1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910825007903321

Autore

Berger Joel

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2008

ISBN

1-282-42613-3

9786612426131

0-226-04364-9

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (358 p.)

Disciplina

591.5

Soggetti

Fear in animals

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

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

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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.