Comments on: please translate: bow wow. Meow. Buzz buzz.

Question: please translate: bow wow. Meow. Buzz buzz.

grumblebee — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:02:45 -0800

Recommend non-fiction books about animals -- books that will blow my mind.

I've read Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:07:44 -0800

When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals

By: grumblebee

grumblebee — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:11:39 -0800

Just in case you don't think of them as "animals," I'm also really interest in insects and marine life. But I'm up for a great read about any kind of animal.

By: jpziller

jpziller — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:13:47 -0800

I *really* love "Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine. They travelled the world visiting endangered species, and it's all written in Adams' (hilarious) style.

By: sulaine

sulaine — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:16:39 -0800

I read The Year of the Whale a long time ago, but remember liking it very much.

By: typewriter

typewriter — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:24:01 -0800

Nthing When Elephants Weep.

By: hydrophonic

hydrophonic — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:24:45 -0800

E.O. Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ants, or the more accessible, less expensive version Journey to the Ants.

By: Dr. Wu

Dr. Wu — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:27:15 -0800

I recommend - with some reservations - Howard C. Hughes's (!!) book Sensory Exotica, which is all about the sensory apparati that various animals have evolved as survival strategies. The reservations are for the truly weird, semi-scholarly, semi-casual way in which it's written, but there's enough mind-blowing detail in there to interest you, I'd bet.

Also highly recommending Edward O. Wilson's and Bert Hölldobler's Journey to the Ants, which is the layman's version (not dumbed down; just accessible) of their magnum opus The Ants, which is packed with technical info that, so far, has kept it beyond my ken.

I also just finished David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo, which I loved.

By: Dr. Wu

Dr. Wu — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:27:35 -0800

On preview: a-yup.

By: subajestad

subajestad — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:34:21 -0800

I really enjoyed James Herriot's tales about being a veterinarian in rural England during the first half of the 20th century.

By: rabbitrabbit

rabbitrabbit — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:41:09 -0800

Stories Rabbits Tell

By: BundleOfHers

BundleOfHers — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:52:34 -0800

I loved A Primate's Memoir.

By: salvia

salvia — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:55:33 -0800

Previous question about books about people and animals.

In the Company of Crows and Ravens is supposed to be good. (Haven't read it myself.)

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:01:06 -0800

Bernd Heinrich's books are very good. I've read The Geese of Beaver Bog, and Racing with the Antelope.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:07:26 -0800

Not so much a scientific tract about animals per se, more of a memoir of a childhood obsessed with studying them, but My Family And Other Animals, by naturalist Gerald Durrell, is one of my all time favorite books. He dissects the behaviour of his hilariously eccentric and famous literary family with the same verve as his spiders and sea anemones and whatnot.

By: woodblock100

woodblock100 — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:09:41 -0800

One Day at Teton Marsh by Sally Carrighar. Don't miss this - it's a natural history version of Rashomon ... one day's events replayed a number of times, from the viewpoint of each of the animals involved. Published in 1947, but still immensely readable today.

By: The Michael The

The Michael The — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:12:07 -0800

Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence.

By: laumry

laumry — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:26:40 -0800

Hi there. I own The New Encyclopedia Of Mammals (ed. David Macdonald), and I highly recommend it. It is about 1000 pages long and covers a lot of mammalian life with in-depth articles and extremely vivid photography. (For example, it's got a mind-blowing sequence depicting the birth of a baby dolphin.)

Only problem - I think this is an old edition. Perhaps this book, edited by (I think) the same guy, is the closest easily available equivalent.

(Great question!)

By: not that girl

not that girl — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:28:37 -0800

The Michael The's recommendation made me think about Peacemaking Among Primates. I would have called it very interesting but not mind-blowing when I read it a few years ago, but some of what I've learned has really stayed with me.

By: giraffe

giraffe — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:43:50 -0800

Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan ... And the World by Courtney Humphries.

By: rtimmel

rtimmel — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:44:15 -0800

And even more ants -- The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies is superb.

By: TheOtherGuy

TheOtherGuy — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:07:05 -0800

Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond

It is ostensibly a book about humans, but how we behave as animals. There are plenty of discussions about animal behaviours and how we really aren't that different.

By: Joe13

Joe13 — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:26:35 -0800

In The Shadow of a Rainbow -- Leslie. Beautiful, strange, amazing, true.

By: The corpse in the library

The corpse in the library — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:32:43 -0800

Bernd Heinrich's Winter World.

By: jamjam

jamjam — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:44:52 -0800

I think one of the very best books on animals published in the last fifty years is an art history: Animals and Men by Kenneth Clark.

Clark's series of extremely brief essays on relatively famous and familiar works of art depicting animals transformed the way I see them--and us.

By: dawson

dawson — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:17:04 -0800

The Book of Animal Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong. Also
there is another recent book with, I believe, "Fish" and "masturbation" in the title, but I can't locate it.
The Hidden Life Of Dogs by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas is a classic.
Because the Cat Purrs: How We Relate to Other Species and Why It Matters by Janet Lembke.

By: illenion

illenion — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:18:31 -0800

Frans De Waal's "Our Inner Ape" is about the great apes and how we fit in among them, and how we ARE them. The descriptions of similarities between "us" and "them" are amazing - I especially recall the sections on chimpanzee politics and war.

