Any author who can highlight the existential sadness of a lonely cockroach, make krill exciting, or describe a colleague fishing and swallowing in a "mermaid-like mammalian explosion" is truly a gift to scientific communication... provocative, says the Guardian.

Everything you want to know about how animals live together and what it means for us.

Some animal societies hold a mirror to the human world: elephants hold funerals for deceased relatives. The pinyon jays perform cooperative breeding. Rats will do anything to help a cold, wet stranger. Other lives may seem extremely bizarre. Take the locusts, which swarm over the land in millions, unable to slow down even for a minute, because the hungry ranks behind them will bite their legs if they don't stay a step ahead.

But whatever the animal, scientific behaviorist Ashley Ward can usually find something worthy of admiration. Traveling from the savannah of the Serengeti to the frozen Antarctic Ocean, with stops in the marshy fields and torrents of northern Yorkshire, he brings his curious eye and infectious humor down to their level. The result is a highly expansive, myth-busting tour of some of nature's greatest wonders, in a delightfully good-natured company.

Pages: 400, Publication Year: 0105, Dimensions: 12.8x12.8cm