

"SUPER NATURAL is a mind-expanding romp through Earth’s most extreme environments and the astonishing creatures who flourish in them. With awe and curiosity, Alex Riley plumbs the abyssal plains, the polar ice caps, and every habitat in between to reveal the tenacity, diversity, and flat-out weirdness of life on our harsh, hospitable planet."

[The Inquisitive Biologist · Rating 5 out of 5]

An entertaining romp through life's outliers, Super Natural explores the extreme conditions under which some organisms not only survive, but often thrive. Read the full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2025...

[Rhinnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Yeezy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting, documentary-style nature book that brings animals to life vividly, showing them striving to live. Humans can also draw strength from it.

[Liam Bittles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply fascinating read. Highly recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in biology.

[James Easterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thorough and well researched book on the extremes of life.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting book, and it makes sci-fi writers seem unoriginal. There are more unique and "alien" animals on earth already than we ever see in any form of media.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s not in depth on any one topic, but almost every page had me saying, “that’s so cool!” about something. I learned a ton of stuff I did not know. I felt like this author did a good job of being optimistic about the possibilities inherent in life’s adaptive, unrelenting nature, while hinting realistically at the fact that life may ultimately go on without us, in ways that our species wouldn’t even recognize.