Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals - Hardcover

Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff

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158 ratings by Goodreads

9780345478818: Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345478819 ISBN 13: 9780345478818

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2006

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The wondrous, remarkable, and outlandish activities of animals have long captured our curiosity, and no one has better explored or illuminated our fascination than Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, bestselling author of the groundbreaking Dogs Never Lie About Love and When Elephants Weep. Masson’s genuine passion for our two- and four-legged, invertebrate, flippered, and finned friends has turned into his life’s calling–and earned him a reputation as one of our most provocative authorities on animal behavior.

Now Masson shares his vast knowledge in this comprehensive and charming volume featuring one hundred of his favorite animals. Drawing upon this affable expert’s own experience and extensive research, Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras offers fascinating facts, colorful anecdotes, and surprising tidbits on familiar creatures (bottlenose dolphins, hummingbirds, kangaroos) as well as lesser-known, yet equally entrancing critters (bonobos, kakapos, and wombats). Inside you’ll discover that

� armadillos are the only mammals who routinely give birth to genetically identical quadruplets
� frogs can mate for months at a time
� koalas have tiny brains, possibly because they sleep for twenty hours a day
� a newborn kangaroo is the size of a small bean
� lobsters, if allowed to, can live for nearly a century
� the manatee is one of the most gentle and inoffensive of animals

No one interprets the inner workings and idiosyncrasies of animal behavior quite like Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, nor does anyone else translate them to the page so engagingly. What’s more, this guide includes gorgeous photographs and links to educational websites. Irresistible and illuminating, Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras will forever change the way you view our world’s most amazing creatures.

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About the Author:

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, former psychoanalyst and projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, is the bestselling author of two dozen books, including Raising the Peaceable Kingdom, Slipping into Paradise, The Pig Who Sang to the Moon, The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats, Dogs Never Lie About Love, and When Elephants Weep. A longtime resident of Berkeley, California, he now lives in New Zealand with his wife, his two sons, and several animal friends.

From Booklist:

In a series of short essays, psychoanalyst and animal-loving author Masson (When Elephants Weep, 1995; Dogs Never Lie About Love, 1997) examines his 100 favorite animals--actually more than 100, as many accounts (pigeons, beetles) cover an entire group of animals. In impressionistic prose, Masson conveys snippets of information along with his own feelings and views about each animal. In taxonomically wide-ranging discourse, Masson looks at animals ranging from octopus to okapi, from spider to tuatara, from chicken to sturgeon. Typically, each essay touches on the aspects of the animal in question that Masson finds most fascinating, leading to musings on emotions and ethics engendered by each species. An essay on jellyfish discusses the dangers of their venom and the wonders of their eyes, revealing that the more we know, the less anthropocentric we become. Although Masson's emotional writing style is not for everyone, his breathless passion for the other lives that share our planet is infectious, and the short-essay format makes for interesting, bite-size reading. Nancy Bent
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