A selection of the world's most incredible things according to award-winning writer, comedian, artist and podcaster Rob Auton I Strongly Believe In Incredible Things is a book of poetic prose, musings, short stories and biro drawings detailing a selection of the Earth's incredible things by award-winning writer, comedian, artist and podcaster Rob Auton. Unique, enchanting and utterly life affirming, this is a collection of pages that come together to create the opposite of the news, becoming the tonic for the complicated gin that is the world we find ourselves in today: a humorous and heartfelt book that is the ying to the yang that is politics ;a book of breathing space that gives oxygen to rediscovering the beauty of living on earth with the aim of fuelling people to return to the coal-face of everyday life with optimism and wonder in their pockets. Inhaling all we have in common, exhaling all we don't. From bubble wrap to Killer Whales; frog spawn to empathy, hand-dryers to parents, I Strongly Believe in Incredible Things wants to take you on a journey back to the incredible planet we live on.

Described by Charles Darwin as "the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived," Alexander von Humboldt helped to transform western science in the nineteenth century. Naturalist, botanist, zoologist, author, cartographer, artist, and sociologist, he is widely respected as the founder of physical geography (and climatalogy), and his influence on all branches of natural science still persists today.

The travels and publications of Joseph Hooker, author of the "Himalayan Journals," are inextricably tied to British colonialism and Empire-building. Travelling in his role as director of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, he collected about 7,000 species in India and Nepal, added 25 new rhododendron species to Kew (creating a rhododendron craze among British gardeners), and brought over samples of both rubber and quinine from the Amazon. Hooker dedicated these " Journals "to his close friend Charles Darwin. Contents of this work--reprinted here in two parts--include many pictures and foldout maps of the areas covered by his travels.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Bates lived and studied in Amazonian South America for a total of eleven years, and is still regarded as one of the world's pioneering naturalists and entomologists. This classic two-volume work elucidates his concept of mimetic resemblance--known to this day as "Batesian mimicry"--and displays his significant contribution to the early development of the theory of natural selection.
This is a reprint of the Bates family copy, the exclusive property of the Natural History Museum, and includes a family tree of the Leicester branch of Bates family. The volumes are richly illustrated with numerous plates and a foldout map of Bates' journey along the Amazon.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"The Malay Archipelago" is perhaps the most celebrated of all writings on Indonesia. Attracting huge public interest at the time of publication, this two-part work ranks with the nineteenth century's most important travel writing and Wallace's name continues to be inextricably linked to the area.
Wallace was best known for his discovery and description of the faunal discontinuity that now bears his name, "Wallace's Line," extending between the islands of Bali and Lombok and Borneo and Sulawesi, described here in "The Malay Archipelago." This led to his theory of natural selection, which was presented to the Linnaean Society in 1858.

The travels and publications of Joseph Hooker, author of the "Himalayan Journals," are inextricably tied to British colonialism and Empire-building. Travelling in his role as director of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, he collected about 7,000 species in India and Nepal, added 25 new rhododendron species to Kew (creating a rhododendron craze among British gardeners), and brought over samples of both rubber and quinine from the Amazon. Hooker dedicated these " Journals "to his close friend Charles Darwin. Contents of this work--reprinted here in two parts--include many pictures and foldout maps of the areas covered by his travels.

John White was Surgeon General on Captain Arthur Phillip's ship, leading the First Fleet in 1788. White's journal describes and illustrates the many new plants he discovered in New South Wales, and provides valuable ethnographic information, making this one of the first descriptions of the environment and indigenous people at the time of Britain's colonization of Australia. The volume is richly illustrated with sixty-five plates of plants, birds, and animals and will be useful to researchers interested in biodiversity as well as scientific travel.

"The Malay Archipelago" is perhaps the most celebrated of all writings on Indonesia. Attracting huge public interest at the time of publication, this two-part work ranks with the nineteenth century's most important travel writing and Wallace's name continues to be inextricably linked to the area.
Wallace was best known for his discovery and description of the faunal discontinuity that now bears his name, "Wallace's Line," extending between the islands of Bali and Lombok and Borneo and Sulawesi, described here in "The Malay Archipelago." This led to his theory of natural selection, which was presented to the Linnaean Society in 1858.

Ayetli gadogv—to "stand in the middle"—is at the heart of a Cherokee perspective of the natural world. From this stance, Cherokee Earth Dwellers offers a rich understanding of nature grounded in Cherokee creature names, oral traditional stories, and reflections of knowledge holders. During his lifetime, elder Hastings Shade created booklets with over six hundred Cherokee names for animals and plants. With this foundational collection at its center, and weaving together a chorus of voices, this book emerges from a deep and continuing collaboration between Christopher B. Teuton, Hastings Shade, Loretta Shade, and others. Positioning our responsibilities as humans to our more-than-human relatives, this book presents teachings about the body, mind, spirit, and wellness that have been shared for generations. From clouds to birds, oceans to quarks, this expansive Cherokee view of nature reveals a living, communicative world and humanity's role within it.

