Showing titles in Animals

The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it’s born as a tiny willow-leaf-shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe - a journey of about 4,000 miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water.

Humanity can make short work of the oceans' creatures. In 1741, hungry explorers discovered herds of Steller's sea cow in the Bering Strait, and in less than thirty years, the amiable beast had been harpooned into extinction. It's a classic story, but a key fact is often omitted. Bering Island was the last redoubt of a species that had been decimated by hunting and habitat loss years before the explorers set sail.

Being among bees is a full-body experience, Mark Winston writes. Bee Time presents his reflections on three decades spent studying these remarkable creatures, and on the lessons they can teach about how humans might better interact with one another and the natural world, from the boardroom to urban design to agricultural ecosystems.

As spring arrives, Stephen Moss’ Somerset garden is awash with birdsong: chiffchaffs, wrens, robins and more. Overhead, buzzards soar, ravens tumble and the season gathers pace. But this equinox is unlike any other. As the nation goes into lockdown, Stephen records the wildlife around his home, with his fox-red Labrador, Rosie, by his side. When old routines fall away, and blue skies are no longer crisscrossed by contrails, they discover the bumblebees, butterflies and birdsong on their local patch.

The blackbird is one of the most familiar of all British birds and its song is a great favourite. Enjoy the beautiful melodies created by this much-loved songbird in the British Library's new collection of recordings, which reveal the extraordinary virtuosity, splendour, and magic of its song. From the poet Edward Thomas to the Beatles, the blackbird has been an inspiration to writers, composers, and the wider public for many centuries.

The familiar call of the common cuckoo, "cuck-oo", has been a harbinger of spring ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa many thousands of years ago. However, for naturalist and scientist Nick Davies, the call is an invitation to solve an enduring puzzle: How does the cuckoo get away with laying its eggs in the nests of other birds and tricking them into raising young cuckoos rather than their own offspring?

Without our domesticated plants and animals, human civilization as we know it would not exist. We would still be living at subsistence level as hunter-gatherers if not for domestication. It is no accident that the cradle of civilization - the Middle East - is where sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, and cats commenced their fatefully intimate associations with humans.

Becoming Wild offers a glimpse into cultures among nonhuman animals through looks at the lives of individuals in different present-day animal societies. By showing how others teach and learn, Safina offers a fresh understanding of what is constantly going on beyond humanity. With reporting from deep in nature, alongside individual creatures in their free-living communities, this audiobook offers a very privileged glimpse behind the curtain of life on Earth and helps inform the answer to that most urgent of questions: Who are we here with?

Bees are like oxygen: ubiquitous, essential, and, for the most part, unseen. While we might overlook them, they lie at the heart of relationships that bind the human and natural worlds. In Buzz, the beloved Thor Hanson takes us on a journey that begins 125 million years ago, when a wasp first dared to feed pollen to its young. From honeybees and bumbles to lesser-known diggers, miners, leafcutters, and masons, bees have long been central to our harvests, our mythologies, and our very existence. They've given us sweetness and light, the beauty of flowers, and as much as a third of the foodstuffs we eat. And, alarmingly, they are at risk of disappearing.

Every morning, ecologist Tim Blackburn is inspired by the diversity contained within the moth trap he runs on the roof of his London flat. Beautiful, ineffably mysterious organisms, these moths offer a glimpse into a larger order, one that extends beyond individual species of moth, beyond lepidoptera or insects, and into a hidden landscape.

Dog behaviourist Nigel Reed reveals the secrets to a happy, well-behaved dog in his revolutionary new book, The Dog Guardian. Struggling to solve your dog's behavioural problems? Looking to achieve the perfect relationship with your dog? The Dog Guardian is here to help. Dog behaviourist Nigel Reed teaches emotional intelligence for dog owners, leading to confident, happy and well-behaved dogs.

Avoid getting eaten! Do you find yourself wondering: Do bears eat humans? Do birds eat people? Do kangaroos? Could I survive people eating predators of any kind? Perfect for anyone with a fun or morbid interest in wildlife or survivalism, Creatures That Eat People is full of stories of strange animals that eat humans and the situations that lead to it.

Remarkable new discoveries affirm the octopus as one of nature’s most intelligent and complex animals. This new book brings us closer than ever to these elusive creatures. The companion to the highly anticipated National Geographic television special, this book explores the alluring underwater world of the octopus—a creature that resembles an alien lifeform, but whose behavior has earned it a reputation as one of the most intelligent animals on the planet.

Written by a beginner bird-watcher with the freshness and passion of a convert, Waiting for the Albino Dunnock explores the world of birds through the seasons of a single year. It describes encounters with particular birds in the landscapes of East Anglia, where the author is rooted. Occasional journeys farther afield take the listener to truly wild places in the Outer Hebrides and Eastern Europe. Yet the ordinary experience of bird-watching is also far more than just that.

This download showcases some of the most exquisite sounds that can be heard in the natural world, from the rich, melodious songs of the Blackbird, Pied Butcherbird and Nightingale that are full of complexity, ingenuity and perfectly arranged phrases, to the breathtaking compositions of the Skylark, Albert's Lyrebird and White-rumped Shama, and the rhythmical variations on a theme from the Chiming Wedgebill and White-browed Robin-chat.

Emperor penguins have the most extraordinary lifecycle. They march up to 100 miles over solid ice to reach their breeding grounds. They choose to breed in the depths of the worst winter on the planet; and in an unusual role reversal, the males incubate the eggs, fasting for over 100 days to ensure they introduce their chicks safely into their new frozen world. My Penguin Year recounts author Lindsay McCrae's adventure to the end of the Earth, spending a year living alongside the most resilient creatures in nature.

