Animal Science

Three young bears from different species - black, polar, and grizzly - are separated from their families when they are just young cubs. They find themselves brought together on a perilous journey. Fate is about to change all these bears lives forever.

In Higher Animals, New Yorker science writer Michael Specter explores how MRNA vaccines have transformed the scientific landscape and helped spark a biotechnology revolution. Biology is information, and increasingly, that means digital information. We need to think of biology the way we think about computer code, only instead of bits and bytes, we use the genetic letters: ACGT. The widely-used mRNA COVID vaccines offer the most immediate example of this groundbreaking moment in medical and scientific history.

Yellowkit can't wait to fight for her Clan. But when she earns her warrior name, Yellowfang, she realizes that her true destiny is to become a healer. As a loyal medicine cat, Yellowfang has proven her dedication to ShadowClan—but her dreams are haunted by a dark prophecy that threatens to destroy the Warrior clans forever.

The young cats who set off on a quest many moons ago have returned with a chilling message: The Clans must move to a new home or risk extermination. But the dangers waiting for them beyond their borders are impossible to predict, and the cats have no idea where to go. What they need is a sign from StarClan....

This audiobook introduces the different types of coats and coverings that animals have.

Discover the amazing ways animals adapt to the most extreme regions on Earth. Fiery temps and little rain make the desert a difficult place to survive. But several animals from fennec foxes to kangaroo rats have adapted to these harsh conditions. Find out how their unique behaviors and body parts allow them to call this biome home.

Snowy owls make their homes in the icy white lands of the north. In these snowy places, they are perfectly camouflaged. Learn more about this giant owl!

Big, stately great horned owls with their hooting call and big orange eyes are the owls of scary stories. Learn more about these tufted hunters.

In all animals, mating is a deal. But few creatures behave as if sex is a simple, even mutually beneficial, transaction. Many more treat it with reverence, suspicion, angst, and violence. In the case of the Black Grouse, the bird at the center of Matt Ridley’s investigation, the males dance and sing for hours a day, for several exhausting months, in an arduous and even deadly ritual called a “lek.” To prepare for the ordeal, they grow, preen and display fancy, twisted, bold-colored feathers. When achieved, consummation with a female takes seconds.

With three of the goddess Durga's quests behind them, only one prophecy now stands in the way of Kelsey, Ren, and Kishan breaking the tiger's curse. But the trio's greatest challenge awaits them: A life-endangering pursuit in search of Durga's final gift, the Rope of Fire, on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. It's a race against time - and the evil sorcerer Lokesh - in this eagerly anticipated fourth volume in the best-selling Tiger's Curse series.

When we see a bird flying from branch to branch happily chirping, it is easy to imagine they lead a simple life of freedom, flight, and feathers. What we don't see is the arduous, life-threatening challenges they face at every moment. Beaks, Bones and Bird Songs guides the listener through the myriad, and often almost miraculous, things that birds do every day to merely stay alive. Like the goldfinch, which manages extreme weather changes by doubling the density of its plumage in winter.

Animal scientists have long considered domestic livestock to be too dumb to know how to eat right, but the lifetime research of animal behaviorist Fred Provenza and his colleagues has debunked this myth. Their work shows that when given a choice of natural foods, livestock have an astoundingly refined palate, nibbling through the day on as many as fifty kinds of grasses, forbs, and shrubs to meet their nutritional needs with remarkable precision.

In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman - chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field - gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning this paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease.

In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?

It all starts with a school essay. Twelve-year-old Gratuity “Tip” Tucci is assigned to write five pages on “The True Meaning of Smekday” for the National Time Capsule contest, and she’s not sure where to begin: When her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck? Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended to Earth, and aliens - called the Boov - abducted her mother?

Why do birds have regional accents? Can horses learn maths? What do animals without eyes see? Questions such as these have fascinated scientists and animal lovers alike long before ethology – the study of animal behaviour – became recognised as a science in the 1970s. Now, as issues of conservation and welfare dominate the field, an understanding of how and why animals act the way they do has become even more critical. In Animal Behaviour, John A. Byers explains the mechanisms and motivations behind a range of animal movements.

In Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. Add to the mix a new wolf named Cole, and Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves.

For centuries, the dietary needs of dogs were a secondary consideration. Our loyal companions, domesticated from wolves, lived on scraps from human meals, whatever was available and convenient at the time. In rural communities, a dog’s diet might have included leftovers, bones, and whatever they could scavenge. There was little thought given to balancing nutrients, matching caloric needs to activity levels, or preventing diet-related diseases. The invention of commercial dog food in the mid-19th century marked a pivotal shift.

ShadowClan has fallen. A group of rogues now rules the pine forest, and their cruel leader, Darktail, will not stop until he has conquered the rest of the Clans. Alderheart is more certain than ever that their only hope is to find the lost SkyClan and fulfill StarClan’s prophecy—before Darktail’s vicious reign puts an end to the warrior Clans forever.

Thanks to Firestar’s aid, the newly reunited SkyClan is thriving. Their leader, Leafstar, is desperate to believe that they will survive where the ancient SkyClan cats failed. But as threats continue to plague the Clan and dissent grows from within, Leafstar must face the one question she dreads most: Is SkyClan meant to survive?