Showing titles in Nature & Ecology

Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over 15 years, in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. These objects tell her about London and its lost ways of life. Moving from the river's tidal origins in the west of the city to the point where it meets the sea in the east, Mudlarking is a search for urban solitude and history on the River Thames, what Lara calls 'the longest archaeological site in the world'.

Have you ever paused to watch an ant scurry by and wondered what it’s really up to? Beneath the surface of your garden, beneath sidewalks, tree trunks, and even your kitchen floor, lies a bustling civilisation of unsung heroes: ants. The Secret World of Ants takes you on an eye-opening journey into the lives of these miniature powerhouses—revealing a world of strength, strategy, and spectacular cooperation that rivals human society in complexity.

Humans have kept honey bees in hives for millennia, yet only in recent decades have biologists begun to investigate how these industrious insects live in the wild. The Lives of Bees is Thomas Seeley’s captivating story of what scientists are learning about the behavior, social life, and survival strategies of honey bees living outside the beekeeper’s hive - and how wild honey bees may hold the key to reversing the alarming die-off of the planet’s managed honey bee populations.

Welcome to Paranormal Deep Dive, the podcast where we go beyond the surface and plunge into the darkest corners of the world's most infamous hauntings. Join our hosts each week as they uncover chilling details, explore eerie legends, and investigate the supernatural forces behind the biggest paranormal stories of our time. From haunted houses to ghostly apparitions, cryptic creatures, and everything in between, we separate fact from fiction and dig into the mysteries that keep you up at night. If you're ready for the truth behind the terror, take a deep dive with us.

All around the world protection for threatened wilderness areas continues its expansion through the support of an unexpected activity: Sport Hunting. In this book, outdoor writer and scientist Mike Arnold takes listeners on a global odyssey stalking vast tracts of wilderness in the U.S. and Canada, Coutadas and preserves in Africa, rain forests in Central America, and game lands in Europe. He encounters apex predators, exotic birds, and game animals of all kinds, many of which now thrive in places that not long ago had been devoid of wildlife.

How on earth did James Herriot come to be sitting on a high Yorkshire moor, smelling vaguely of cows? James isn't sure, but he knows that he loves it. This second hilarious volume of memoirs contains more tales of James' unpredictable boss Siegfried Farnon; his charming student, brother Tristan; animal mayhem galore; and his first encounters with a beautiful girl named Helen.

Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends - and their amazing links to recent discoveries.

Science's greatest puzzle is where did we come from and how did we get here. This book shows how telling this story depends on understanding the gigantic family tree - the Tree of Life - that records the relationships between all species of life on earth - from humans, fish and butterflies to oak trees, mushrooms and bacteria. Knowing the Tree of Life unlocks the distant past letting us travel back in time to follow the twists and turns of life's history; it is what allows us to tell the very personal story that began four billion years ago.

By 1930, no place in the world was less well explored than Greenland. The native Inuit had occupied the relatively accessible west coast for centuries. The east coast, however, was another story. In August 1930, Henry George Watkins (nicknamed “Gino”), a twenty-three-year-old British explorer, led thirteen scientists and explorers on an ambitious expedition to the east coast of Greenland and into its vast and forbidding interior to set up a permanent meteorological base on the icecap, 8,200 feet above sea level.

In Methusaleh's Zoo, Steven Austad tells the stories of some extraordinary animals, considering why, for example, animal species that fly live longer than earthbound species and why animals found in the ocean live longest of all. Austad—the leading authority on longevity in animals—argues that the best way we will learn from these long-lived animals is by studying them in the wild.

We at Abstract Thoughts aim to bring more awareness to the world about the safe use of psychedelic mushrooms, the benefits as well as the drawbacks, that people should think about before making a decision to "trip". The whole idea is just to spread awareness and educate the masses, from beginner growers to our more experienced growers too. Psilocybin Mushroom: A Safe Trip, is a one-stop listen for psychedelic enthusiasts all over the world who are serious about gaining a complete understanding of the magic that is mushrooms.

The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, aster for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating grief, mistrust, and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system, Victoria has nowhere to go and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own.

Rivers, on a long view, are alive. They are born; they change; they shift their channels; they forge new routes to the sea; they move both gradually and violently; they can teem (usually) with life; they may die a quasi-natural death; they are frequently maimed and even murdered. It is the annual flood pulse—the brief time when the river occupies the floodplain—that gives a river its vitality, but it is human engineering that kills it, suppressing the flood pulse with dams, irrigation, siltation, dikes, and levees.

From prehistoric cave paintings to the prints and etchings of Picasso, owls have captivated and inspired us for millennia. Whether they appear as ancient Athenian symbols of wisdom, ghostly harbingers of death, or the cuddly sidekicks of Harry Potter and Winnie the Pooh, these birds have continued to fascinate and disturb us in equal measure. Through revelatory new behavioural research, Jennifer Ackerman provides an intimate glimpse into these magnificent creatures' lives.

In 1985, The Observer magazine sent Douglas Adams to Madagascar to look for the exotic and potentially extinct aye-aye lemur. There he met zoologist Mark Carwardine, and together they made a radio pilot about their travels, In Search of the Aye-Aye. This led to a hugely popular radio series, Last Chance to See, later adapted as a best-selling book. Douglas Adams died in 2001, but his friend Stephen Fry took his place for a follow-up 20th anniversary television series, broadcast on BBC Two in 2009.

Humans and fungi share nearly 50 percent of the same DNA. Because we're related, designing drugs to combat the varieties that attack us is a challenge. Meanwhile, in an ever hotter, wetter world, fungi may be finding new ways to thrive, queueing up global outbreak potentials for which no vaccine and woefully few medications exist; some fungi are already beginning to resist treatment. Among other lifeforms, bats, amphibians, and essential crops are also increasingly threatened by these pathogens.

A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut, Death in the Air, is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. In winter 1952, London automobiles and thousands of coal-burning hearths belched particulate matter into the air. But the smog that descended on December fifth of 1952 was different; it was a type that held the city hostage for five long days.

A Podcast about Cryptid beings such as Bigfoot, Dogman, Jersey Devil, the Loch Ness Monster, Aliens, and much more! Have stories to share? Sightings? Visit us at www.cryptidcreatures.net or email us at info@cryptidcreatures.co

Adventures in Volcanoland charts journeys across deserts, through jungles and up ice caps, to some of the world's most important volcanoes, from Nicaragua to Hawaii, Santorini to Ethiopia, exploring Tamsin Mather's obsession with these momentous geological formations, the cultural and religious roles they have played in the minds of those living around them at different times throughout history, and the science behind their formation and eruptions.