Len lived her life alongside her bird neighbours, with some sleeping in her bedroom and many flitting in and out all day long. This is the book she wrote about the birds – a study not just of their behaviour but their individual personalities. We learn about their intelligence, emotional lives, and characters, their capacity for play and humour, the range of their song, their likes and dislikes, and their bond with Len.

The story of the short life and tragic death of Bowland Beth - an English hen harrier. 'The sun was blood red as it broke the horizon and lit the communal roost where the female hen harrier had spent the night. She watched the other harriers as they left to go foraging for food out on the moor. She didn't join them, for she had felt a quickening in her body, an urge to move to Mallowdale Pike, a rocky crag from where she had fledged nine months ago. After preening, she lifted off from the roost and soared up over the fell.'

It is the Winter Solstice and Sarah Sands is sitting by her father's bedside, bracing herself for loss. What her father needs to do, she thinks, is conserve his energy - to hibernate like a hedgehog. When the hedgehog curls up in its bed of leaves, its heart rate slows, its body temperature drops and for months there it remains, hardly breathing at all. A few days earlier, Sarah and her grandson had found a poorly hedgehog in the garden and taken it to the local hedgehog sanctuary. They named her Peggy, and her fate had become a matter of pressing concern.

Sumptuous, beautiful and packed with refreshingly down-to-earth advice, Arthur Parkinson's book focuses on dramatic but easy-to-grow floral plants that will turn your garden into a perfumed, sustainable paradise, teeming with wildlife and alive with the sound of songbirds. Arranged seasonally, it includes sowing tips and propagating hints, plus advice on planning and keeping track of what is happening in your garden. As well as dramatic floral annuals, Arthur's container suggestions include herbs, figs and scented pelagoniums, as well as permanent planting ideas for cover and winter structure.

For many of us, the buzzing of a bee elicits panic. But the next time you hear that low droning sound, look closer: the bee has navigated to this particular spot for a reason using a fascinating set of tools. What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees invites us to follow bees' mysterious paths and experience their alien world.

Farm animals are familiar to us from childhood but little did we know that their inner lives are full of complexity, deep bonds and family dramas. Rosamund Young has been an organic farmer for over 40 years and this is her record of a life at the beck and call of the animals while observing and preserving the abundant wildlife at Kite's Nest Farm. It is a story of joy, discovery, co-operation and sometimes heartbreak.

This “accessible and always entertaining” (Booklist) combination of history, pop science, and in-depth reporting offers a fascinating account of the asteroids that hit Earth long ago and those streaming toward us now, as well as how prepared we are against asteroid-caused catastrophe.

As recently as 11,000 years ago - "near time" to geologists - mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, ground sloths, giant armadillos, native camels and horses, the dire wolf, and many other large mammals roamed North America. In what has become one of science's greatest riddles, these large animals vanished in North and South America around the time humans arrived at the end of the last great ice age.

The wolf is so often depicted as the male predator, preying on the vulnerable girl/woman who strays from the path; the she-wolf meanwhile depicts women who sit outside the accepted boundaries of feminine behaviour. Berry openly recounts her own uncomfortable and sometimes frightening experiences as a woman to try to understand how we navigate our fears when threat can seem constant.

With a shrinking wilderness and global warming, the future of the wolverine is uncertain. The Wolverine Way reveals the natural history of this species and the forces that threaten its future, engagingly told by Douglas Chadwick, who volunteered with the Glacier Wolverine Project. This five-year study in Glacier National Park—which involved dealing with blizzards, grizzlies, sheer mountain walls, and other daily challenges to survival—uncovered key missing information about the wolverine's habitat, social structure, and reproduction habits.

Whales are among the largest, most intelligent, deepest diving species to have ever lived on our planet. We have hunted them for thousands of years and scratched their icons into our mythologies. They simultaneously fill us with waves of terror, awe and affection - yet we know hardly anything about them. Whales tend to enter our awareness only when they die, struck by a ship or stranded in the surf. They evolved from land-roaming, doglike creatures into animals that move like fish and breathe like us and can grow to 300,000 pounds, live 200 years and roam entire ocean basins. Yet despite centuries of observing whales, we know little about their evolutionary past.

Written from the perspective of Bodacious the cat, this is a beautifully written memoir of Bodacious’s life on the farm and everything that entails - early mornings, frosty starts, beautiful sunrises, adventurous rare-breed Zwartbles sheep, hard work, entertaining animals, mouthwatering food, kind people and idyllic country living with its highs and lows.

Meet the intelligent insects, marvelous minibeasts, and inspirational invertebrates that help shape our planet - and discover how you can help them help us by rebugging your attitude today! Remember when there were bugs on your windshield? Ever wonder where they went? We need to act now if we are to help the insects survive. Robin Wall Kimmerer, David Attenborough, and Elizabeth Kolbert are but a few voices championing the rewilding of our world. Rebugging the Planet shows us small changes we can make to have a big impact on our littlest allies.

House cats rule back alleys, deserted Antarctic islands, and our bedrooms. Clearly they own the Internet, where a viral cat video can easily be viewed upward of 10 million times. But how did cats accomplish global domination? Unlike dogs, they offer humans no practical benefit. The truth is they are sadly incompetent rat catchers and pose a threat to many ecosystems. Yet we love them still.