Animal Science

In this New York Times best seller, a naturalist probes the forest to comprehend the secret lives of owls. Leigh Calvez takes listeners on an adventure into the world of owls: owl-watching, avian science, and the deep forest - often in the dead of night. These birds are a bit mysterious, and that's part of what makes them so fascinating.

The founder and president of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, and bestselling author Gene Stone explore the wonders of animal life with “admiration and empathy” (The New York Times Book Review) and offer tools for living more kindly toward them. In the last few decades, a wealth of new information has...

Animal scientists have long considered domestic livestock to be too dumb to know how to eat right, but the lifetime research of animal behaviorist Fred Provenza and his colleagues has debunked this myth. Their work shows that when given a choice of natural foods, livestock have an astoundingly refined palate, nibbling through the day on as many as fifty kinds of grasses, forbs, and shrubs to meet their nutritional needs with remarkable precision.

Every cow just wants to be happy. Every chicken just wants to be free. Every bear, dog, or mouse experiences sorrow and feels pain as intensely as any of us humans do. In a compelling appeal to reason and human kindness, Matthieu Ricard here takes the arguments from his best sellers Altruism and Happiness to their logical conclusion: Compassion toward all beings, including our fellow animals, is a moral obligation and the direction toward which any enlightened society must aspire.

Following on from the events in A Zoo in My Luggage, The Whispering Land sees Gerald Durrell and his wife Jacquie travel to Argentina to collect animals for their newly established zoo. With rare insight and unique charm, Durrell pulls the listener into the tropical landscape of Patagonia, where he witnesses magical moments with penguins, seals and ocelots, and encounters a hilarious cast of characters, including a swearing parrot and a belching guanaco.

When the Iraq war began, conservationist Lawrence Anthony could think of only one thing: the fate of the Baghdad Zoo, caught in the crossfire at the heart of the city. Once Anthony entered Iraq, he discovered that hostilities and uncontrolled looting had devastated the zoo and its animals. Working with members of the zoo staff and a few compassionate U.S. soldiers, Anthony defended the zoo, bartered for food on war-torn streets, and scoured bombed palaces for desperately needed supplies.

Approximately 200,000 years ago, as modern humans began to radiate out from their evolutionary birthplace in Africa, Neanderthals were already thriving in Europe - descendants of a much earlier migration of the African genus Homo. But when modern humans eventually made their way to Europe 45,000 years ago, Neanderthals suddenly vanished.

Millions of Americans harbor the dream of living off their land but are held back by the uncertainty of diving into the unknown waters of farming. According to a USDA report, over 40% of the U.S. farmland is operated by someone other than its owner, indicating that the dream of owning and managing a farm is often overwhelmed by fear and uncertainty. But imagine having a comprehensive guide that translates these complex processes into simple, actionable steps - a roadmap that empowers you to convert your little plot into a nourishing, profitable hub of life.

Effective altruism is built upon the simple, but profound, idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the "most good you can do". Such a life requires an unsentimental view of charitable giving: To be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more good with our money or our time than other options open to us. Singer introduces us to an array of remarkable people who are restructuring their lives in accordance with these ideas and shows how living altruistically often leads to greater personal fulfillment.

My name is Tawny Bigford. I'm 35, single, and I love hot showers. Seriously, all I wanted was a hot shower to start my day off right, but when I went to confront my landlady about the broken plumbing, I wound up talking to her corpse instead. Now everyone thinks I'm to blame for her murder--not the best way to make an impression on the new neighbors, let me tell you. But how can I prove I'm innocent when I know practically nothing about the woman I supposedly killed?

Can octopuses feel pain and pleasure? What about crabs, shrimps, insects, or spiders? How do we tell whether a person unresponsive after severe brain injury might be suffering? When does a fetus in the womb start to have conscious experiences? Could there even be rudimentary feelings in miniature models of the human brain, grown from human stem cells? And what about AI? These are questions about the edge of sentience, and they are subject to enormous, disorienting uncertainty. We desperately want certainty, but it is out of reach.

Award-winning environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in the previous year. “This was the most anomalous year (so far) in human history,” guest editor Bill McKibben writes, “the...

The story that became a global sensation: Sophie, the Australian cattle dog who was lost at sea and swam six miles through shark-infested waters to a remote island where she survived in the wild for five months.... It was just another day in paradise as Jan and Dave Griffith, along with their blue cattle dog, Sophie, motored out of Mackay Marina for a gorgeous weekend at sea. But when the sky suddenly darkened and the waves turned fierce, the unthinkable happened: Sophie disappeared overboard.

Horses have a story to tell - one of resilience, sociability, and intelligence and of partnership with human beings. In The Horse, journalist and equestrienne Wendy Williams brings that story brilliantly to life. Williams chronicles the 56-million-year journey of horses as she visits with experts around the world, exploring what our biological affinities and differences can tell us about the bond between horses and humans and what our longtime companions might think and feel.

A charming novel for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and How to Stop Time, following a cat through his nine lives in Edinburgh, moving through the ever-changing city and meeting its inhabitants over centuries Early morning, 1902. At 7/7 Marchmont Crescent, Eilidh the charlady tips coal into...

What's that springing into the air? An Arctic fox! He lands, breaking through the snow. He has caught his lunch. Learn more about Arctic foxes and how they survive in the frigid tundra. Follow them as they search for prey beneath the snow and ice. Find out how fox pups stay safe from roaming predators.

To flourish, humans need to develop virtues of independent thought and acknowledged social dependence. In this book, a leading moral philosopher presents a comparison of humans to other animals and explores the impact of these virtues.

The name of Charles Darwin is known to nearly all who have had the benefit of a Western-style education. It is synonymous with the theory of evolution and due to his perspective of man as an animal, his worked ushered in a new paradigm of understanding of the physical and mental behavior of man. However, because of the immense impact of his best known theory, most know only of his work through reviews and historical reports.

A baby kangaroo lives in its mother’s pouch. A zebra group is called a dazzle. A mother octopus has 50,000 babies! Find out how animal families care for their young, keep one another safe, and share duties. Accessible and fun K–3 level information reveals the animal world to young listeners and researchers in this Pebble Explore title from the Animal Societies series.

A bear sleeps in a den. A snake might coil around a branch to rest. A crab carries its home on its back! Find out where all kinds of animals live—in the water, up in the trees, or burrowed underground. Accessible and fun K-3 level information reveals the animal world to young listeners and researchers in this Pebble Explore title from the Animal Societies series.