Showing titles in Animals

'Steve Brusatte, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, brings mammals out from the shadow of their more showy predecessors . . . In this beautifully written . . . terrific book, he tells the extraordinary story of how mammals came to be and makes the case for them as creatures who...

This true-life wilderness survival epic recounts 17-year-old Alex Messenger's near-lethal encounter with a grizzly bear during a canoe trip in the Canadian tundra. The story follows Alex and his five companions as they paddle north through harrowing rapids and stunning terrain. Twenty-nine days into the trip, while out hiking alone, Alex is attacked by a barren-ground grizzly. Left for dead, he wakes to find that his summer adventure has become a struggle to stay alive.

A journey into the weird, wonderful and truly astonishing lives of the small but mighty creatures who keep the world turning. Out of sight, underfoot, unseen beyond fleeting scuttles or darting flights, insects occupy a hidden world, yet are essential to sustaining life on earth. Insects influence our ecosystem like a ripple effect on water. They arrived when life first moved to dry land, they preceded – and survived – the dinosaurs, they outnumber the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches, and they will be here long after us.

In 1898, the British were building a railway line between Mombasa in Kenya and Uganda. At the Tsavo River in Kenya where a bridge needed to be built, the project was suddenly interrupted by two man-eating lions that targeted the camps of the workers. Over a period of nine months, the lions killed scores of people. These lions were deliberately hunting people, preferring humans over any other prey, and they seemed to have supernatural abilities in evading all attempts to stop them. Colonel J.H. Patterson, the chief engineer in charge of the project, finally managed to eliminate them.

THE TIMES SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR A Sunday Times Bestseller 'Thrilling . . . the best book on the subject written for the general reader since the 1980s.' The Sunday Times 66 million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth. Today, Dr. Steve Brusatte, one of the leading...

Have you ever wondered what your dogs are thinking? What they're feeling? Now you finally can! The answers will surprise and delight you as scientist and dog-owner Alexandra Horowitz explains how our four-legged friends perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human.

'When we know what to look for and what it means, seasonal moments that were once hidden shine brightly.' In The Hidden Seasons , Tristan Gooley shows us how to read the clues that the sun, moon, stars, plants, fungi, animals, water and weather give us - but that we continually miss, because we don't know how and where to look. Spring is the time of wildflower signs, unique cloud shapes and curious animal behaviour. Summer is a time of coastal clues, astronomical extremes and secret grass patterns. Autumn is a time for reading leaves, deciphering scents and investigating fungi.

"Winner of the 2014 Samuel Johnson PrizeShortlisted for the 2014 Costa Biography Award‘. In real life, goshawks resemble sparrowhawks the way leopards resemble housecats. Bigger, yes. But bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier, and much, much harder to see. Birds of deep woodland, not gardens, they’re the birdwatchers’ dark grail.’ As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T. H.

The scuba-diving philosopher and best-selling author of Other Minds explores the origins of animal consciousness. Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals and flower-like worms, whose rooted bodies and intricate geometry are more reminiscent of plant life than anything recognisably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins.

Thinking on My Feet is an inspiring journal of walks divided into seasonal sections. Discover the joys and benefits of walking, encounters with the natural and urban world, with the familiar and strange, with animals, people and events. Kate charts her feelings and impressions throughout, capturing the perspectives that only a journey on foot allows. Find out what makes you curious, what makes something memorable.

Dian Fossey's classic account of four gorilla families - one of the most important books ever written about our connection to the natural world. For 13 years Dian Fossey lived and worked with Uncle Bert, Flossie, Beethoven, Pantsy and Digit in the remote rain forests of the volcanic Virunga Mountains in Africa, establishing an unprecedented relationship with these shy and affectionate beasts. In her base camp, 10,000 feet above sea-level, she struggled daily with rain, loneliness and the ever-constant threat of poachers who slaughtered her beloved gorillas with horrifying ferocity.

Journalist Susan Casey was in her living room when she first glimpsed this strange place and its resident sharks, their dark fins swirling around a tiny boat in a documentary. These great whites were the alphas among alphas, the narrator said, some of them topping 18 feet in length, and each fall they congregated here off the northern California coast.

What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his team began with a radical step: they taught dogs to go into an MRI scanner - completely awake. They discovered what makes dogs individuals with varying capacities for self-control, different value systems, and a complex understanding of human speech. And dogs were just the beginning. In What It's Like to Be a Dog, Berns explores the fascinating inner lives of wild animals from dolphins and sea lions to the extinct Tasmanian tiger.

More than 10,000 years ago spectacularly large mammals roamed the pampas and jungles of South America. This book tells the story of these great beasts during and just after the Pleistocene, the geological epoch marked by the great ice ages. Megafauna describes the history and way of life of these animals, their comings and goings, and what befell them at the beginning of the modern era and the arrival of humans.

Voted the greatest English cricketer of the 20th century by the fans, Sir Ian Botham is the English game’s one true living legend, and his story, both on and off the pitch, reads like a Boy’s Own rollercoaster ride. Born with a natural genius for the game, Botham began breaking records with bat and ball from a young age and soon became the man English cricket expected most from. After a troubled period as captain, Botham rose once again to become a national hero with his display in the Miracle Ashes of 1981.

Former Bake Off host, passionate animal lover and comedian Sue Perkins, is our indispensable guide to the animal kingdom. Join her on a comical, insightful and, at times, shocking nature trail around the world.

It is difficult to conceive of the vast scale of the history of life on Earth, from the very first living organisms sparking into life in hydrothermal deep-sea vents to the dizzying diversity of life today. The evolution of life is a sweeping epic of a tale, with twists and turns, surprising heroes and unlikely survivors. The Earth beautifully distils this complex story into a meaningful scale. In taking a closer look at 47 carefully selected organisms over 15 periods in our planetary history, this audiobook tells the whole story of life on Earth.

Picking up from where the Sunday Times best-selling How Animals Saved My Life left off, Noel shares the moving, heart-warming and often surprising stories of the animals that he has treated in his remarkable career. As he explores how our relationships with animals can bring out the best in each of us, we meet some of the wonderful animals he has tried to help, the families who love them and the deeply personal challenges Noel has faced along the way. It is animals like these who have taught Noel the valuable lessons of love, hope and faith.

In 1811, when the self-schooled daughter of a carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from Britain's southern shoreline, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had discovered the 'first' dinosaur, and over the next seventy-five years - as the science of palaeontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited theories of evolutionary biology, and as religious scholars identified the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures - everything changed.

Let's be clear: Mamadou Ndiaye knows a whole lot of animals that can and will end you, but he has no plans to let these strange and horrifying creatures cash in his life insurance policy. Now the TikTok star is turning his engaging, entertaining and informative takes on animal biology and behaviour into this hilarious guide to the world's most deadly creatures.