How to Find the Perfect Match for You...

Here is a systematic and enjoyable way to choose a dog. This highly informative and useful book will take the guesswork out of choosing a dog while leaving in the fun. It will tell you about more than 110 breeds and help you to select a dog compatible with your personality, family, and lifestyle. Choosing a dog can become easy and enjoyable as you learn everything there is to know about the breeds, including:

* physical characteristics -- height, weight, strength, coat color and texture, tendency to shed, and food requirements

* temperamental characteristics -- indoor/outdoor activity level, emotional stability, sociability, training potential, and watchdog/guard-dog ability

* popularity, background, and unique qualities of each breed

This fully illustrated guide includes easy-to-read tables and pages of practical advice, plus a miniquestionnaire to help you narrow down your selection to the perfect match for you, your family, and your lifestyle.

Apocalypse, now?

Death by fire, ice, poison gas, suffocation, asteroid. At five moments through history life on Earth was dragged to the very edge of extinction.

Now, armed with revolutionary technology, scientists are uncovering clues about what caused these catastrophes. Deep-diving into past worlds of dragonflies the size of seagulls and fishes with guillotines for mouths, they explore how – against all the odds – life survived and what these ominous chapters can tell us about our future.

Written by one of the leading figures in biosocial criminology and evolutionary psychology, this work explores the tight relationship between criminality and indiscriminate sexuality within the framework of life history theory. The underlying thesis is that traits associated with a strong libido, indiscriminately expressed, are intertwined with traits associated with criminal behavior; that is, excessive interest in sexual adventures pursued in an irresponsible way is undergirded by the same individual short-run hedonistic traits that define criminality. While traditional criminology tends to view sexual and criminal behavior as separate domains, many biosocial criminologists, evolutionary psychologists, neuroscientists, and behavioral and molecular geneticists are not at all surprised that a link exists between criminality and sexuality. Research shows that the statistical relationship between indiscriminate sexuality and criminal behavior is stronger than for most other variables associated with crime, although most studies dealing with this relationship are from outside the dominant environmentalism paradigm of criminology. Using life history theory as the theoretical umbrella for exploring the relationship between indiscriminate sexuality and criminal behavior, the book explores how and why criminal behavior is related to hypersexuality. Life history theory, which has a long and fruitful history of use among evolutionary biologists who use it to investigate the relationship between mating strategies and the environment among various species of animals (including humans) is particularly suited to understanding how an exclusive focus on mating effort is related to criminal behavior. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in criminology, psychology, and sociology, and anyone interested in examining the interconnection between biological, psychological, and socio-environmental factors in relation to criminal behavior.

'Of all the places where I feel the translucency of things, places that are thin for me, bluebell woods are first among them.' Some travellers are driven by the need to scale a natural wonder, or to see a city's sights or a place of history. Others, like Alice Maddicott, travel in search of a particular scene, feeling or atmosphere, often inspired by music, literature and art. Taking us deep into our emotional and creative responses to place, this extraordinary book explores the author's relentless travelling, from the heat of Sicily to the mountains of Japan. With her uniquely lyrical approach to psycho-geography, Maddicott explores the relationship with landscape that is the very essence of human creativity. From seventeenth-century salons of Paris to the underground culture and crumbling balconies of modern Tbilisi, through writers as diverse as Italo Calvino and L. M. Montgomery and artists like Ana Mendieta and eighteenth-century girls embroidering their lives, Tender Maps is a beautifully evocative book of travel, culture and imagination that transports readers in time and place. 'A rich and beguiling work of literary travel memoir that nimbly tracks the wider contours of the world in terms of feeling, memory, introspection and the imagination.' - Travis Elborough, author of Atlas of Vanishing Places

