Wildhood

The Epic Journey from Adolescence to Adulthood in Humans and Other Animals

By: Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, Kathryn Bowers

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Publishers Weekly Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2019

A New York Times Editor’s Pick

People Best Books Fall 2019

Chicago Tribune 28 Books You Need to Read Now

Booklist’s Top 10 Sci-Tech Books of 2019

“It blew my mind to discover that teenage animals and teenage humans are so similar. Both are naive risk-takers. I loved this book!” (Temple Grandin, author of Animals Make Us Human and Animals in Translation)

A revelatory investigation of human and animal adolescence and young adulthood from the New York Times best-selling authors of Zoobiquity.

With Wildhood, Harvard evolutionary biologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and award-winning science writer Kathryn Bowers have created an entirely new way of thinking about the crucial, vulnerable, and exhilarating phase of life between childhood and adulthood across the animal kingdom.

In their critically acclaimed best seller Zoobiquity, the authors revealed the essential connection between human and animal health. In Wildhood, they turn the same eye-opening, species-spanning lens to adolescent young-adult life. Traveling around the world and drawing from their latest research, they find that the same four universal challenges are faced by every adolescent human and animal on earth: how to be safe, how to navigate hierarchy; how to court potential mates; and how to feed oneself. Safety. Status. Sex. Self-reliance. How human and animal adolescents and young adults confront the challenges of wildhood shapes their adult destinies.

Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers illuminate these core challenges through the lives of four animals in the wild: Ursula, a young king penguin; Shrink, a charismatic hyena; Salt, a matriarchal humpback whale; and Slavc, a roaming European wolf. Through their riveting stories - and those of countless others, from adventurous eagles and rambunctious high schoolers to inexperienced orcas and naive young soldiers - listeners get a vivid and game-changing portrait of adolescent young adults as a horizontal tribe, sharing behaviors and challenges, setbacks and triumphs.

Upending our understanding of everything from risk-taking and anxiety to the origins of privilege and the nature of sexual coercion and consent, Wildhood is a profound and necessary guide to the perilous, thrilling, and universal journey to adulthood on planet Earth.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio

Fascinating and well researched, this book is a must for any parent!

I stumbled into this book and have now given it as a gift to most of my friends who, like me, are raising teenagers. It provides an invaluable and fascinating portrait of the key milestones of adolescence. By looking at these milestones across species, it provides a unique and emotionally less fraught exploration of the trials, tribulations and triumphs that await human teens. It also humanizes the adolescent challenges facing non-human teens in ways that inspire greater empathy with the animal kingdom. Great book! Beautifully read. I’m sure I’ll read it more than once!

awesome

the author dives into how to keep children safe but letting go. I found it to be scary yet challenging.

¡Spectacular!

BNH and KB did a spectacular job of laying out and describing adolescence across species. In particular, they offer the reader insights into human Wildhood that often challenges extant conceptions and parenting/societal practices. Beautifully written. Bravo!

Comments from a reader

A must read for people in their 20s and 30s who are not feeling like or had the chance to become an adult.