In Greenland, where Inuit haul harpoons on their dogsleds to hunt seals, Kerasote finds remnants of one of the planet's last hunter-gatherer peoples; they stalk their prey for subsistence, much as their ancestors did, despite their new love affair with VCRs. Then, in Siberia, newly opened to Western sportsmen, Kerasote accompanies trophy seekers, wealthy sportsmen intent on bagging record-sized snow sheep while engaged in questionable hunting practices. Finally, Kerasote recounts his own relationship with elks he shoots in Wyoming, the painful but albeit spiritual transaction that occurs when we consciously acknowledge the lives we take to feed us. These ethical paradoxes and moral dilemmas make Bloodties a critical book for anyone grappling with the humans' role on Earth. Part outdoors journal, part anthropology, Bloodties is a beautifully written, evocative work of contemporary ecology.

    They are also astonishingly diverse in their shapes, patterns, textures, and colors—in nature’s fashion show, they are the haute couture of marine life.This collection of more than 250 remarkable images is the result of seven years of painstaking fieldwork across the Pacific Ocean, using photographic techniques that Middleton developed to capture these extremely fragile creatures on camera. She also provides short essays that examine the place these invertebrates occupy on the tree of life, their vast array of forms, and their lives in the ocean. Scientist Bernadette Holthuis contributes profiles describing each species, many of them for the first time. Middleton’s book is a stunning new view of nature that harmoniously combines art and science.

    As in her bestseller Red-Tails in Love, Winn explores a once-hidden world in a series of interlocking narratives about the extraordinary denizens, human and animal, of an iconic American park.

    He was one of the first scientists to free-dive among sharks, and he has spent nearly thirty years studying shark behavior, sometimes swimming in schools of several hundred sharks. From his firsthand observations he has learned that sharks are not the vicious man-eaters that we imagine, but fascinating animals with complex behaviors. Most people who think of sharks at all think immediately of great white sharks. But there are more than four hundred species of shark. Dr. Klimley has studied several species, most notably the great white and the hammerhead. (He describes the great white as the athlete among sharks, and the hammerhead as the Ph.D. of the shark world.) In "The Secret Life of Sharks" Dr. Klimley reveals the significant discoveries he made about hammerhead navigation and great white eating habits. By studying hammerheads gathered around underwater seamounts, Dr. Klimley learned that hammerheads rely on sophisticated tracking of ocean-floor magnetism to navigate. His long-term study of great white sharks off the California coast demonstrated that these huge sharks prefer to eat seals and sea lions because of the energy contained in their fatty bodies. They are selective eaters, not the man-eaters we expect, and they sometimes go weeks between meals. But Dr. Klimley did observe a ritualized behavior that great whites practice in order to avoid deadly disputes over prey that one shark has captured and another wants.Although we have learned a great deal about shark behavior, says Dr. Klimley, there is much that we do not know. Unfortunately we are destroying these magnificent creatures of the deep throughoverfishing and degradation of the oceans. Already some populations of sharks have declined steeply.Vividly written by one of the foremost authorities on sharks, "The Secret Life of Sharks" is a fascinating account of some of the world's most magnificent animals.

    Unlikely Friendships tells one story after another of animals who, with nothing else in common, bond in the most unexpected ways and thrive on the warmth, closeness, and trust that come with being true friends.Imagine a predator cuddling its prey. Or a bird befriending a mammal. Or a fish poking its nose out of the water to nuzzle a dog. Or a massive gorilla - the one named Koko, famous for her ability to communicate in sign language - embracing a tiny kitten.Science writer Jennifer S. Holland narrates each story, and also offers insights into these relationships. Sometimes there are plausible scientific explanations: an orphan seeking comfort from an older animal; an adult yearning for a younger creature to nurture. Consider the lioness who befriended and protected a baby oryx - unexpected, but not inexplicable. Sometimes a friendship is about need, as in the case of the blind Lab and her "seeing-eye" cat. B ut sometimes it's just a lovely mystery. How else can one explain the story of Owen the hippo and Mzee the tortoise, two notoriously surly creatures who became bosom buddies?Each story reveals the true power of friendship and, to some degree, the many forms of "love" that seem to exist in the animal kingdom. Yes, scientists might scoff at that notion, but readers may feel a little differently about the world after they finish this book.

    When Lily the alpaca falls pregnant, they are in for an anxious few months as they battle against the odds to keep themselves afloat. 'In Seriously Mum, How Many Cats?' there is concern that the cats are going to take over the farm. There are cats in the barn, cats in the garden and even a cat invasion in the bedroom one night. Exploding tyres, flamenco dancing, religious parades and, of course, all your favourite animals return once again to entertain you in the latest story about these much-loved expats.