River of gold is the story of South Africa’s most iconic river, described by Rudyard Kipling as the ‘great, grey, green, greasy Limpopo all set about with fever trees’. Here for the first time is the only full account of this river’s history, its ancient past, wildlife, landscapes, early kingdoms and their people, warfare, trade, slaves, 19th-century hunting, travel and adventures and the conservation efforts of four national parks of which the renowned Kruger National Park is one. The book (and the river) encompasses two world heritage sites, two Transfrontier conservation areas, private game reserves, some of the richest rock art sites in southern Africa with the river’s ‘source’ centred at the site of the world’s richest gold deposits ever discovered, Johannesburg. After 1750 km, this amazing river, which to early travellers had neither a beginning nor an end, sharing a border with four southern Africa countries, enters the Indian Ocean 50 km southeast of the town of Xai Xai in Mozambique, first recorded by Vincent Erskine in 1869. Two of the authors, Clive Walker and Peter Norton, in their quest to unearth its secrets have travelled the length of the river from its source to the sea. Not in one journey but several over a number of years while at the same time photographing its unique landscapes, wildlife and people. Only two works have ever been published about the river. The first by Carl Birkby in 1939, Limpopo journey, a journalist and war correspondent, and the artist Walter Battiss in 1965, simply titled Limpopo. Both accounts concentrated on the author’s impressions and journeys along sections of the river. River of gold is to be published by Jacana Media, in full colour with some 200 images, numerous sketches, maps and an afterword by Dr John Ledger. This long-awaited publication comes at a critical time with the growing concern for the country’s water resources, threats to our rivers, wetlands and catchment areas, loss of municipal water through aging infrastructure and contamination through sewage outflow. Add climate change to the mix and the prospects grow dimmer. If this publication can reveal the magnificence of one of our prime rivers and draw attention to its unique biodiversity and history, this publication will reveal information previously unknown and draw attention to rivers and wetlands and the vital need to conserve them.

[Wild Nights Out] is a wonderful invitation to rediscover the dark and all the thing that cry, creep or glow there. Chris Packham from the Foreword [Wild Nights Out] is about reframing our relationship with darkness...because without that affinity humans will remain tourists in their own landscape. the Guardian This book gently holds your hand and guides you into the mysterious folds of the darkness, helping you get the most out of the night. Nocturnal empowerment for the curious. Nick Baker, naturalist, TV presenter and author The go-to guide for exploring nature at night, whether on summer holidays, weekends away or even back garden adventures! Learn how to call for owls, walk like a fox and expand your sensory perceptions. Wild Nights Out is a wonderful new hands-on guide for those who wish to take kids (of all ages) outdoors for fun, thrilling nighttime nature adventures. Parents, grandparents, teachers and nature educators alike will discover a wealth of unique activities to explore the natural world from dusk till dawn. Alongside games, walks and exercises to expand our senses, storyteller and outdoor educator Chris Salisbury will bring this unexplored nocturnal dimension to life with lore about badgers, bats and minibeasts as well as tales of the constellations and planets to share around the campfire. In Wild Nights Out you can expect to find: 25 fun and informative games and activities Practical information on how to conduct night walks safely Animal facts and stargazing stories Beautiful black-and-white illustrations throughout Nature has so much to offer at night, so let Wild Nights Out be your guide to the dark. It will boost the resilience and self-confidence of children and adults, and instill a lifelong love of having fun in the outdoors when the sun goes down.

Explore Ireland with i-SPY - facts, photos and fantastic spots! Beat the boredom and take time out from screens with this pocket-sized book packed with facts, photos and fantastic spots for hours of fun! It's ideal for holidays, family road trips or simply exploring your local area. Kids will have fun collecting points with more than 140 things to find in Ireland. From mountains and beaches to landmarks and attractions, they'll learn all about the country and its history along the way. And once they've scored 1000 points, super-spotters can claim their official i-SPY certificate and badge. With more than 30 i-SPY books to collect, there's something for everyone! For even more spotting fun check out: i-SPY On a Car Journey (ISBN 9780008386443) i-SPY On a Train Journey (ISBN 9780008431730) i-SPY At the Seaside (ISBN 9780008386528) i-SPY Nature (ISBN 9780008386467)

“Woodsqueer� is sometimes used to describe the mindset of a person who has taken to the wild for an extended period of time. Gretchen Legler is no stranger to life away from the rapid-fire pace of the twenty-first century, which can often lead to a kind of stir-craziness. Woodsqueer chronicles her experiences intentionally focusing on not just making a living but making a life—in this case, an agrarian one more in tune with the earth on eighty acres in backwoods Maine. Building a home with her partner, Ruth, on their farm means learning to live with solitude, endless trees, and the wild animals the couple come to welcome as family. Whether trying to outsmart their goats, calculating how much firewood they need for the winter, or bartering with neighbors for goods and services, they hone life skills brought with them (carpentry, tracking and hunting wild game) and other skills they learn along the way (animal husbandry, vegetable gardening, woodcutting). Legler’s story is at times humbling and grueling, but it is also amusing. A homage to agrarian American life echoing the back-to-the-land movement popularized in the mid-twentieth century, Woodsqueer reminds us of the benefits of living close to the land. Legler unapologetically considers what we have lost in America, in less than a century—individually and collectively—as a result of our urban, mass-produced, technology-driven lifestyles. Illustrated with rustic pen-and-ink illustrations, Woodsqueer shows the value of a solitary sojourn and both the pathway to and possibilities for making a sustainable, meaningful life on the land. The result, for Legler and her partner, is an evolution of their humanity as they become more physically, emotionally, and even spiritually connected to their land and each other in a complex ecosystem ruled by the changing seasons.

