Showing titles in Animals

Poachers Were My Prey chronicles R. T. Stewart's many exciting undercover adventures, detailing the techniques he used in putting poachers behind bars. It also reveals, for the first time, the secrets employed by undercover wildlife officers in catching the bad guys.

Through vivid stories of devoted pigs, two-timing magpies, and scheming roosters, The Inner Life of Animals weaves the latest scientific research into how animals interact with the world with Peter Wohlleben's personal experiences in forests and fields. Horses feel shame, deer grieve, and goats discipline their kids. Ravens call their friends by name, rats regret bad choices, and butterflies choose the very best places for their children to grow up.

Los dinosaurios, las criaturas más formidables de la Tierra, se desvanecieron hace ya sesenta y seis millones de años, pero siguen siendo uno de los misterios más intrigantes de todos los tiempos. En Auge y caída de los dinosaurios, el paleontólogo Steve Brusatte repasa la evolución de estos extraordinarios seres mientras nos hace partícipes de sus apasionantes expediciones alrededor del mundo y sus recientes descubrimientos, que ponen en entredicho todo cuanto creíamos saber sobre la evolución de los dinosaurios.

Atop a hill in the rainforest of Belize, next to the ruins of a fallen civilization, a butterfly farm raises the brilliant blue morpho. What starts out as the worst vacation ever turns into a quest to learn more about the first-of-its-kind farm when journalist Diana Marcum inadvertently discovers this wildlife sanctuary, which is supported by an international live-butterfly trade.

Did you know that in medieval times dogs were known to have accompanied their masters into battle wearing suits of armour? Or that cows from different regions moo in different accents? Were you aware that the courtship dance of some seahorses can last eight hours? Or that an albatross flies much further in a lifetime than the Apollo astronauts did on their moon missions? In this collection, narrators Jason Zenobia, Charles King and Lawrence Keefe talk us through over 1,000 facts about birds, cats, dogs, fish, horses, insects, lizards, sharks, snakes and spiders.

Breathless is story of SARs-CoV-2 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists who study its origin, its ever-changing nature, and its capacity to kill us. David Quammen expertly shows how strange new viruses emerge from animals into humans as we disrupt wild ecosystems and how those viruses adapt to their human hosts, sometimes causing global catastrophe. He explains why this coronavirus will probably be a “forever virus,” destined to circulate among humans and bedevil us endlessly, in one variant form or another.

Following a game warden’s adventures from the woods of Maine to the swamps of New Orleans as he and his canine companions investigate murder, search for missing persons, and rescue survivors from natural disasters, this is a memoir that reads like a true crime novel. A Good Man with a Dog explores Roger Guay’s life as he and his canine partners are exposed to terrible events, from tracking down hostile poachers to searching for victims of violent crimes,

Cooperation is the means by which life arose in the first place. It’s how we progressed through scale and complexity, from free-floating strands of genetic material, to nation states. But given what we know about the mechanisms of evolution, cooperation is also something of a puzzle. How does cooperation begin, when on a Darwinian level, all that the genes in your body care about is being passed on to the next generation? A biologist by training, Raihani looks at where and how collaborative behavior emerges throughout the animal kingdom, and what problems it solves.

Celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland.

For millennia, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented more than thirty thousand years ago in the Chauvet Cave paintings in southern France. With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Jennifer Ackerman illuminates the rich biology and natural history of these birds and reveals remarkable new scientific discoveries about their brains and behavior.

Four decades ago, the areas around Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks sheltered the last few hundred surviving grizzlies in the lower 48 states. Protected by the Endangered Species Act, their population has surged to more than 1,500, and this burgeoning number of grizzlies now collides with the increasingly populated landscape of the 21st-century American West. Montana journalist Robert Chaney chronicles the resurgence of this charismatic species against the backdrop of the country's long history with the bear.

One evening late in his life, veteran sportswriter Mike Sullivan was asked by his son what he remembered best from his three decades in the press box. The answer came as a surprise. "I was at Secretariat's Derby, in '73. That was...just beauty, you know?" John Jeremiah Sullivan didn't know, not really - but he spent two years finding out, journeying from prehistoric caves to the Kentucky Derby in pursuit of what Edwin Muir called "our long-lost archaic companionship" with the horse.

Imagine raising an orphaned bear cub, carefully reintroducing her to the wild, then being welcomed back, almost daily, to observe her wild world for more than 17 years. Imagine visiting her in her feeding spots, watching her with her mates and her young, peering into her den, and, over time, observing the lives of all the other wild bears in her territory and surrounding ones. That is what happened to Ben Kilham.

For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes listeners on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life forms that are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life's diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior.

Discover this remarkable account of 21 years in remote Kenya with a troop of Savannah baboons from the New York Times best-selling author of Behave. Brooklyn-born Robert Sapolsky grew up wishing he could live in the primate diorama in the Museum of Natural History. At school he wrote fan letters to primatologists and even taught himself Swahili, all with the hope of one day joining his primate brethren in Africa. But when, at the age of 21, Sapolky's dream finally comes true, he discovers that the African bush bears little resemblance to the tranquillity of a museum.

The last wish of Walter Kirn’s terminally ill father is to spend his final days in his remote Montana cabin. Trapped in life’s loneliest predicament, he sticks with his pleasures: nature, Murder, She Wrote, and reminiscing with his adult son. The only thing Walter didn’t foresee is the bear rooting outside his father’s sickroom window - a bold and curious yearling with whom Walter forms a unique and consoling bond.

The fascinating and heartbreaking account of the first publicly exhibited captive killer whale a story that forever changed the way we see orcas and sparked the movement to save them. Killer whales had always been seen as bloodthirsty sea monsters. That all changed when a young killer whale was captured off the west coast of North America and displayed to the public in 1964. Moby Doll, as the whale became known, was an instant celebrity, drawing 20,000 visitors on the one and only day he was exhibited.

Written by a marine scientist (and winner of French eloquence competitions), this work of narrative nonfiction blends Bill François’ personal story with that of sea creatures to create an original and exciting work. In poetic prose, he describes his unlikely journey from being a Parisian child, afraid of the water and crippled by self-consciousness, to an eloquent and self-assured young man with a passion for the ocean and all who inhabit it.

This book looks at the weird and wonderful world of parasites, the most abundant form of life on Earth. Parasites come in all forms and sizes and inhabit every free-living organism. Parasitism is now, and always has been, a way to survive under changing environmental conditions. From arctic oceans to tropical forests, Scott Gardner, Judy Diamond, and Gabor Racz investigate how parasites survive and evolve, and how they influence and provide stability to ecosystems.

Ants number in the ten quadrillions, and they have been here since the Jurassic era. Inside an anthill, you'll find high drama worthy of a royal court; and between colonies, high-stakes geopolitical intrigue is afoot. Just like us, ants grow crops, raise livestock, tend their young and infirm, and make vaccines. And, just like us, ants have a dark side: They wage war, despoil environments, and enslave rivals - but also rebel against their oppressors.