The Truth about Animals : Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife

From medieval bestiaries to the latest viral video of romping panda cubs, we humans love to make up stories about the virtues and vices of animals. Pandas are chaste. Penguins are monogamous. Sloths are plain lazy. In reality, pandas could make a dominatrix blush, and penguins pay for sex, while sloths might just be the most successful animals on the planet. In The Truth About Animals, Lucy Cooke travels the globe to find out how the animal world really works, discovering along the way answers to questions you never knew you had, like what Aristotle's obsession with eels has to do with modern drug mafias, and even why the Puritan Cotton Mather thought storks could fly into space. Funny, thought-provoking, and at times downright bizarre, this book reveals the weird, wild, and completely unexpected in the animal kingdom. The Truth About Animals shows us that once we stop looking for animals to be furry little humans, we can finally see what makes them so extraordinary. Book jacket.