Platypus - The extraordinary story of how a curious creature baffled the world by Ann Moyal

$16.00 NZD

Category: Natural History | Reading Level: very good

When the first specimen of a platypus arrived in England in 1799 it was greeted with astonishment and disbelief. This volume tells the story of a biological riddle that confounded scientists and challenged theories of creationism and evolution.

Chasing Doctor Dolittle - Learning the Language of Animals by Con Slobodchikoff

$14.00 NZD

Category: Natural History | Reading Level: very good

"Slobodchikoff's ground-breaking research" (Jonathan Balcombe) shows us that animals have much to teach us about language Groundbreaking research has been done teaching animals human language, but what about the other way around? Studies have shown that lizards, squid, monkeys, and birds are talking to each other, communicating information about food, predators, squabbles, and petty jealousies. These animal languages are unique and highly adaptive. By exploring them, we come to appreciate the basis of our own languages; understanding or even "speaking" them allows us to get closer to the other species who inhabit this planet with us. The implications of animals having language are enormous. It has been one of the last bastions separating "us" from "them." Slobodchikoff's studies of the communication system of prairie dogs over twenty-five years have attracted a considerable amount of attention from the media, including a one-hour documentary on his work produced by BBC and Animal Planet. In Chasing Doctor Dolittle, he posits that the difference is one of degree, not the vast intellectual chasm that philosophers have talked about for millennia. Filled with meticulous research, vivid examples and daring conclusions, this book will challenge the reader's assumptions and open up new possibilities of understanding our fellow creatures. ...Show more

Consolations of the Forest - Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga by Sylvain Tesson

$10.00 NZD

Category: Natural History | Reading Level: good-very good

Sylvain Tesson, found a radical solution to his need for freedom, one as ancient as the experiences of the hermits of old Russia: he decided to lock himself alone in a cabin in the middle taiga, on the shores of Baikal, for six months. Noting carefully his impressions of the silence, Sylvain Tesson shar es with us an extraordinary experience. ...Show more

Fierce Friends - Artists And Animals 1750-1900 by Louise Lippincott; Andreas Bluhm

$20.00 NZD

Category: Art | Reading Level: good-very good

'Fierce Friends' tells the story of humankind's relationship with the animal kingdom as depicted in art from the mid-18th to the early 20th century, including the work of Audubon, Gericault, Kandinsky, Rousseau, Stubbs, Van Gogh and many other artists."

Ferdinand Bauer - The Australian Natural History Drawings by Marlene J Norst

$25.00 NZD

Category: Artists | Series: Art in Natural History Ser. | Reading Level: very good

A biography of one of the pioneers of botanical and natural history art showcases Bauer's drawings made on a historic 1801 voyage to Australia. His attention to detail gave scientists an excellent study of Australian plants and animals. Most of these drawings and watercolors have never before been publi shed. ...Show more

The Species Seekers - Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth by Richard Conniff

$14.00 NZD

Category: Natural History | Reading Level: very good

From the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth, a colorful band of amateur naturalists explored the most perilous corners of the planet to discover new life-forms. Amid globe-spanning tales of adventure, Richard Conniff recounts a dramatic historical shift, as humans finally discovered the panth eon of life on Earth-and our place within it. ...Show more

Bonsai - Its art, science, history and philosophy by Deborah R Koreshoff

$30.00 NZD

Category: Gardening | Reading Level: very good

The Last of the Light: - About Twilight by Peter Davidson

$20.00 NZD

Category: Natural History | Reading Level: very good

Neither day nor night, twilight has long exerted a fascination for Western artists, thinkers, and writers, while haunting the Romantics and intriguing philosophers and scientists. In The Last of the Light, Peter Davidson takes readers through our culture’s long engagement with the concept of twilight—fr om the melancholy of smoky English autumn evenings to the midnight sun of northern European summers and beyond. Taking in poets and painters, Victorians and Romans, city and countryside, and deftly combining memoir, literature, philosophy, and art history, Davidson shows how the atmospheric shadows and the in-between nature of twilight has fired the imagination and generated works of incredible beauty, mystery, and romance. Ambitious and brilliantly executed, this is the perfect book for the bedside table, richly rewarding and endlessly thought-provoking. ...Show more