    The species that survive will be the ones that are most compatible with us: the weedy species--from mosquitoes to coyotes--that thrive in continually disturbed human-dominated environments. The End of the Wild is a wake-up call. Marshaling evidence from the last ten years of research on the environment, Stephen Meyer argues that nothing--not national or international laws, global bioreserves, local sustainability schemes, or wildlands--will change the course that has been set. Like it or not, we can no longer talk about conserving nature, only managing what is left. The race to save biodiversity is over.But that doesn't mean our work is over. The End of the Wild is also a call to action. Without intervention, the surviving ecosystems we depend on for a range of services--including water purification and flood and storm damage contro--could fail and the global spread of invasive species (pests, parasites, and disease-causing weedy species) could explode. If humanity is to survive, Meyer argues, we have no choice but to try to manage the fine details. We must move away from the current haphazard strategy of protecting species in isolation and create trans-regional meta-reserves, designed to protect ecosystem functions rather than species-specific habitats.

    They are particularly known for their evocative calls which embody wild places; they provoke a range of emotions that many have expressed in poetry, art and music.There is a wildlife spectacle that can transport the soul to a place of yearning and beauty, to an experience that has inspired generations of thinkers and dreamers. Imagine if you will, a blustery, cold day in December. Bitterly cold. A bird stands alone on the edge of a mudflat, some distance from where you are standing. Its silhouette is unmistakable. A plump body sits atop long, stilty legs. The long neck arcs into a small head, which tapers further into a long curved bill. The smooth, convex outlines of this curlew are alluring. They touch some ancestral liking we all have for shapes that are round and smooth. The curved curlew’s outline is anomalous in this planar, uniform landscape, but its colour blends well. The mud is gunmetal grey, the curlew brown and the water murky. The sky is dull with a hint of drab. The air is infused with the smells of decay.Over the last thirty years curlew numbers have fallen by an alarming 20 per cent across the European continent, and in their most western reaches in the Irish Republic there is nothing short of a disaster unfolding. In the 1980s there were around 5,000 pairs of nesting curlews, today there are fewer than 130, a staggering drop of 99 per cent. So alarming are the figures that curlews were made a species of highest conservation concern in the UK in December 2015, and put onto the red list of threatened species by the IUCN, the worldwide union of conservation bodies which monitors the status of animals and plants throughout the globe. They are now in the same category as jaguars, ‘near threatened,’ which means extinction is likely in the future.This transition of curlews to high conservation status made it clear they were slipping away for problems that could be addressed with the public and political will to solve them. It was then that the idea of a 500-mile journey by foot began to crystallise in Mary Colwell’s mind and became a concrete plan. Colwell decided to take time out to walk from the West coast of Ireland through Wales to the East coast of England to raise awareness about its plight, and to raise funds to protect this beautiful bird and its habitat.Colwell started walking in the early spring when birds were first arriving on their breeding grounds in the west of Ireland, walking through to Wales when they incubated their eggs. She then travelled through England to coincide with the time when the chicks were hatching. Six weeks after setting out she arrived in East Anglia as the fledglings were beginning to try out their wings. By finishing on the east coast, she marked the place where many curlews would come to spend the winter.Colwell chronicles her impressive journey in this beautifully illustrated book, weaving a wonderfully told story of the experiences on her walk, interspersed with the natural history of this most impressive of birds that has fascinated us for millennia.

    Brenda Peterson, one of our best nature writers, brings the full complement of science, history, and memoir to the great battle being played out nationwide to save wild wolves.

    The film showed Richardson in his day-to-day work, looking some of the world's most dangerous animals directly in the eye, crouching down at their level, playing with them and, sometimes, even kissing them on the nose - all without ever being attacked, or injured. The film's popularity skyrocketed, and Richardson became an international sensation. In Part of the Pride Kevin Richardson tells the story of his life and work, how he grew from a young boy who cared for so many animals that he was called 'The Bird Man of Orange Grove', to an adolescent who ran wild and, finally, to a man who is able to cross the divide between humans and predators.As a self-taught animal behaviorist, Richardson has broken every safety rule known to humans when working with these wild animals. Flouting common misconceptions that breaking an animal's spirit with sticks and chains is the best way to subdue them, he uses love, understanding and trust to develop personal bonds with them. His unique method of getting to know their individual personalities, what makes each of them angry, happy, upset, or irritated - just like a mother understands a child - has caused them to accept him like one of their own into their fold.Like anyone else who truly loves animals, Richardson allows their own stories to share center stage as he tells readers about Napoleon and Tau, the two male lions he calls his 'brothers'; the amazing Meg, a lioness Richardson taught to swim; the fierce Tsavo who savagely attacked him; and the heartbreaking little hyena called Homer who didn't live to see his first birthday.Richardson also chronicles his work on the feature film The White Lion, and has a lot to say about the state of lion farming and hunting in South Africa today. In Part of the Pride Richardson, with novelist Tony Park, delves into the mind of the big cats and their world to show readers a different way of understanding the dangerous big cats of Africa.

