Only coming to prominence in the mid-nineteenth century when English, French and American scientists encountered the animal for the first time, the gorilla’s physical resemblance to humans immediately struck a chord, marking the beginning of a relationship between animal and man that has yielded diverse results, becoming a popular subject for scientists, writers, anthropologists and artists alike. Along with the orang-utan, and some chimpanzees, gorillas are classified as higher apes, a gr...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTThe 10th-anniversary edition of the instant classic, The Sixth Extinction, now with a new epilogue. Kolbert blends intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes.

A great collection of questions, answers and facts! Why can't elephants jump? Why don't sheep shrink when they get wet? Divided into sections about animals, people, the law and funny names and places, each part of this hardback book explores little known and often amusing information - Certain to entertain!

In 1856, Paul Du Chaillu ventured into the African jungle in search of a mythic beast, the gorilla. After wild encounters with vicious cannibals, deadly snakes, and tribal kings, Du Chaillu emerged with 20 preserved gorilla skins—two of which were stuffed and brought on tour—and walked smack dab into the biggest scientific debate of the time: Darwin's theory of evolution. Quickly, Du Chaillu's trophies went from objects of wonder to key pieces in an all-out intellectual war. With a wide ra...

This national bestseller exploring the complex emotional lives of animals was hailed as "a masterpiece" by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and as "marvelous" by Jane Goodall.The popularity of When Elephants Weep has swept the nation, as author Jeffrey Masson appeared on Dateline NBC, Good Morning America, and was profiled in People for his ground-breaking and fascinating study. Not since Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals

In this dynamic account, award-winning science writer Ann Gibbons chronicles an extraordinary quest to answer the most primal of questions: When and where was the dawn of humankind?Following four intensely competitive international teams of scientists in a heated race to find the “missing link”–the fossil of the earliest human ancestor–Gibbons ventures to Africa, where she encounters a fascinating array of fossil hunters: Tim White, the irreverent Californian who discovered the partial ske...

“Surprising. Impressive. Cannibalism restores my faith in humanity.” —Sy Montgomery, The New York Times Book ReviewFor centuries scientists have written off cannibalism as a bizarre phenomenon with little biological significance. Its presence in nature was dismissed as a desperate response to starvation or other life-threatening circumstances, and few spent time studying it. A taboo subject in our culture, the behavior was portray...

One of America's great nature-writers explores the magic and science of feathers.**“An illuminating study of an evolutionary marvel.” ―**EconomistWinner of the John Burroughs MedalFeathers are an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. From flying dinosaurs to showgirls on the Las Vegas Strip, their story spans hundreds of millions of years—yet has never been fully told. In Feathers

I hope this short book throws some more light on one of the great communicators.I have interviewed Sir David Attenborough many times, mainly for articles published in the UK broadcasting listings magazine Radio Times. These essays and shorter pieces - on subjects ranging from the world's rarest birds to meerkats, from a strange Easter island statue to his one pet hate, the rat - are based on articles of mine first published in that magazine and on the PBS website, with additional c...

Darwin's theory of evolution was for more than a century dogged by a major problem: the evidence proving the connections between the main groups of organisms was nowhere to be found.By the 1970s this absence of 'transitional fossils' was hotly debated; some palaeontologists wondered if these 'missing links' had been so quick that no trace of them was left. However, during the past three decades fossils of walking whales from Pakistan, feathered dinosaurs from China, fish with feet f...

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s groundbreaking bestseller, When Elephants Weep, was the first book since Darwin’s time to explore emotions in the animal kingdom, particularly from animals in the wild. Now, he focuses exclusively on the contained world of the farm animal, revealing startling, irrefutable evidence that barnyard creatures have feelings too, even consciousness.Weaving history, literature, anecdotes, scientific studies, and Masson’s own vivid experiences observing ...

Rain is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive.It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of the world's water. Yet this is the first book to tell the story of rain.Cynthia Barnett's Rain begins four billion years ago with the torrents that filled the oceans, and builds to the storms of climate change. It weaves together science—the true shape of a raindrop, the mysteries of frog and fish rains—with ...