By: The otter lady

The otter lady — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:28:11 -0800

Becoming a Tiger is excellent

By: amtho

amtho — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:34:19 -0800

I'm not sure what you're looking for, but I have two insect-focused books to recommend:

The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre (or anything by him) - he's a 19th-century French entomologist, and this is a kind of highlights-in-translation book that I found by sitting on the floor of the now-gone Oxford Books in Atlanta for about 2.5 hours. During my praying mantis phase. The praying mantis section is OK, but the dung beetle, ant, and wasp writings are classic. This guy is so very into what he's doing that you can get utterly lost in his prose, even in translation. He was the kind of scientist who would spend hours crouched on the ground with a magnifying glass, watching a massive ant war, and then write about it in gripping detail. There's a reason people still care about his work.

The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies - this was published this year, and my experience reading Fabre drew me to it. It looks amazing. I glanced through it at the local library and may get it when I have more time. It's substantial, though, while the Fabre book above is more manageable in size. The author of this book mainly works with ants, though he covers some other insects (bees in particular).

And a non-insect book, in case you don't mind a little emotion:

Sandy: The Sandhill Crane Who Joined Our Family - A short book, very nice, by a guy who ended up rescuing a crane egg and raising the chick. Somehow more cranes ended up in the story, and it really was a wonderful book. I'm afraid I don't remember it that clearly -- it's been many years since I read it -- but I remember being really moved by it.

By: scottatdrake

scottatdrake — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:09:55 -0800

Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process - A really amazing story. This bird had a vocabulary of over 100 words, could count, recognize shapes & colors, string together rudimentary sentences, and even tell little white lies to get what he wanted.

By: cosmicbandito

cosmicbandito — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:25:59 -0800

Wild Animals I have Known is what you want. It's something of a classic in the genre, and explores the lives of crows, foxes, wolves, rabbits, partridge and others.

By: matildaben

matildaben — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:36:33 -0800

Monster of God by David Quammen. Science writer with a wonderful writing style takes on the idea of the man-eating predator across history and what predators mean in the human imagination.

By: caution live frogs

caution live frogs — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:37:30 -0800

The Geese of Beaver Bog was a fun read. Picked it up on the clearance rack at a local big-box store a while back, thoroughly enjoyed it. Equal parts personal story and ecology / animal behavior. Author is a University of Vermont bio professor, so he knows what he's talking about. Has also written a bunch of other behavior books (bees, ravens, owls) that might fit your request.

By: ifjuly

ifjuly — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:04:59 -0800

There's a new book on ant and bee colonies as superorganisms; it got reviewed in NYRB recently. Sounds great.

By: ifjuly

ifjuly — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:07:32 -0800

Here's that review, and one more.

By: shothotbot

shothotbot — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:22:42 -0800

I recommend - with some reservations - Howard C. Hughes's (!!) book Sensory Exotica, which is all about the sensory apparati that various animals have evolved as survival strategies. The reservations are for the truly weird, semi-scholarly, semi-casual way in which it's written, but there's enough mind-blowing detail in there to interest you, I'd bet.

Dr Wu

Let me say, Dr Wu is right on here. This should be a great book but it is just a lot of good information in an annoying wrapper. Grrr.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:42:08 -0800

Temple Grandin's books (herd animals and autistics).

(By anything, below, I mean "any popular, that is, for lay readers, work".)

Your Inner Fish (though it's more comparative anatomy than animal behavior).

Anything by Frans de Waal (chimp politics).

Anything by EO Wilson (ants, sociobiology).

The Ancestor's Tale by Dawkins.

Life Richard Fortey.

Any popular work by Niko Tinbergen is absolutely charming.

Zimmer's Parasite Rex

I've read all of these, so I'm personally vouching for them.

By: Drasher

Drasher — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:31:25 -0800

Merle's Door

period

you will cry

By: biscotti

biscotti — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:22:24 -0800

The Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson. Completely changed the way I thought about dogs.

By: fieldtrip

fieldtrip — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:42:17 -0800

As mentioned above, anything by David Quammen. He is absolutely great.

By: monopas

monopas — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:18:34 -0800

One I enjoyed:

Kicked Bitten and Scratched by Amy Sutherland. She also wrote one about Shamu.

Also, I am an Equine Facilitator (horse handler) for a mental heath therapy group so I am a little biased, but:

Soul of a Horse by Joe Camp (guy who wrote Benji)

Chosen by a Horse by Susan Richards

A Year at the Races by Jane Smiley

And for a bit more out -there:
Kinship With All Life by J Allen Boone

By: PercussivePaul

PercussivePaul — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:15:52 -0800

There is a book called Beautiful Swimmers which talks about the Chesapeake blue crab and the people who make (or made, likely) their living from it. It won a Pulitzer for non-fiction.

By: jamjam

jamjam — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:18:29 -0800

Can't believe I forgot about this book before, but: Ring of Bright Water.

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 03:55:02 -0800

Konrad Lorenz's "King Solomon's Ring" was written back in 1949 by one of the first people to consider animal behaviour in a scientific way. Lorenz was also a compelling writer.

In terms of fiction I like Laurence Van der Post's "A Story Like the Wind" about a 13 year old boy and his dog in Africa.