What better way to say how you feel than with a collection of cute and paw-sitive af-fur-mations? With over 60 bee-autifully illustrated puns for the special someone in your life, this warm and witty book will bring a smile to their face and o-fish-ally capture their heart. Including animal-themed puns such as: • I love you beary much • I moose you when we’re apart • We go so whale together • I wallaby by your side • Always yours, meow and forever The perfect book to give as a gift on Valentine’s Day, anniversaries or just to show someone you care.

"Surprising. Impressive. Cannibalism restores my faith in humanity." --Sy Montgomery, The New York Times Book Review For centuries scientists have written off cannibalism as a bizarre phenomenon with little biological significance. Its presence in nature was dismissed as a desperate response to starvation or other life-threatening circumstances, and few spent time studying it. A taboo subject in our culture, the behavior was portrayed mostly through horror movies or tabloids sensationalizing the crimes of real-life flesh-eaters. But the true nature of cannibalism--the role it plays in evolution as well as human history--is even more intriguing (and more normal) than the misconceptions we've come to accept as fact. In Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, zoologist Bill Schutt sets the record straight, debunking common myths and investigating our new understanding of cannibalism's role in biology, anthropology, and history in the most fascinating account yet written on this complex topic. Schutt takes readers from Arizona's Chiricahua Mountains, where he wades through ponds full of tadpoles devouring their siblings, to the Sierra Nevadas, where he joins researchers who are shedding new light on what happened to the Donner Party--the most infamous episode of cannibalism in American history. He even meets with an expert on the preparation and consumption of human placenta (and, yes, it goes well with Chianti). Bringing together the latest cutting-edge science, Schutt answers questions such as why some amphibians consume their mother's skin; why certain insects bite the heads off their partners after sex; why, up until the end of the twentieth century, Europeans regularly ate human body parts as medical curatives; and how cannibalism might be linked to the extinction of the Neanderthals. He takes us into the future as well, investigating whether, as climate change causes famine, disease, and overcrowding, we may see more outbreaks of cannibalism in many more species--including our own. Cannibalism places a perfectly natural occurrence into a vital new context and invites us to explore why it both enthralls and repels us.

This book provides an introduction to the significant role of physics in evolution, based on the ideas of matter and energy resource flow, organism self-copying, and ecological change. The text employs these ideas to create quantitative models for important evolutionary processes. Many fields of science and engineering have come up against the problem of complex design-when details become so numerous that computer power alone cannot make progress. Nature solved the complex-design problem using evolution, yet how it did so has been a mystery. Both laboratory experiments and computer-simulation attempts eventually stopped evolving. Something more than Darwin's ideas of heredity, variation, and selection was needed. The solution is that there is a fourth element to evolution: ecological change. When a new variation is selected, this can change the ecology, and the new ecology can create new opportunities for even more new variations to be selected. Through this endless cycle, complexity can grow automatically. This book uses the physics of resource flow to describe this process in detail, developing quantitative models for many evolutionary processes, including selection, multicellularity, coevolution, sexual reproduction, and the Serengeti Rules. The text demonstrates that these models are in conceptual agreement with numerous examples of biological phenomena, and reveals, through physics, how complex design can arise naturally. This will serve as a key text on the part physics plays in evolution, and will be of great interest to students at the university level and above studying biophysics, physics, systems biology, and related fields.

Queen Victoria was obsessed with it. Socrates' last words were about it. Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur made their scientific breakthroughs using it. Hailed as a messenger of the gods, powerful sex symbol, gambling aid, all-purpose medicine and handy research tool, the humble chicken has been also cast as the epitome of evil, and the star of the world's most famous joke. Beginning with the recent discovery, that the chicken's unlikely ancestor is the T. Rex, How the Chicken Crossed the World tracks the chicken from its original domestication in the jungles of Southeast Asia some 10,000 years ago to today's Western societies, where it became the most engineered of animals, to the uncertain future of what is now humanity's single most important source of protein. In a masterful combination of historical sleuthing and journalistic exploration on four continents, Lawler reframes the way we feel and think about all domesticated animals and even nature itself.