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Many Things Under a Rock
- The Mysteries of Octopuses
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
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Publisher's summary
Of all the creatures of the deep blue, none is as captivating as the octopus. In Many Things Under a Rock, marine biologist David Scheel investigates four major mysteries about these elusive beings. How can we study an animal with perfect camouflage and secretive habitats? How does a soft and boneless creature defeat sharks and eels, while thriving as a predator of the most heavily armored animals in the sea? How do octopus bodies work? And how does a solitary animal form friendships, entice mates, and outwit rivals?
Over the course of his twenty-five years studying octopuses, Scheel has witnessed a sea change in what we know and are able to discover about octopus physiology and behavior—even an octopus's inner life. Here he explores amazing new scientific developments, weaving accounts of his own research, and surprising encounters, with stories and legends of Indigenous peoples that illuminate our relationship with these creatures across centuries. In doing so, he reveals a deep affinity between humans and even the most unusual and unique undersea dwellers.
Octopuses are complex, emotional, and cognitive beings. This is the story of what we have learned and what we are still learning about the natural history and wondrous lives of these animals with whom we share our blue planet.
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Meh- ok....
- By Mr. Crunchy on 08-23-19
By: Jeremy Wade
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The Ocean of Life
- The Fate of Man and the Sea
- By: Callum Roberts
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts - one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists - leads listeners on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on Earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.
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Immediate fan of Mr Roberts
- By Anna on 06-25-24
By: Callum Roberts
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The Log from the Sea of Cortez
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts. Drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, it is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure.
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Beautiful Book
- By Stuart on 10-07-17
By: John Steinbeck
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The Habit of Rivers
- Reflections on Trout Streams and Fly Fishing
- By: Ted Leeson, John Gierach - foreword
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Originally published in 1994, this book was a fly-fishing phenomenon in the way Howell Raines' Fly Fishing Through the Mid-Life Crisis was. Taking his fishing hobby to near metaphysical levels, Ted Leeson tells about his passions: rivers, trout, and fly fishing. With wry humor and rare insight, he explores questions that engage most fishermen: What is it about rivers that draws us so irresistibly, and why does fly fishing seem such an aptly suited response?
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Greatest Book I've Ever Listened To.
- By Travis on 03-17-18
By: Ted Leeson, and others
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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 Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
- By: Elisabeth Tova Bailey
- Narrated by: Renee Raudman
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Elisabeth Tova Bailey tells the intimate and inspiring story of her year-long encounter with a snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, she becomes an astute and amused observer of the snail's surprising nocturnal adventures as it lives in a flowerpot on her nightstand. Intrigued by the snail’s clear decision making abilities, hydraulic locomotion, mysterious courtship, and molluscan anatomy, Bailey takes the listener deep into the life of this tiny amazing animal. With wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating recounts a remarkable journey of human and gastropod survival and resilience, and shows how the natural world illuminates our own human existence. Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Nonfiction, the John Burrough Medal Award for Natural History, and a National Outdoor Book Award. If you enjoyed Wesley the Owl, The Guest Cat, and Marley & Me, you'll enjoy this unique interspecies audiobook listen.
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This is an unexpected wonder. The quiet virtues of the snail reflect the quiet voyage of the author.
- By Frances on 08-03-15
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Feathers
- The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: Aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
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Fantastic Science and Fun
- By Chris Reich on 12-28-14
By: Thor Hanson
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The Founding Fish
- By: John McPhee
- Narrated by: John McPhee
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Few fish are as beloved, or as obsessed over, as the American shad. Although shad spend most of their lives in salt water, they enter rivers by the hundreds of thousands in the spring and swim upstream heroic distances in order to spawn, then return to the ocean.
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Read and released.
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-14
By: John McPhee
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The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
- A New History of a Lost World
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.
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"The Rise of the Scientists Who Study Dinosaurs"
- By Daniel Powell on 09-16-18
By: Steve Brusatte
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Atlas of a Lost World
- By: Craig Childs
- Narrated by: Craig Childs
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of Apocalyptic Planet, an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America 20,000 years ago and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. This book upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were.
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Blaaaa
- By Josh NJ on 07-26-18
By: Craig Childs
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Twelve Days of Terror
- Inside the Shocking 1916 New Jersey Shark Attacks
- By: Richard G. Fernicola MD
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Upon the 100th anniversary of the most terrifying stretch of shark attacks in American history - a wave said to have been the inspiration for Jaws - comes a reissue of the classic Lyons Press account and investigation.
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At long last
- By S on 05-04-21