    Based on six years of research, the book follows a handful of unforgettable characters at Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo: an alpha chimp with a weakness for blondes, a ferocious tiger who revels in Obsession perfume, and a brilliant but tyrannical CEO known as El Diablo Blanco.Zoo Story crackles with issues of global urgency: the shadow of extinction, humanity's role in the destruction or survival of other species. More than anything else, though, it's a dramatic and moving true story of seduction and betrayal, exile and loss, and the limits of freedom on an overcrowded planet-all framed inside one zoo reinventing itself for the twenty-first century. Thomas French, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, chronicles the action with vivid power: Wild elephants soaring above the Atlantic on their way to captivity. Predators circling each other in a lethal mating dance. Primates plotting the overthrow of their king. The sweeping narrative takes the reader from the African savannah to the forests of Panama and deep into the inner workings of a place some describe as a sanctuary and others condemn as a prison. All of it comes to life in the book's four-legged characters. Even animal lovers will be startled by the emotional charge of these creatures' histories, which read as though they were co-written by Dickens and Darwin.Zoo Story shows us how these remarkable individuals live, how some die, and what their experiences reveal about the human desire to both exalt and control nature.

    Not since Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals has a book so thoroughly and effectively explored the full range of emotions that exist throughout the animal kingdom.From dancing squirrels to bashful gorillas to spiteful killer whales, Masson and coauthor Susan McCarthy bring forth fascinating anecdotes and illuminating insights that offer powerful proof of the existence of animal emotion. Chapters on love, joy, anger, fear, shame, compassion, and loneliness are framed by a provocative re-evaluation of how we treat animals, from hunting and eating them to scientific experimentation. Forming a complete and compelling picture of the inner lives of animals, When Elephants Weep assures that we will never look at animals in the same way again.

    Based on the popular Instagram account of the same name, Goats of Anarchy takes you on a tour of animal rescue guru and full-time goat mama Leanne Lauricella's goat rescue farm. This is a place where special-needs goats can heal, grow, and butt heads to their hearts’ content. Join Pocket, Ella, Chibs, Lyla, Prospect and Polly--the goat who took the Internet by storm with her adorable duck costume--as they rumble, snuggle, pig out, dress up, and even teach you a few goat yoga moves to loosen your haunches. You will love the beautiful, full color photographs throughout this bio filled book. Whether they’re learning to walk or just romping around the farm, these horned and hooved heartbreakers will have you grinning ear to ear as they chew the scenery—literally!

    He’s been bitten by twenty-six venomous snakes, been stung by three stingrays, and survived a near-fatal scorpion sting while deep in the Amazon jungle. He’s received more than four hundred stitches and broken twenty-three bones, including breaking his back in three places, and had to learn how to walk again. But when you research only the venom you yourself have collected, the adventures—and danger—never stop.Imagine a three-week-long first date in Siberia catching venomous water shrews with the daughter of a Russian war hero; a wedding attended by Eastern European prime ministers and their machine-gun-wielding bodyguards and snakes; or leading a team to Antarctica that results in the discovery of four new species of venomous octopi. Bryan’s discoveries have radically reshaped views on venom evolution and contributed to the creation of venom-based life-saving medications. In pursuit of venom, he has traveled the world collecting samples from Indonesia to Mexico, Germany, and Brazil. He’s encountered venomous creatures of all kinds, including the Malaysian king cobra, the Komodo dragon, and the brush-footed trapdoor spider. Bryan recounts his lifelong passion for studying the world’s most venomous creatures in this outlandish, captivating memoir, where he and danger are never far apart.

    This new edition specifically features three new care plans, two expanded care plans, updated content and language reflecting the most current clinical practice and professional standards, enhanced QSEN integration, a new emphasis on interprofessional collaborative practice, an improved page design, and more. It's everything you need to create and customize effective nursing care plans!