Animal Science

Can octopuses feel pain and pleasure? What about crabs, shrimps, insects, or spiders? How do we tell whether a person unresponsive after severe brain injury might be suffering? When does a fetus in the womb start to have conscious experiences? Could there even be rudimentary feelings in miniature models of the human brain, grown from human stem cells? And what about AI? These are questions about the edge of sentience, and they are subject to enormous, disorienting uncertainty. We desperately want certainty, but it is out of reach.

Oxygen takes the listener on an enthralling journey, as gripping as a thriller, as it unravels the unexpected ways in which oxygen spurred the evolution of life and death.

Join Biologist Ashley Ward as he takes listeners into the intimate worlds of social animals. Journeying from Aysgarth Falls to the Great Barrier Reef, it becomes clear that animals are not so far removed from us as we might imagine. In a time where humans are struggling to navigate cityscapes, isolation and a loneliness epidemic, Ward shows us that studying the social behaviour of animals offers insights valuable in their own right as well as a window into the evolutionary basis of our own species.

From the best-selling author of the essential new 2019 book on animal agriculture and climate crisis: We are the Weather. Discover Jonathan Safran Foer's eye-opening and life-changing account of the meat we eat. Eating Animals is the most original and urgent book on the subject of food written this century. It will change the way you think and change the way you eat. For good. Whether you're flirting with veganuary, trying to cut back on animal consumption, or a lifelong meat eater, you need to listen to this book.

Animal Farm is George Orwell's great socio-political allegory set in a farmyard where the animals decide to seize the farmer's land and create a co-operative that reaps the benefits of their combined labours. However, as with all great political plans, some animals see a bigger share of the rewards than others and the animals start to question their supposed utopia.

In Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, biologist, illustrator, and award-winning author Bernd Heinrich explores his local woods, where he delights in the seemingly infinite feats of animal inventiveness he discovers there. Because winter drastically affects the most elemental component of all life---water---radical changes in a creature's physiology and behavior must take place to match the demands of the environment.

What is animal welfare? This concise and accessible guide is for anyone who is interested in animals and who has wondered how we can assess their welfare scientifically. It defines animal welfare as "health and animals having what they want", a definition that can be easily understood by scientists and non-scientists alike, expresses in simple words what underlies many existing definitions, and shows what evidence we need to collect to improve animal welfare in practice. Above all, it puts the animal's own point of view at the heart of an assessment of its welfare.

Take a funny and illuminating tour of the female body with award-winning comedian Sara Pascoe. Women have so much going on, what with boobs and jealousy and menstruating and broodiness and sex and infidelity and pubes and wombs and jobs and memories and emotions and the past and the future and themselves and each other. Here's a book that deals with all of it. Sara Pascoe has joked about femininity and sexuality on stage and screen, but now she has a book to talk about it all for a bit longer.

Thinking about raising chickens? You've come to the right place! This new edition of Raising Chickens for Dummies provides the most up-to-date, thorough information on the many aspects of keeping chickens in your backyard. You'll hear hands-on, easy-to-follow instructions on choosing and purchasing chickens, constructing housing for your birds, feeding your chickens for optimal health, combating laying issues, controlling pests and predators, optimizing egg production, and much more.

David R. Montgomery and Anne Bikle take us far beyond the well-worn adage to deliver a new truth: the roots of good health start on farms. What Your Food Ate marshals evidence from recent and forgotten science to illustrate how the health of the soil ripples through to that of crops, livestock, and ultimately us. Navigating discoveries and epiphanies about the world beneath our feet, they reveal why regenerative farming practices hold the key to healing sick soil and untapped potential for improving human health.

Podkin and his sister and baby brother, Paz and Pook, struggle to keep their ragtag clan of refugees safe from enemies who are destroying the forest in an effort to find them. When they are separated from their clan, the siblings encounter the mysterious and mystical creatures who are the heart of the forest itself. As the fate of all rabbitkind hangs in the balance, the youngsters must recruit these new allies and convince feuding clans to come together in a desperate final battle to defeat the diabolical Gorm.

Harlon has been raised to protect her younger siblings, twins Ash and Xeno, both Listeners - those who can hear what's inside animals' heads and even plant thoughts in their minds. When their home is attacked by the Automators, who aim to stamp out all Listeners, the children must flee for their lives. In a thrilling and dangerous adventure, they must journey alone across Rumyc to try to rescue each other - and fulfil the promise made to their mother that they will find the island lost in the deepest part of the ocean.

Why Animals Talk is an exhilarating journey through the untamed world of animal communication. Drawing on the author's extensive research and observations of animals in the wild, the book shatters conventional wisdom and invites you to experience communication through the eyes of animals themselves. From the majestic howls of wolves and the enchanting chatter of parrots to the melodic clicks of dolphins and the spirited grunts of chimpanzees, these diverse and seemingly bizarre expressions are far from mere noise. In fact, they hold secrets that we are just beginning to decipher.

Since the 1987 publication of Diet for a New America, beef consumption in the United States has fallen a remarkable 19 percent. While many forces are contributing to this dramatic shift in our habits, Diet for a New America is considered to be one of the most important. Diet for a New America is a startling examination of the food we currently buy and eat in the United States and the astounding moral, economic, and emotional price we pay for it.

For as long as Alex Neptune can remember, the ocean has been trying to kill him. So he's not too happy when a bunch of sea creatures drag him to the abandoned aquarium on the hill, where an imprisoned water dragon needs his help. But how can he say no to a magical creature? Recruiting his tech-genius best friend Zoe, legend-lover Anil, a sharp-shooting octopus, three acrobatic otters and a thieving seagull, Alex plots a heist to break the dragon out. And suddenly discovers the power of the ocean at his fingertips...

A tour of some of the world's most iconic and endangered species - and what we can do to save them. Climate change and habitat destruction are not the only culprits behind so many animals facing extinction. The impact of consumer demand for cheap meat is equally devastating, and it is vital that we confront this problem if we are to stand a chance of reducing its effect on the world around us. Our planet's resources are reaching a breaking point.

We are unprepared for the greatest discovery of modern science. Scientists are confident that there is alien life across the universe yet we have not moved beyond our perception of 'aliens' as Hollywood stereotypes. The time has come to abandon our fixation on alien monsters and place our expectations on solid scientific footing. Using his own expert understanding of life on earth and Darwin's theory of evolution - which applies throughout the universe - Cambridge zoologist Dr Arik Kershenbaum explains what alien life must be like.

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.

Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics - as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies.

Learn about the science and history of dinosaurs with iMindsJNR audio-learning series for younger minds. Huge and sometimes ferocious, dinosaurs ruled the earth for more than 175 million years. To us, dinosaurs might be scary-looking. But humans never had to fear dinosaurs because they died out 65 million years ago, a long time before the first people were around!Dinosaurs lived in a period called the Mesozoic era, which began about 240 million years ago.