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Sign up todayThe Unexpected Truth About Animals
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Learn moreRandom House presents the audiobook edition of The Unexpected Truth About Animals, written and read by Lucy Cooke.
History is full of strange animal stories, invented by the brightest and most influential, from Aristotle to Disney, and they reveal as much about us and the things we believe as they do about the animals they misrepresent. We once thought that eels were born from sand, that swallows hibernated under water, and that bears gave birth to formless lumps that were licked into shape by their mothers.
Zoologist Lucy Cooke unravels many such myths, revealing the facts she’s uncovered while sniffing out vultures, snooping on sloths and stalking drunk moose.
The Unexpected Truth About Animals is in equal parts astonishing, illuminating and laugh-out-loud funny. Starring: feminist hyenas; perverted penguins, exploding bats and frogs in taffeta trousers...
'Eye-opening, informative and very funny!' - Chris Packham
Lucy Cooke (Author, Reader)
Lucy Cooke is a fellow of Durham University, a National Geographic explorer, TED talker and award-winning broadcaster with a Masters in zoology from New College Oxford, where she studied under Richard Dawkins.
Her first book A Little Book of Sloth was a New York Times bestseller and spawned a major TV series for Discovery and a BBC Radio 4 documentary. The Truth About Animals, her first long-form book was shortlisted for the Royal Society prize and has been translated into nineteen languages. Her most recent book, Bitch: What Does it Mean to be Female? was cited as one of the best books of the year by both the Telegraph and the Guardian and was adapted into the BBC Radio 4 series, Political Animals.
She is a columnist for BBC Wildlife Magazine and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, The Times, Telegraph and New Scientist amongst other publications. She is a sought-after public speaker and has written, produced, and presented documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, Animal Planet and Discovery. She has presented on the BBC’s ‘Springwatch’ and is a regular on BBC Radio 4.
Lucy Cooke (Author, Reader)
Lucy Cooke is a fellow of Durham University, a National Geographic explorer, TED talker and award-winning broadcaster with a Masters in zoology from New College Oxford, where she studied under Richard Dawkins.
Her first book A Little Book of Sloth was a New York Times bestseller and spawned a major TV series for Discovery and a BBC Radio 4 documentary. The Truth About Animals, her first long-form book was shortlisted for the Royal Society prize and has been translated into nineteen languages. Her most recent book, Bitch: What Does it Mean to be Female? was cited as one of the best books of the year by both the Telegraph and the Guardian and was adapted into the BBC Radio 4 series, Political Animals.
She is a columnist for BBC Wildlife Magazine and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, The Times, Telegraph and New Scientist amongst other publications. She is a sought-after public speaker and has written, produced, and presented documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, Animal Planet and Discovery. She has presented on the BBC’s ‘Springwatch’ and is a regular on BBC Radio 4.
Reviews
A bloody fabulous read. Thoroughly recommend. A riot of facts....Cooke scores a series of goals with style and panache. Beautifully written, meticulously researched, with the science often couched in outrageous asides, this is a splendid read. In fact, I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a non-fiction work so much.Best science pick.
Sigmund Freud's first paper involved the dissection of eels in an attempt to locate their testes. To his frustration, Freud failed to find any. The eel's life cycle remains slippery, notes natural-history broadcaster Lucy Cooke in her deeply researched, sassily written history of "the biggest misconceptions, mistakes and myths we've concocted about the animal kingdom", spread by figures from Aristotle to Walt Disney. Other chapters spotlight the sloth, vulture, hippopotamus, panda, chimpanzee and others, and dismantle anthropocentric clichés with scientific,
global evidence.