The Unexpected Truth About Animals: Brilliant natural history, starring lovesick hippos, stoned sloths, exploding bats and frogs

Description

In this menagerie of the misunderstood, zoologist Lucy Cooke explores centuries of animals myths, revealing the fascinating and often hilarious truths behind some of the strangest animal theories. History is full of strange animal stories, invented by the brightest and most influential, from Aristotle to Disney, and they reveal as much about us and the things we believe as they do about the animals they misrepresent. We once thought that eels were born from sand, that swallows migrated to the moon, and that bears gave birth to formless lumps that were licked into shape by their mothers. In The Unexpected Truth About Animals, zoologist Lucy Cooke unravels many such myths, revealing the fascinating - and often hilarious - facts she's uncovered while chasing hyenas, spying on tobogganing penguins and stalking drunken moose. You'll learn why sloths risk their lives to poo, how bats joined the Allies in the Second World War, and the mystery of the beaver's balls. And you'll discover that even the most outlandish theories may have some truth in them after all.

Lucy Cooke is an award-winning broadcaster and documentary filmmaker with a Masters in Zoology from the University of Oxford, where she was tutored by Richard Dawkins. She has presented prime time series for BBC, ITV and National Geographic and is a regular on Radio 4 where she hosts her own "Power of..." series and frequently guests on Infinite Monkey Cage and Sue Perkin's Nature Table. Lucy has written for the Sunday Times, Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. She is the author of two previous books, A Little Book of Sloth, which was a New York Times bestseller and The Unexpected Truth about Animals, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize and has been translated into 17 languages.

A bloody fabulous read. Thoroughly recommend. -- Sue Perkins (Twitter) A riot of facts....Cooke scores a series of goals with style and panache. * The Times * Beautifully written, meticulously researched, with the science often couched in outrageous asides, this is a splendid read. In fact, I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a non-fiction work so much. * Daily Express * Best science pick. Sigmund Freud's first paper involved the dissection of eels in an attempt to locate their testes. To his frustration, Freud failed to find any. The eel's life cycle remains slippery, notes natural-history broadcaster Lucy Cooke in her deeply researched, sassily written history of "the biggest misconceptions, mistakes and myths we've concocted about the animal kingdom", spread by figures from Aristotle to Walt Disney. Other chapters spotlight the sloth, vulture, hippopotamus, panda, chimpanzee and others, and dismantle anthropocentric cliches with scientific, global evidence. * Nature * Lucy Cooke's The Unexpected Truth About Animals was a joy from beginning to end. Who could resist a writer who argues that penguins have been pulling the wool over our eyes for years, and that, far from being cute and gregarious, they are actually pathologically unpleasant necrophiliacs? * Guardian *