The Unexpected Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos And Other Wild Tales

Description

Shortlisted for the 2018 Royal Society Investment Science Book Prize Endlessly fascinating. - Bill Bryson Eye-opening, informative and very funny! - Chris Packham Well-informed and downright funny - Richard Dawkins History is full of strange animal stories invented by the brightest and most influential, from Aristotle to Disney. But when it comes to understanding animals, we’ve got a long way to go. Whether we’re watching a viral video of romping baby pandas or looking at a picture of penguins ‘holding hands’, we often project our own values – innocence, abstinence, hard work – onto animals. So you’ve probably never considered that moose get drunk and that penguins are notorious cheats. In The Unexpected Truth About Animals Zoologist Lucy unravels many such myths – that eels are born from sand, that swallows hibernate under water, and that bears gave birth to formless lumps that are licked into shape by their mothers – to show that the stories we create reveal as much about us as they do about the animals. Astonishing, illuminating and laugh-out-loud funny.

About the Author

Lucy Cooke has a Master s in Zoology from the University of Oxford, where she was tutored by Richard Dawkins. 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 seventeen languages. She has also written for The Sunday Times, Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Lucy is also an award-winning broadcaster and documentary filmmaker. Initially working behind the scenes in television comedy, she is now a regular on Radio 4 and has presented prime-time series for BBC, ITV and National Geographic.