Published in 2018
330 pages
10 hours and 28 minutes
Lucy Cooke is an award-winning filmmaker who has written, produced, and directed several popular documentary series for BBC, PBS, Discovery, and National Geographic. Her first book, A Little Book of Sloth, was a New York Times bestseller. She earned a Masters in zoology from the University of Oxford. She lives in London.
What is this book about?
Mary Roach meets Bill Bryson in this “surefire summer winner” (Janet Maslin, New York Times), an uproarious tour of the basest instincts and biggest mysteries of the animal world
Humans have gone to the Moon and discovered the Higgs boson, but when it comes to understanding animals, we’ve still got a long way to go. Whether we’re seeing a viral video of romping baby pandas or a picture of penguins “holding hands,” it’s hard for us not to project our own values – innocence, fidelity, temperance, hard work – onto animals. So you’ve probably never considered if moose get drunk, penguins cheat on their mates, or worker ants lay about. They do – and that’s just for starters.
In The Truth About Animals, Lucy Cooke takes us on a worldwide journey to meet everyone from a Colombian hippo castrator to a Chinese panda porn peddler, all to lay bare the secret – and often hilarious – habits of the animal kingdom. Charming and at times downright weird, this modern bestiary is perfect for anyone who has ever suspected that virtue might be unnatural.
