The better to eat you with : fear in the animal world / Joel Berger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berger, Joel.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fear in animals.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (358 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

At dawn on a brutally cold January morning, Joel Berger crouched in the icy grandeur of the Teton Range. It had been three years since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone after a sixty-year absence, and members of a wolf pack were approaching a herd of elk. To Berger's utter shock, the elk ignored the wolves as they went in for the kill. The brutal attack that followed-swift and bloody-led Berger to hypothesize that after only six decades, the elk had forgotten to fear a species that had survived by eating them for hundreds of millennia. Berger's fieldwork that frigid day raised important questions that would require years of travel and research to answer: Can naive animals avoid extinction when they encounter reintroduced carnivores? To what extent is fear culturally transmitted? And how can a better understanding of current predator-prey behavior help demystify past extinctions and inform future conservation? The Better to Eat You With is the chronicle of Berger's search for answers. From Yellowstone's elk and wolves to rhinos living with African lions and moose coexisting with tigers and bears in Asia, Berger tracks cultures of fear in animals across continents and climates, engaging readers with a stimulating combination of natural history, personal experience, and conservation. Whether battling bureaucracy in the statehouse or fighting subzero wind chills in the field, Berger puts himself in the middle of the action. The Better to Eat You With invites readers to join him there. The thrilling tales he tells reveal a great deal not only about survival in the animal kingdom but also the process of doing science in foreboding conditions and hostile environments.

Contents:

The wolf is at the door - who's afraid?

The shy giant of the forest

A tropical primate in Alaska

Emissaries of a dying epoch

Subarctic shadows

To know thy enemy

Among the naive

A tiger east of the sun

A continent of virgins and recent ghosts

On being caribou and musk ox

Islands of ice and innocence

Changing the rules of engagement

Nomads of the Gobi

The silent cats of Patagonia

A cedibility conundrum

Different sides of the Darwinian divide

Of fear and culture.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 287-292) and index.

ISBN:

9786612426131

9781282426139

1282426133

9780226043647

0226043649

OCLC:

527657972