Animal Science

Military working dogs gained widespread attention after Cairo participated in the SEAL Team 6 mission that led to Osama bin Laden's death. Before that, few civilians realized that dogs served in combat, let alone that they could parachute from thirty thousand feet up. The Dogs of War reveals the amazing range of jobs that our four-legged soldiers now perform, examines the dogs' training and equipment, and sets the record straight on those rumors of titanium teeth.

Award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin's Catwings books are beloved by younger readers. In the final book of the series, youngest catwings kitten Jane is fed up with life on the farm, and decides to strike out on her own. She soon finds that people will take advantage of her for their own gain, and tries to find someone who loves her not just because she is a cat with wings.

Co-author of the best-selling Mrs. Murphy novels, Rita Mae Brown launches a new series with this first mystery featuring Baxter the wirehaired dachshund. When Baxter and his owner, Mags, leave New York for Nevada, they find themselves embroiled in a real head scratcher. First, the local water-pumping station is sabotaged. Then, a murdered man’s bones - dating back to the 1800s - are unearthed in a barn owned by Mags’ great-aunt.

It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: The tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.

High in the mountainous rain forests of Burma and India grow some of the world's last stands of mature, wild teak. For more than a thousand years, people here have worked with elephants to log these otherwise impassable forests and move people and goods (often illicitly) under cover of the forest canopy. In Giants of the Monsoon Forest, geographer Jacob Shell takes us deep into this strange elephant country to explore the lives of these extraordinarily intelligent creatures.

W. H. Beck's highly anticipated debut promises to delight young listeners with an imaginative tale about a rat who refuses to be judged by his appearance. Malcolm the rat loves the attention he gets as a pet at McKenna School. That' s where he meets the Midnight Academy, a secret society of classroom pets who've pledged to keep the students safe. The trouble is, rats have a bad reputation, so when their iguana leader is kidnapped, the Academy suspects Malcolm.

Where can you find a dog on wheels and a fluffy chicken that work together at a veterinarian’s office? What about Mr. G the goat and Jellybean the donkey, two inseparable friends? Or dog and cheetah BFFs? Look no further! Together Forever! tells three heartwarming tales of unlikely animal friendships that prove love knows no species. These true stories will amaze, inspire, and make you say “Awww.”

Now that Snip the cat is gone (but hardly forgotten), the classroom animals of the Midnight Academy are ready for things to get back to normal at the McKenna School. After all, protecting nutters (students) and lankies (teachers) is an around-the-clock job! When a rare coin and a strange code are uncovered in the school, Malcolm and the academy have another mystery on their hands.

When Gregor falls through a grate in the laundry room of his apartment building, he hurtles into the dark Underland, where spiders, rats, and cockroaches coexist uneasily with humans. This world is on the brink of war, and Gregor's arrival is no accident. A prophecy foretells that Gregor has a role to play in the Underland's uncertain future. Gregor wants no part of it, until he realizes it's the only way to solve the mystery of his father's disappearance.

Introduces a variety of sounds and types of communications that are made by animals.

In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman - chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field - gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning this paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease.

For generations, four Clans of wild cats have shared the forest according to the laws laid down by their ancestors. But the warrior code is threatened, and the ThunderClan cats are in grave danger. The sinister ShadowClan grows stronger every day. Noble warriors are dying - and some deaths are more mysterious than others. In the midst of this turmoil appears an ordinary housecat named Rusty...who may turn out to be the bravest warrior of them all.

At every moment, within our bodies and all around us, trillions of microscopic combatants are waging a war that shapes our health and life on Earth. Countless times per second, viruses known as phages attack and destroy bacteria while leaving all other life forms, including us, unscathed. Vastly outnumbering the viruses that do us harm, phages power ecosystems, drive evolutionary innovation, and harbor a remarkable capacity to heal life-threatening infections when conventional antibiotics fail. Yet most of us have never heard of them, thinking of viruses only as enemies to be feared.

The enchanted island of Corfu was home to Gerald Durrell and his family for five years before the Second World War. For the passionate young zoologist, Corfu was a natural paradise, teeming with strange birds and beasts that he could collect watch and care for. But life was not without its problems - Gerald’s family often objected to his animal-collecting activities, especially when the beasts wound up in the family’s villa or even worse - the fridge.

A quarter of a century after her memoir, Thinking in Pictures, forever changed how the world understood autism, Temple Grandin—the “anthropologist from Mars,” as Oliver Sacks dubbed her—transforms our awareness of the different ways our brains are wired. Do you have a keen sense of direction, a love of puzzles, the ability to assemble IKEA furniture without crying? You are likely a visual thinker.

Who has large horns, and who has huge wings? Who is the same size as a quarter? Who is the largest fish in the sea? Take a measure of the many different animal sizes.

We keep dogs and are kept by them. We love dogs and (we assume) we are loved by them. We buy them sweaters, toys, shoes; we are concerned with their social lives, their food, and their health. The story of humans and dogs is thousands of years old but is far from understood. In Our Dogs, Ourselves, Alexandra Horowitz explores all aspects of this unique and complex relationship that “dog lovers will savor and absorb” (Shelf Awareness). As Horowitz considers the current culture of dogdom, she reveals the odd, surprising, and contradictory ways we live with dogs.

Learn about the science and history of dinosaurs with iMindsJNR audio-learning series for younger minds. Huge and sometimes ferocious, dinosaurs ruled the earth for more than 175 million years. To us, dinosaurs might be scary-looking. But humans never had to fear dinosaurs because they died out 65 million years ago, a long time before the first people were around!Dinosaurs lived in a period called the Mesozoic era, which began about 240 million years ago.

Long ago, the land of Ulv was filled with magic. But that was before a wolf ate all the stars in the night sky, ridding the world of magic and allowing Shadow Creatures, beasts made of shadow and evil, to flourish. Twelve-year-old Bo knows the stories but thinks the Stars and the wolf who ate them are nothing more than myths - until the day Bo's guardian, Mads, is attacked by a giant wolf straight from the legends.

Frankie was a completely normal pet goldfish until Tom's evil-scientist big brother, Mark, tried to murder him with toxic gunge! Luckily Tom and his best friend, Pradeep, shocked Frankie back to life with a battery, and he's been their zombie-fishy friend ever since. On a trip to the aquarium, something fishy starts going on. Something that almost certainly involves evil older brothers, a vampire kitten, a psychic octopus, and a plot to take over the world! Can Pradeep and Tom help Frankie to swim another day, or will he come to a squiddy end?