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The unexpected truth about animals stoned sloths, lovelorn hippos and other wild tales

Humans have walked on the moon and discovered the Higgs boson, but when it come to understanding animals we still have a long way to go. We once thought that eels spontaneously generated from mud and that bears gave birth to formless lumps which they then licked into shape. We still believe penguins...

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Main Author: Cooke, Lucy, 1970- (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language:English
Published: London : Black Swan, 2018.
Edition:Black Swan edition.
Subjects:
Animals > Miscellanea.
Animals > Humor.
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Summary:Humans have walked on the moon and discovered the Higgs boson, but when it come to understanding animals we still have a long way to go. We once thought that eels spontaneously generated from mud and that bears gave birth to formless lumps which they then licked into shape. We still believe penguins are cute, sloths are lazy and vultures have filthy habits. The truth is something else entirely. Zoologist Lucy Cooke takes us on a global adventure, consulting the world's experts to discover the truth behind bizarre tales of self-gelding beavers and news reports of drunken moose. Her research uncovers fascinating and entirely unexpected animal facts alongside extraordinary stories of the science and scientists of the past: jaw-dropping experiments and theories that often tell us as much about ourselves and our relationship with the natural world as the actual animals concerned.
Item Description:Originally published: Doubleday, 2016.
Physical Description:469 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:178416190X
9781784161903
Author Notes:

Lucy Cooke is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning broadcaster and National Geographic Explorer with a master's in zoology from New College, Oxford, where she studied under Richard Dawkins. She is a fellow of Durham University and a regular guest lecturer at universities including Harvard and Cambridge.
Lucy has written, directed and presented award-winning international television series for the BBC, National Geographic, Animal Planet and Discovery, and co-presented BBC Springwatch . On BBC Radio 4 she has hosted her own series, The Truth About... and Political Animals , and is a regular on The Infinite Monkey Cage and Sue Perkins' Nature Table . She has written for the New York Times , Wall Street Journal , Guardian and New Scientist , among others.
Her bestselling book Bitch: What Does It Mean to Be Female? challenges the sexist dogma embedded in evolutionary biology. A Telegraph and Guardian book of the year, it has been adopted onto university syllabuses around the world and is being developed as a stage musical and television series. Her earlier books include The Truth About Animals , shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize and translated into nineteen languages, and A Little Book of Sloth , which became a major Discovery series.


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