Animal Weapons
The Evolution of Battle
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Narrated by:
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Sean Runnette
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By:
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Douglas J. Emlen
About this listen
In Animal Weapons, Doug Emlen takes us outside the lab and deep into the forests and jungles, to explain the processes behind the most intriguing and curious examples of extreme animal weapons-fish with mouths larger than their bodies and bugs whose heads are so packed with muscle they don't have room for eyes. As singular and strange as some of the weapons are, we learn that similar factors set their evolution in motion. He looks at everything from our armor and camouflage to the evolution of the rifle and the structures human populations have built across different regions and eras to protect their homes and communities.
Animal Weapons brings us the complete story of how weapons reach their most outsized, dramatic potential, and what the results we witness in the animal world can tell us about our own relationship with weapons of all kinds.
©2014 Douglas J. Emlen (P)2014 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Fun, entertaining, hilarious, and informative
- By Susan T on 11-04-19
By: David Hu
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The Thing with Feathers
- The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
- By: Noah Strycker
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. The Thing with Feathers explores the astonishing homing abilities of pigeons, the good deeds of fairy-wrens, the influential flocking abilities of starlings, the deft artistry of bowerbirds, the extraordinary memories of nutcrackers, and other mysteries.
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Interesting book, terrible reader
- By MGM123 on 03-16-18
By: Noah Strycker
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The Wonder of Birds
- What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future
- By: Jim Robbins
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.
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Stories about birds with something for everyone
- By D on 07-24-17
By: Jim Robbins
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Parasite Rex
- Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and the darkest shadows of science. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer takes listeners on a fantastic voyage into the secret universe of these extraordinary life forms that are not only among the most highly evolved on Earth, but make up the majority of life's diversity. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the parasite-riddled war zone of southern Sudan, Zimmer introduces an array of amazing creatures that invade their hosts, prey on them from within, and control their behavior.
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Fascinating and Horrible
- By David A on 10-09-18
By: Carl Zimmer
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What a Fish Knows
- The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins
- By: Jonathan Balcombe
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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An underwater exploration that overturns myths about fishes and reveals their complex lives, from tool use to social behavior. There are more than 30,000 species of fish - more than all mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined. But for all their breathtaking diversity and beauty, we rarely consider how fish think, feel, and behave.
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Title misled me
- By Margaret Weidemann on 08-12-17
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Monster of God
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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For millennia, lions, tigers, and their man-eating kin have kept our dark, scary forests dark and scary, and their predatory majesty has been the stuff of folklore. But by the year 2150 big predators may only exist on the other side of glass barriers and chain-link fences. Their gradual disappearance is changing the very nature of our existence. We no longer occupy an intermediate position on the food chain; instead we survey it invulnerably from above - so far above that we are in danger of forgetting that we even belong to an ecosystem.
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Great book, shame about the performance
- By Shirzy on 05-23-18
By: David Quammen
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The Tyrannosaur Chronicles
- By: David Hone
- Narrated by: Gavin Osborn
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Adored by children and adults alike, tyrannosaurus is the most famous dinosaur in the world, one that pops up again and again in pop culture, often battling other beasts such as King Kong, triceratops, or velociraptors in Jurassic Park. But despite the hype, tyrannosaurus and the other tyrannosaurs are fascinating animals in their own right and are among the best-studied of all dinosaurs.
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An Engaging Biography of the King
- By Erik on 08-06-18
By: David Hone
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A Naturalist at Large
- The Best Essays of Bernd Heinrich
- By: Bernd Heinrich
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the finest scientists and writers of our time comes an engaging record of a life spent in close observation of the natural world, one that has yielded marvelous, mind-altering insight and discoveries. In essays that span several decades, Bernd Heinrich finds himself at his beloved camp in Maine, plays host to annoying visitors from Europe (the cluster fly) and more helpful guests from Asia (ladybugs), and unravels the far-reaching ecological consequences of elephants in Botswana bruising mopane trees.
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Listen and See the World Anew!
- By Thoughtful Learner on 06-03-18
By: Bernd Heinrich
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Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You
- A Lively Tour Through the Dark Side of the Natural World
- By: Dan Riskin
- Narrated by: Dan Riskin
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin explains, it's also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless. Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be.
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Just a bunch of random animal behaviors.
- By Goddess on 05-18-23
By: Dan Riskin
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Unbound
- How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink
- By: Richard L. Currier
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.
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Good facts, not much else
- By Joel B. Gordon on 10-30-16
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The Bald Eagle
- The Improbable Journey of America's Bird
- By: Jack E. Davis
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you’re not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as “majestic” and “noble,” yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies.
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I thought the book would be about the bald eagle
- By An Amazon Buyer on 10-25-22
By: Jack E. Davis
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The Hidden Life of Trees
- What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World
- By: Peter Wohlleben
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? Research is now suggesting trees are capable of much more than we have ever known. In The Hidden Life of Trees, forester Peter Wohlleben puts groundbreaking scientific discoveries into a language everyone can relate to.
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Tree Hugger
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-19
By: Peter Wohlleben
What listeners say about Animal Weapons
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Susan
- 07-17-15
Loved it!
I loved this book. The mix of science and history, science and human nature and animal weapons was great!
Sean Runnette is fantastic as always.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Travis
- 03-02-21
Fantastic
I can’t believe I found a book that combines my love for ecology and biology with military strategy and history. It’s absolutely fantastic and I learned so much. Thanks!
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- Ryan Stellick
- 08-22-19
Very well written, I really enjoyed this book.
I heard about this book on the Meat Eater Podcast and it sounded interesting based on the discussion about it. It was even better than expected. The author seamlessly weaves together so many interesting stories, history, facts, and research. He also makes an effort to drive home other important points that I personally appreciated. Definitely check this one out.
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- KC
- 11-16-22
What I’ve been looking for.
Thank you for this work. It’s beautiful to me. Without this type of understanding we will never fully realize our mistakes. We have no natural weapon because we are human and we are human because we had no weapon, to wield/guide our fate. Nothing to focus on power or constrained to a reproductive algorithm.
Will read again.
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- Stef
- 03-08-16
Riveting
Excellently written, brilliantly presented. Good book worth reading / listening too. I enjoyed the parallels between animal and human weapons.
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- richard
- 10-07-19
Excellent and easy read
The only thing I found a bit silly was that the author really kind of overdid it with his adjective usage throughout the book. But, that’s my only complaint. It was an interesting story that blended military history and animal weapons. Plus the reader of this book, Sean Runnette, is one of my favorites.
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- Anonymous User
- 03-18-24
Fun read
Enjoyed the book. Good tie-in’s between animal weapons and their sizes and how they change over time and the similarities to changes in military weapons over time. Good read.
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- Celine Larkin
- 01-04-18
Great book!
loved this book. But the narrator has a problem pronouncing s's and they sound like "sh", which was annoying. The book deserves better!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Zoi
- 05-18-24
Not at all what I expected
This was not at all with I expected. However, I was not at all disappointed.
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- ~rrmk
- 09-10-19
Wanted to like it. it didn't pull me in though.
The nation could have been better and more inviting. A little to much back and forth and not enough story.
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