The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics by Tom L. Beauchamp (Editor); R. G. Frey (Editor)

$200.00 NZD

Category: Natural History | Series: Oxford Handbooks | Reading Level: near fine

Humans encounter and use animals in a stunning number of ways. The nature of these animals and the justifiability or unjustifiabilitly of human uses of them are the subject matter of this volume. Philosophers have long been intrigued by animal minds and vegetarianism, but only around the last quarter of the twentieth century did a significant philosophical literature begin to be developed on both the scientific study of animals and the ethics of human uses of animals. This literature had aprimary focus on discussion of animal psychology, the moral status of animals, the nature and significance of species, and a number of practical problems. This Oxford Handbook is designed to capture the nature of the questions as they stand today and to propose solutions to many of the majorproblems. Several chapters in this volume explore matters that have never previously been examined by philosophers. The authors of the thirty-five chapters come from a diverse set of philosophical interests in the History of Philosophy, the Philosophy of Mind, the Philosophy of Biology, the Philosophy of Cognitive Science, the Philosophy of Language, Ethical Theory, and Practical Ethics. They explore manytheoretical issues about animal minds and an array of practical concerns about animal products, farm animals, hunting, circuses, zoos, the entertainment industry, safety-testing on animals, the status and moral significance of species, environmental ethics, the nature and significance of the mindsof animals, and so on. They also investigate what the future may be expected to bring in the way of new scientific developments and new moral problems. This book of original essays is the most comprehensive single volume ever published on animal minds and the ethics of our use of animals. ...Show more

David Douglas - A Naturalist at Work - An Illustrated Exploration Across Two Centuries in the Pacific Northwest by Jack Nisbet

$20.00 NZD

Category: Natural History | Reading Level: very good

During a meteoric career that spanned from 1825 to 1834, David Douglas made the first systematic collections of flora and fauna over many parts of the greater Pacific Northwest. Despite his early death, colleagues in Great Britain attached the Douglas name to more than 80 different species, including th e iconic timber tree of the region. David Douglas, a Naturalist at Work is a colorfully illustrated collection of essays that examines various aspects of Douglas's career, demonstrating the connections between his work in the Pacific Northwest of the 19th century and the place we know today. From the Columbia River's perilous bar to luminous blooms of mountain wildflowers; from ever-changing frontiers of technology to the quiet seasonal rhythms of tribal families gathering roots, these essays collapse time to shed light on people and landscapes. This volume is the companion book to a major museum exhibit about Douglas's Pacific Northwest travels that will open at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane in September 2012. ...Show more

Winged Migration by Jacques Perrin

$45.00 NZD

Category: Natural History | Reading Level: very good

The companion to the Oscar -nominated film, "Winged Migration" is the definitive visual account of its subject: the extraordinary flights of migrating birds around the world. Migration is an enigma. Who knows why the cuckoo, born in Europe, flies alone to the far forests of Africa, home of its ancestors ? Or how the Arctic tern can fly over ten thousand miles on its astonishing journey from pole to pole? Winged Migration follows single birds and whole squadrons on their restless flights seeking answers to such riddles. The result is a tour de force that is testament to the patience of a globe-trotting team of filmmakers and ornithologists. With its informative text, "Winged Migration" offers both the general reader and the dedicated bird watcher a bird's-eye view of five continents and a grand, yet intimate, portrait of the secret life of birds. ...Show more

The Illustrated Shepherd's Life by W H Hudson

$20.00 NZD

Category: Natural History | Reading Level: very good

William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) was an Argentinian-born American naturalist and author, who moved to England in 1874, and became known for his writings on natural history, both Argentine and English, and for his work with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He travelled the country, observin g wildlife and rural life in general, and won high praise both for his work as a naturalist and for his literary style. A Shepherd's Life, published in 1910, contains his impressions of the Wiltshire Downs - the people, places, wildlife and history - which are enhanced by numerous line-drawings. The central character of the book, Caleb Bawcombe, an elderly shepherd, is fictitious, but clearly based on real people Hudson had talked to in Wiltshire, and the overall picture is of continuing closeness to nature, despite enormous changes in agricultural practice, in rural societies at the end of the nineteenth century. ...Show more