Showing titles in Animals

In The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, Riley Black walks listeners through what happened in the days, the years, the centuries and the million years after the impact, tracking the sweeping disruptions that overtook this one spot, and imagining what might have been happening elsewhere on the globe. Picture yourself in the Cretaceous period. It's a sunny afternoon in the Hell Creek of ancient Montana 66 million years ago. In a matter of hours, everything here will be wiped away.

The second collection of memoirs from the author who inspired the BBC and Channel 5 series All Creatures Great and Small. Now settled into the sleepy Yorkshire village of Darrowby, and married to Helen the farmer’s daughter, James Herriot thinks he’s finally got himself sorted. But life as a...

Gerald Durrell's last book, The Aye-Aye and I, records his final animal-collecting expedition, a trip to Madagascar in 1990, and his efforts to save the elusive and mythical lemuroid known as the Aye-Aye. Prompted by the country's radical deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture, Durrell, his wife, and their team of zoologists embark on a mission to capture and conserve the species - distinguished by its "giant, chisel-like teeth", "round, hypnotic eyes", and large "spoon-like ears".

The fifth volume of memoirs from the author who inspired the BBC and Channel 5 series All Creatures Great and Small. During his decades spent as a country vet in Yorkshire, James Herriot has seen huge advances in medical science, technological leaps, and a world irrevocably changed by war. Yet...

In 1954, 63-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow.

In A Good Horse Is Never a Bad Color, Mark Rashid continues to share his talent for training horses through communication rather than force. Rashid uses humorous, feel-good stories to relate his techniques of teaching horses by examining their view of the world. This book is a must-have for compassionate horse trainers and owners. Tales of Arabs, appaloosas, and paints - mistrusted and mistreated because of their breed - will give listeners a new perspective on these breeds and others.

What does it mean to be female? Mother, carer, the weaker sex? Think again. In the last few decades a revolution has been brewing in zoology and evolutionary biology. Lucy Cooke introduces us to a riotous cast of animals, and the scientists studying them, that are redefining the female of the species. Meet the female lemurs of Madagascar, our ancient primate cousins that dominate the males of their species physically and politically. Or female albatross couples, hooking up together to raise their chicks in Hawaii.

In 2001, Sharon Pincott traded her privileged life as a high-flying corporate executive to start a new one with the Presidential Elephants of Zimbabwe. She was unpaid, untrained, self-funded, and arrived with the starry-eyed idealism of most foreigners during early encounters with Africa. For 13 years - the worst in Zimbabwe's volatile history - this intrepid Australian woman lived in the Hwange bush fighting for the lives of these elephants, forming an extraordinary and life-changing bond with them.

John and Elizabeth Gould sailed into Australia on a cold spring day in 1838 prepared for the most astonishing adventure of their lives. They had crossed three oceans from their London home to find the treasures of Australia's birdlife. Elizabeth had fallen pregnant for the seventh time at just 34, and there would be little rest for her in illustrating her husband's exquisite books that had made him England's celebrated 'Bird Man', and a force of nature in both science and publishing.

Catherine Munro transforms her life when she moves to Shetland to study the hardy ponies who call this archipelago home. Over the course of her first year, she is welcomed into the rhythms and routines that characterise life at the edge of the world. When faced with personal loss, Catherine finds comfort and connection in the shared lives of the people, animals and wild landscapes of Shetland.

Early in 2013 Neil Hayward was at a crossroads. He didn't want to open a bakery or whatever else executives do when they quit a lucrative but unfulfilling job. He didn't want to think about his failed relationship with 'the one' or his potential for ruining a new relationship with 'the next one'. And he almost certainly didn't want to think about turning 40. And so instead he went birding. Birding was a lifelong passion. It was only among the birds that Neil found a calm that had eluded him in the confusing world of humans.

Carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, two young Americans, Mark and Delia Owens, caught a plane to Africa, bought a thirdhand Land Rover, and drove deep into the Kalahari Desert. There they lived for seven years, in an unexplored area with no roads, no people, and no source of water for thousands of square miles. In this vast wilderness the Owenses began their zoology research, working along animals that had never before been exposed to humans.

It's December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote Russian village. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren't random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.

From the 1948 US edition: This is the story of the most publicized jungle animal that ever lived. In his best-selling Man-Eater's of Kumaon, Jim Corbett told of his battles with many man-eating tigers. In this book he tells a sustained and climactic story of his hard-won battle with a single leopard. Leopards very rarely become man-eaters, but those few that do are the peers of the man-eating tigers in ferocity and possess an even greater cunning.

De Waal reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal's landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal - and human - intelligence.

In this illuminating book, brain scientist and horsewoman Janet Jones describes human and equine brains working together. Using plain language, she explores the differences and similarities between equine and human ways of negotiating the world. Mental abilities—like seeing, learning, fearing, trusting, and focusing—are discussed from both human and horse perspectives. Throughout, true stories of horses and handlers attempting to understand each other—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—help to illustrate the principles.

The third collection of memoirs from the author who inspired the BBC and Channel 5 series All Creatures Great and Small. This omnibus edition comprises of Vets Might Fly and Vet in a Spin. Training as an RAF pilot in the smoke and bustle of London is a far cry from James Herriot’s day job as a...

For six years Jim and Jamie Dutcher lived intimately with a pack of wolves, gaining their trust as no one has before. In this book the Dutchers reflect on the virtues they observed in wolf society and behavior. Each chapter exemplifies a principle, such as kindness, teamwork, playfulness, respect, curiosity, and compassion. Their heartfelt stories combine into a thought-provoking meditation on the values shared between the human and the animal world.

The first collection of memoirs from the author who inspired the BBC and Channel 5 series All Creatures Great and Small. This edition contains If Only They Could Talk and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet. Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to...

When barefoot running guru Christopher McDougall takes in a neglected donkey, his aim is to get Sherman back to reasonable health. But Sherman is ill-tempered, obstinate and uncooperative - and it's clear his poor treatment has made him deeply fearful of humans. Chris knows that donkeys need a purpose - they are working pack animals - and so when he learns of the sport of Burro Racing or running with donkeys, he sets out to give Sherman something worth living for.