Nature

Animals lead rich social lives. They care for one another, compete for resources, and mate. Within a society, social relationships may be simple or complex and usually vary considerably, both between different groups of individuals and over time. These social systems are fundamental to biological organization, and animal societies are central to studies of behavioral and evolutionary biology. But how do we study animal societies? How do we take observations of animals fighting, grooming, or forming groups and produce a realistic description or model of their societies?. Analyzing Animal Societies presents a conceptual framework for analyzing social behavior and demonstrates how to put this framework into practice by collecting suitable data on the interactions and associations of individuals so that relationships can be described, and, from these, models can be derived. In addition to presenting the tools, Hal Whitehead illustrates their applicability using a wide range of real data on a variety of animal species—from bats and chimps to dolphins and birds. The techniques that Whitehead describes will be profitably adopted by scientists working with primates, cetaceans, birds, and ungulates, but the tools can be used to study societies of invertebrates, amphibians, and even humans. Analyzing Animal Societies will become a standard reference for those studying vertebrate social behavior and will give to these studies the kind of quality standard already in use in other areas of the life sciences. more...

Price: $29.00

This classic textbook is a concise introductory guide to the subject of animal behavior. The book is organized by first building the four-cornered foundations of the subject, then moving higher. In an extremely well-organized progression, the student is lead to an understanding of the essential topics, explained in logical self-contained units. Each chapter ends with suggestions for further reading. In this second edition, the coverage of mechanisms of behavior is much expanded, as is the material on evolution and natural selection. The chapter on development includes much of the new work on learning and memory, especially song-learning in birds. Indeed throughout the book, examples are drawn from recent ground-breaking research.: The latest edition of the textbook of choice in animal behaviour; Extremely well illustrated and including many classic photos by Niko Tinbergen; Uniquely well suited as an introductory text - designed for student use with a clear and logical organization founded on self-contained units more...

Price: $50.00

From one of the finest nature writers at work in America today-a lyrical, dramatic, illuminating tour of the hidden domain of wild animals. Whether recalling the experience of being chased through the Grand Canyon by a bighorn sheep, swimming with sharks off the coast of British Columbia, watching a peregrine falcon perform acrobatic stunts at 200 miles per hour, or engaging in a tense face-off with a mountain lion near a desert waterhole, Craig Childs captures the moment so vividly that he puts the reader in his boots. Each of the forty brief, compelling narratives in THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES focuses on the author's own encounter with a particular species and is replete with astonishing facts about the species' behavior, habitat, breeding, and lifespan. But the glory of each essay lies in Childs's ability to portray the sometimes brutal beauty of the wilderness, to capture the individual essence of wild creatures, to transport the reader beyond the human realm and deep inside the animal kingdom more...

Price: $14.99

Rita Mae Brown’s earliest memory is of the soothing purr of Mickey, her family’s long-haired tiger cat, who curled up and claimed a spot in her crib. From there, a steady parade of cats, dogs, horses, and all manner of two- and four-legged critters have walked, galloped, and flown into and through her world. more...

Price: $25.00

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Price: $54.00