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The Unexpected Truth About Animals by Lucy Cooke
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The Unexpected Truth About Animals

Brilliant natural history, starring lovesick hippos, stoned sloths, exploding bats and frogs in taffeta trousers...
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Narrator Lucy Cooke

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Length 10 hours 28 minutes
Language English
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Random 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 has a Master's in Zoology from the University of Oxford, where she was tutored by Richard Dawkins. She is the author of two previous books, A Little Book of Sloth, which was a New York Times bestseller, and The Unexpected Truth about Animals, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize and has been translated into seventeen languages. She has also written for the Sunday Times, Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Lucy is also an award-winning broadcaster and documentary filmmaker. Initially working behind the scenes in television comedy, she is now a regular on Radio 4 and has presented prime-time series for BBC, ITV and National Geographic.


Lucy Cooke (Author, Reader)
Lucy Cooke has a Master's in Zoology from the University of Oxford, where she was tutored by Richard Dawkins. She is the author of two previous books, A Little Book of Sloth, which was a New York Times bestseller, and The Unexpected Truth about Animals, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize and has been translated into seventeen languages. She has also written for the Sunday Times, Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Lucy is also an award-winning broadcaster and documentary filmmaker. Initially working behind the scenes in television comedy, she is now a regular on Radio 4 and has presented prime-time series for BBC, ITV and National Geographic.


Collage of covers

Indie Bookshop Appreciation Sale

In celebration of independent bookshops, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks. Don’t miss out—purchases support local bookstores!

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Phone showing make the switch message

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Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

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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.

Lucy Cooke's The Unexpected Truth About Animals was a joy from beginning to end. Who could resist a writer who argues that penguins have been pulling the wool over our eyes for years, and that, far from being cute and gregarious, they are actually pathologically unpleasant necrophiliacs? Expand reviews
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