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Author: Scott Forbes
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837235
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Why do baby sharks, hyenas, and pelicans kill their siblings? Why do beetles and mice commit infanticide? Why are twins and birth defects more common in older human mothers? A Natural History of Families concisely examines what behavioral ecologists have discovered about family dynamics and what these insights might tell us about human biology and behavior. Scott Forbes's engaging account describes an uneasy union among family members in which rivalry for resources often has dramatic and even fatal consequences. In nature, parents invest resources and control the allocation of resources among their offspring to perpetuate their genetic lineage. Those families sometimes function as cooperative units, the nepotistic and loving havens we choose to identify with. In the natural world, however, dysfunctional familial behavior is disarmingly commonplace. While explaining why infanticide, fratricide, and other seemingly antisocial behaviors are necessary, Forbes also uncovers several surprising applications to humans. Here the conflict begins in the moments following conception as embryos struggle to wrest control of pregnancy from the mother, and to wring more nourishment from her than she can spare, thus triggering morning sickness, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Mothers, in return, often spontaneously abort embryos with severe genetic defects, allowing for prenatal quality control of offspring. Using a broad sweep of entertaining examples culled from the world of animals and humans, A Natural History of Families is a lively introduction to the behavioral ecology of the family.
Author: Scott Forbes
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837235
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why do baby sharks, hyenas, and pelicans kill their siblings? Why do beetles and mice commit infanticide? Why are twins and birth defects more common in older human mothers? A Natural History of Families concisely examines what behavioral ecologists have discovered about family dynamics and what these insights might tell us about human biology and behavior. Scott Forbes's engaging account describes an uneasy union among family members in which rivalry for resources often has dramatic and even fatal consequences. In nature, parents invest resources and control the allocation of resources among their offspring to perpetuate their genetic lineage. Those families sometimes function as cooperative units, the nepotistic and loving havens we choose to identify with. In the natural world, however, dysfunctional familial behavior is disarmingly commonplace. While explaining why infanticide, fratricide, and other seemingly antisocial behaviors are necessary, Forbes also uncovers several surprising applications to humans. Here the conflict begins in the moments following conception as embryos struggle to wrest control of pregnancy from the mother, and to wring more nourishment from her than she can spare, thus triggering morning sickness, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Mothers, in return, often spontaneously abort embryos with severe genetic defects, allowing for prenatal quality control of offspring. Using a broad sweep of entertaining examples culled from the world of animals and humans, A Natural History of Families is a lively introduction to the behavioral ecology of the family.
Author: Margaret Renkl
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571319875
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 187
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Book Description
From the New York Times columnist, a portrait of a family and the cycles of joy and grief that mark the natural world: “Has the makings of an American classic.” —Ann Patchett Growing up in Alabama, Margaret Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents—her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father—and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver. And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds—the natural one and our own—“the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin.” Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut. “Magnificent . . . Readers will savor each page and the many gems of wisdom they contain.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Author: Norman I. Platnick
Publisher:
ISBN: 1782407502
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
Spiders of the World explores the huge diversity of spider species and their fascinating traits, with profiles of 117 families accompanied by expert commentary and beautiful photographs.
Author: Wayne A. Beach
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781572736917
Category : Adaptability (Psychology)
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Family members and cancer patients routinely talk about and through cancer on the telephone. Yet little is known about the social organization of these conversations. This title offers an examination of the natural history of one family's 13 month journey through a wife/mother/sister's terminal cancer.
Author: Terry Tempest Williams
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679740244
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.
Author: Peter Goldblatt
Publisher: Timber Press
ISBN: 0881928976
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
Irises and their relatives are lily-like plants related to the orchid and narcissus families, with whom they share a propensity for large, brightly colored, attractive flowers. Many have longlasting flowersÑIris, Gladiolus, and Freesia are among the most important cut-flower crops in the world. The intricate flowers of the iris family are finely adapted for pollination by a variety of animals, including hummingbirds, sunbirds, beetles, butterflies, moths, wasps, and bees. This intimate connection between flower form and pollination biology reveals how the marvelous range of flower colors, shapes, and scents are vital to the lives of the species. The diversity of Iridaceae is illustrated in more than 200 superb photographs supplemented by expert line drawings. A lifetime of work by the world's expert on Iridaceae is distilled in this definitive account. Botanists, ecologists, naturalists, and gardeners will find this an essential reference.
Author: Susan Allport
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504034120
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
Anyone who has ever held a baby—or observed a nesting bird—will find much to inform and entertain in this enchantingly written and thoroughly researched book. Allport revels in the marvelous diversity of care in the animal world. She shows us our place in that world with great humor, knowledge, and common sense.
Author: Francis Mark Mondimore
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801853494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
And he focuses on the process by which individuals come to identify themselves as homosexual, the sensitivity of children to their own sexual identities, and the psychological effects of the stigmatization of homosexuality on adolescents.
Author: Donald Culross Peattie
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595341676
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 407
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Book Description
"A volume for a lifetime" is how The New Yorker described the first of Donald Culross Peatie's two books about American trees published in the 1950s. In this one-volume edition, modern readers are introduced to one of the best nature writers of the last century. As we read Peattie's eloquent and entertaining accounts of American trees, we catch glimpses of our country's history and past daily life that no textbook could ever illuminate so vividly. Here you'll learn about everything from how a species was discovered to the part it played in our country’s history. Pioneers often stabled an animal in the hollow heart of an old sycamore, and the whole family might live there until they could build a log cabin. The tuliptree, the tallest native hardwood, is easier to work than most softwood trees; Daniel Boone carved a sixty-foot canoe from one tree to carry his family from Kentucky into Spanish territory. In the days before the Revolution, the British and the colonists waged an undeclared war over New England's white pines, which made the best tall masts for fighting ships. It's fascinating to learn about the commercial uses of various woods -- for paper, fine furniture, fence posts, matchsticks, house framing, airplane wings, and dozens of other preplastic uses. But we cannot read this book without the occasional lump in our throats. The American elm was still alive when Peattie wrote, but as we read his account today we can see what caused its demise. Audubon's portrait of a pair of loving passenger pigeons in an American beech is considered by many to be his greatest painting. It certainly touched the poet in Donald Culross Peattie as he depicted the extinction of the passenger pigeon when the beech forest was destroyed. A Natural History of North American Trees gives us a picture of life in America from its earliest days to the middle of the last century. The information is always interesting, though often heartbreaking. While Peattie looks for the better side of man's nature, he reports sorrowfully on the greed and waste that have doomed so much of America's virgin forest.
Author: Jonathan Elphick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780565093785
Category : Birds
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
What's the difference between a swallow and a swift? How many species of ducks, penguins, owls or thrushes are there? Which is the rarest parrot or the most endangered hummingbird? What do toucans eat? Discover all the key facts about the world's orders and families of birds with this ultimate handbook. Expert ornithologist Jonathan Elphick provides a comprehensive survey of every one of the 36 orders and 234 families of birds, revealing their remarkable diversity, appearance, behaviour and lifestyle. With clear, lively text, informative fact boxes that include the latest research and data, and special photography from award-winning wildlife photographers such as David Tipling, The Handbook of Bird Families belongs on the shelf of everyone interested in birds.
