Ants are familiar to every naturalist, ecologist, entomologist, and pest control operator. The identification of the 233 species of Florida ants is technically difficult, and information on Florida ants is dispersed among hundreds of technical journal articles. This book uses detailed and beautiful scientific drawings for convenient identification. To most Florida biologists ants are currently the most inaccessible group of conspicuous and intrusive insects. This book solves the twin probl...

A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The AtlanticHailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did ...

****“Science Friday” Summer Reading Pick****Discover magazine Top 5 Summer Reads****People magazine Best Summer Reads**“A lovely, big-hearted book…brimming with compassion and the tales of the many, many humans who devote their days to making animals well” (The New York Times).**Have you ever wondered if your dog might be a bit depressed? How about heartbroken or homesick? Animal Madness takes these questions seriously, expl...

Now the subject of an Emmy Award–winning film the New York Times calls "spellbinding"How does life work? How does nature produce the right numbers of zebras and lions on the African savanna, or fish in the ocean? How do our bodies produce the right numbers of cells in our organs and bloodstream? In The Serengeti Rules, award-winning biologist and author Sean Carroll tells the stories of the pioneering scientists who sought the answers to such simp...

**“A bizarre collection of evolution tales . . . the weirder, the better.” —Entertainment WeeklyA fascinating exploration of the awe-inspiring, unsettling ingenuity of evolution from Wired writer Matt Simon, author of Plight of the Living Dead (coming soon from Penguin Books)**On a barren seafloor, the pearlfish swims into the safety of a sea cucumber’s anus. To find a meal, the female bolas spider releases pheromones that mimic a female moth, lur...

No book has changed our understanding of ourselves more than Darwin's Origin of Species. It caused a sensation on its first day of publication in 1859 and went on to become an international bestseller. The idea that living things gradually evolve through natural selection profoundly shocked its Victorian readers, calling into question what had been for many the unshakeable belief that there was a Creator.In this book, Janet Browne, Charles Darwin's foremost biographer, sho...

The Insects has been the standard textbook in the field since the first edition published over forty years ago. Building on the strengths of Chapman's original text, this long-awaited 5th edition has been revised and expanded by a team of eminent insect physiologists, bringing it fully up-to-date for the molecular era. The chapters retain the successful structure of the earlier editions, focusing on particular functional systems rather than taxonomic groups and making it easy for students ...

Kids love nature at very early ages. In fact, they develop a love for certain animals as soon as they are exposed to them. Often, it is the babies of their favorite creatures that really spark their imaginations. In this case, a nature book about baby animals can be used to engage the children in the things that they have in common with the babies and also how they differ. The kids are often engaged as soon as they see these baby animals in books.

A leading anthrozoologist and the bestselling author of Dog Sense and Cat Sense explains why we are so drawn to pets.Historically, we relied on our pets to herd livestock, guard homes, and catch pests. But most of us don't need animals to do these things anymore. Pets have never been less necessary. And yet, pet ownership has never been more common than it is today: half of American households contain a cat, a dog, or both. Why are pets still arou...

Many animals, including humans, acquire valuable skills and knowledge by copying others. Scientists refer to this as social learning. It is one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of behavioral research and sits at the interface of many academic disciplines, including biology, experimental psychology, economics, and cognitive neuroscience. Social Learning provides a comprehensive, practical guide to the research methods of this important emerging field. William Hoppitt and Ke...

Insects are the most diverse group of organisms in the 3 billion-year history of life on Earth, and the most ecologically dominant animals on land. This book chronicles for the first time the complete evolutionary history of insects: their living diversity, relationships and 400 million years of fossils. Whereas other volumes have focused on either living species or fossils, this is the first comprehensive synthesis of all aspects of insect evolution. The book is illustrated with 955 photo...

'a true gem' —London Naturalist'I love this book' —Nick BakerThe author completes the book with an identification guide to dung itself, so that you can identify the animal that left it behind. Pellets or pats? Scats, spraints, frass, guano, spoor learn your way around different species droppings. There's also a dung-feeder s identification guide that includes the species you re most likely to encounter on an exploration of the dung...