Few people know bears as intimately as Else Poulsen. She has raised bears, comforted bears, taught bears, learned from bears, had bears communicate their needs to her, and nursed bears back to health. This remarkable book reveals the many insights about bears and their lives that she has gained through her work with them. In the eighties, Poulsen became a zookeeper in Calgary, where she rehabilitated bears in crisis. She has shared in the joy of a polar bear discovering soil under her paws for the first time in twenty years, felt the pride of a cub learning to crack nuts with her molars, and grieved at the horror of captivity for Asian black bears in China.Smiling Bears provides an enlightening and moving portrait of bears in all their richness and complexity and of Poulsen's exhilarating work with them. Also available in paperback.

    The many-pointed star formed from large icicles balances on a rock in a quiet Dumfriesshire valley, a delicate bamboo screen stands on a Japanese beach, a great serpentine ridge of earth extends along a disused railway cutting on Tyneside, four massive snow rings mark the position of the North Pole.

    The more we notice and listen to what our dogs are trying to tell us, the more we can improve our relationship with our best friends, helping them to feel safe and happy.

    The new edition is thoroughly updated, including most notably a new chapter on innate immunity, a capstone chapter on immune responses in time and space, and many new focus boxes drawing attention to exciting clinical, evolutionary, or experimental connections that help bring the material to life.See what's in the LaunchPad

    Now revised and updated, the "Complete Horse Riding Manual" covers dressage, show jumping, and cross-country riding, detailing everything you need to know to compete in these events, whether you are a beginner or more experienced rider."Complete Horse Riding Manual" is brimming with advice on finding the best horse for you, training a young horse, forming the ultimate horse-and-rider team, boosting and maintaining your own physical fitness and suppleness, and building the fitness and stamina of your horse.

    . . a fascinating tome.” —Huffington Post A visual trove of more than 300 dinosaurs, with key anatomy, geology, history, and theory at a glance We live in a golden age of paleontological discovery—the perfect time to dig in to the spectacular world of dinosaurs. From Aardonyx, a lumbering beast that formed a link between two- and four-legged dinosaurs, to Zuniceratops, who boasted a deadly pair of horns, Dinosaurs—The Grand Tour details everything worth knowing about more than 300 dinosaurs. The important discoveries and gory details touch on topics from geology, anatomy, and evolution to astronomy and even Native American and Chinese myth. Fascinating facts abound: Giganotosaurus was longer, two tons heavier, and had bigger jaws than T. Rex. The poison-spitting Dilophosaurus from Jurassic Park wasn’t actually venomous at all.?? Because of its bizarre single-clawed hands, scientists now believe Mononykus was a prehistoric predecessor of the anteater! Illustrations on virtually every page, true to the latest findings, bring these prehistoric creatures to life in all their razor-sharp, long-necked, spiny, scaly glory.

    All of those organisms are rooted in a single origin, with a common code that underwrites our existence. This paradox - that our biology is indistinct from all life, yet we consider ourselves to be special - lies at the heart of who we are.In this original and entertaining tour of life on Earth, Adam Rutherford explores how many of the things once considered to be exclusively human are not: we are not the only species that communicates, makes tools, utilises fire, or has sex for reasons other than to make new versions of ourselves. Evolution has, however, allowed us to develop our culture to a level of complexity that outstrips any other observed in nature.THE BOOK OF HUMANS tells the story of how we became the creatures we are today, bestowed with the unique ability to investigate what makes us who we are. Illuminated by the latest scientific discoveries, it is a thrilling compendium of what unequivocally fixes us as animals, and reveals how we are extraordinary among them.

    From the mythical beasts of ancient Greece to the hormonal vampires of the Twilight saga, monsters have captivated us for millennia. Matt Kaplan, a noted science journalist and monster-myth enthusiast, employs an entertaining mix of cutting-edge research and a love of lore to explore the history behind these fantastical fictions and our hardwired obsession with things that go bump in the night. Ranging across history, Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite tackles the enduring questions that arise on the frontier between fantasy and reality. What caused ancient Minoans to create the tale of the Minotaur and its subterranean maze? Did dragons really exist? What inspired the creation of vampires and werewolves, and why are we so drawn to them? With the eye of a journalist and the voice of a storyteller, Kaplan takes readers to the forefront of science, where our favorite figures of horror may find real-life validation. Does the legendary Kraken, a squid of epic proportions, really roam the deep? Are we close to making Jurassic Park a reality by replicating a dinosaur from fossilized DNA? As our fears evolve, so do our monsters, and Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite charts the rise of the ultimate beasts, humans themselves.