The eye of the sandpiper : stories from the living world / Brandon Keim.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Keim, Brandon, 1976- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Natural history--Anecdotes.

Natural history.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (266 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Comstock Publishing Associates, a division of Cornell University Press, 2017.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In The Eye of the Sandpiper, Brandon Keim pairs cutting-edge science with a deep love of nature, conveying his insights in prose that is both accessible and beautiful. In an elegant, thoughtful tour of nature in the twenty-first century, Keim continues in the tradition of Lewis Thomas, Stephen Jay Gould, and David Quammen, reporting from the frontiers of science while celebrating the natural world's wonders and posing new questions about our relationship to the rest of life on Earth. The stories in The Eye of the Sandpiper are arranged in four thematic sections. Each addresses nature through a different lens. The first is evolutionary and ecological dynamics, from how patterns form on butterfly wings to the ecological importance of oft-reviled lampreys. The second section explores the inner lives of animals, which science has only recently embraced: empathy in rats, emotions in honeybees, spirituality in chimpanzees. The third section contains stories of people acting on insights both ecological and ethological: nourishing blighted rivers, but also caring for injured pigeons at a hospital for wild birds and demanding legal rights for primates. The fourth section unites ecology and ethology in discussions of ethics: how we should think about and behave toward nature, and the place of wildness in a world in which space for wilderness is shrinking. By appreciating the nonhuman world more fully, Keim writes, "I hope people will also act in ways that nourish rather than impoverish its life-which is, ultimately, the problem that needs to be solved at this Anthropocene moment, with a sixth mass extinction looming, once-common animals becoming rare, and Earth straining to support 7.5 billion people. The solution will come from a love of nature rather than chastisement or lamentation."

Contents:

Organized chaos makes the beauty of a butterfly

Chickadees, mutations and the thermodynamics of life

The photosynthetic salamander

Human evolution enters an exciting new phase

Parallel universe of life described far beneath the bottom of the sea

At the edge of invasion, possible new rules for evolution

A mud-loving, iron-lunged, jelly-eating ecosystem savior

Redeeming the lamprey

Decoding nature's soundtrack

Being a sandpiper

Monogamy helps geese reduce stress

What pigeons teach us about love

Chimps and the zen of falling water

How city living is reshaping the brains and behavior of urban animals

Reconsider the rat : the new science of a reviled rodent

Monkeys see selves in mirror, open a barrel of questions

The new anthropomorphism

Honeybees might have emotions

A day in the life of NYC's hospital for wild birds

New Yorkers in uproar over planned mass-killing of swans

An eel swims in the Bronx

On Waldman's pond

The return of the river

A chimp's day in court : inside the historic demand for nonhuman rights

Chimpanzee rights get a day in court

Medical experimentation on chimps is nearing an end. but what about monkeys?

I, cockroach

The improbable bee

The ethics of urban beekeeping

The wild, secret life of New York City

Earth is not a garden

Add a few species. Pull down the fences. Step back

Feral cats vs. conservation : a truce

Should animals have a right to privacy?

When climate change blinds us

To bring back extinct species, we'll need to change our own

September 11, fall migration and Occupy Wall Street

Making sense of seven billion people.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-5017-1264-0

OCLC:

1011682488