For all the love and attention we give dogs,  much of what they do remains mysterious. Just think about different behaviors you see at a dog park: We have a good understanding of what it means when dogs wag their tails – but what about when they snif...

It may be surprising to us now, but the taxidermists who filled the museums, zoos, and aquaria of the twentieth century were also among the first to become aware of the devastating effects of careless human interaction with the natural world.   Witne...

Few animals have a worse reputation than the vulture. But is it deserved? With Vulture, Katie Fallon offers an irresistible argument to the contrary, tracing a year in the life of a typical North American turkey vulture. Turkey vultures, also known a...

Thomas Hardy notes the thrush's "full-hearted evensong of joy illimited", Gilbert White observes how swallows sweep through the air but swifts "dash round in circles" and Rachel Carson watches sanderlings at the ocean's edge, scurrying "across the be...

With more than two hundred species distributed across most of mainland Mexico, Central and South America, and islands in the Caribbean Sea, the Phyllostomidae bat family (American leaf-nosed bats) is one of the world's most diverse mammalian families...

With predictions of a human population of more than nine billion by the middle of this century and eleven billion by 2100, we stand at a crossroads in our agricultural evolution. In this clear and engaging yet scientifically rigorous book, wildlife b...

Fruit flies, silverfish, dandelions, and crabgrass are the bane of many people and the target of numerous chemical and physical eradication efforts. In this compelling reassessment of the relationship between humans and the natural world, John Hainze...

The vast transcontinental journeys made every year by millions of feathered migrants were not known to naturalists before the late nineteenth century. Even today, while cutting-edge technology such as geolocators and isotope analysis helps us map the...

The taxonomy of recent mammals has lately undergone tremendous revision, but it has been almost four decades since the last update to Timothy E. Lawlor's acclaimed identification guide the "Handbook to the Orders and Families of Living Mammals". Inte...

Between 1949 and 1955, the State Department pushed for an international fisheries policy grounded in maximum sustainable yield (MSY). The concept is based on a confidence that scientists can predict, theoretically, the largest catch that can be taken...