Description
Book SynopsisIn The Eye of the Sandpiper, Brandon Keim pairs cutting-edge science with a deep love of nature, conveying his insights in prose that is both accessible and beautiful. In an elegant, thoughtful tour of nature in the twenty-first century, Keim continues in the tradition of Lewis Thomas, Stephen Jay Gould, and David Quammen, reporting from the frontiers of science while celebrating the natural world's wonders and posing new questions about our relationship to the rest of life on Earth.
The stories in The Eye of the Sandpiper are arranged in four thematic sections. Each addresses nature through a different lens. The first is evolutionary and ecological dynamics, from how patterns form on butterfly wings to the ecological importance of oft-reviled lampreys. The second section explores the inner lives of animals, which science has only recently embraced: empathy in rats, emotions in honeybees, spirituality in chimpanzees. The third section contains stories of people
Trade Review
Provides accessible and beautifully written food for thought for ecologists.
* The Quarterly Review of Biology *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Trees of Life
Part I. Dynamics
Organized Chaos Makes the Beauty of a Butterfly
Chickadees, Mutations, and the Thermodynamics of Life
The Photosynthetic Salamander
Human Evolution Enters an Exciting New Phase
"Parallel Universe" of Life Described Far beneath the Bottom of the Sea
At the Edge of Invasion, Possible New Rules for Evolution
A Mud-Loving, Iron-Lunged, Jelly-Eating Ecosystem Savior
Redeeming the Lamprey
Decoding Nature's Soundtrack
Part II. Inner Lives
Being a Sandpiper
Monogamy Helps Geese Reduce Stress
What Pigeons Teach Us about Love
Chimps and the Zen of Falling Water
How City Living Is Reshaping the Brains and Behavior of Urban Animals
Reconsider the Rat: The New Science of a Reviled Rodent
Monkeys See Selves in Mirror, Open a Barrel of Questions
The New Anthropomorphism
Honeybees Might Have Emotions
Part III. Intersections
A Day in the Life of NYC’s Hospital for Wild Birds
New Yorkers in Uproar over Planned Mass Killing of Swans
An Eel Swims in the Bronx
On Waldman’s Pond
The Return of the River
A Chimp’s Day in Court: Inside the Historic Demand for Nonhuman Rights
Chimpanzee Rights Get a Day in Court
Medical Experimentation on Chimps Is Nearing an End. But What about Monkeys?
I, Cockroach
Part IV. Ethics
The Improbable Bee
The Ethics of Urban Beekeeping
The Wild, Secret Life of New York City
Earth Is Not a Garden
Add a Few Species. Pull Down the Fences. Step Back.
Feral Cats vs. Conservation: A Truce
Should Animals Have a Right to Privacy?
When Climate Change Blinds Us
To Bring Back Extinct Species, We’ll Need to Change Our Own
September 11, Fall Migration, and Occupy Wall Street
Making Sense of 7 Billion People
