A comprehensive look at the world’s eight bear species. Discover shared traits and behaviors as well as unique characteristics of the polar bear, brown bear, North American black bear, spectacled bear, Asiatic black bear, sloth bear, sun bear, and giant panda. Readers will marvel at the adaptations each has developed to survive in a challenging world. Jeannie Brett’s stunning artwork, coupled with her thorough research, brings each bear and its habitat to life. Appended with a glossary and an illustrated world map that shows the location of bear habitats.
A full-color guide to the lives of grizzlies, black bears, and polar bears that inhabit North America. In addition to fascinating information on social structure, hibernation, and their legendary fishing abilities, there's also an exploration of the difficulties that bears and humans often have coexisting--as well as invaluable advice on how to act should you encounter a bear in the wild.
In the tradition of the works of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, Timothy Treadwell offers an extraordinary account of the eight summers he spent alone with a pack of wild grizzlies along a remote stretch of the Alaskan coastline. After a misspent youth of drugs, alcohol, petty crime and brushes with suicide, Timothy Treadwell encountered some grizzly bears while tramping through the Alaskan outback one summer. In the eight years since, he has immersed himself in the society of these rare and fascinating animals, observing their culture, photo-graphing their antics and ever so gradually earning their trust. Crammed with little-known bear lore and facts, much of which Treadwell has gleaned from his own research, this is the first book to reveal the day-to-day behavior of bears in the wild. But it is more than an illuminating study of grizzlies. The young author's intimate association with these noble and complex creatures has inspired him to put his own life in order, and his personal story makes Among Grizzlies an exceptionally poignant and exhilarating reading experience.
Photography and personal accounts by environmentalists offer insight into the endangered realm of North America's bears, sharing coverage of a variety of species to challenge popular myths and explore their threatened ecosystems.
"A full colour natural history of the North American black bear, its evolution, biology, environment, history, human interaction, conservation and protection--with maps and photographs."--
This up-close, captivating look at an iconic animal traces our complex relationship to bears throughout history—and what they can tell us about ourselves. On Being a Bear draws on history, legends, scientific studies, and the author’s thirty years of observing bears around the world to offer a richly detailed biography of these iconic animals, including the many ways bears have figured in our lives and imaginations. As author Rémy Marion tells us, some cultures view bears as our wild cousins—as humans cloaked in fur—while others cast bears as cuddly characters in cartoons or seek to eradicate their grizzled forms from civilization. Scientists have made new discoveries into bears’ varied diets, their powerful sense of smell, and a mother bear’s stubborn patience with her cubs. Bears play a vital role in our ecosystems, and new studies into bear hibernation could lead to medical breakthroughs for humans. Offering these and more astonishing insights, On Being a Bear brings readers face-to-face with these long admired, feared, and misunderstood animals, and sets the record straight through a combination of thrilling science and expert storytelling.
After enduring a vicious bear attack in the Russian Far East's Kamchatka Peninsula, a French anthropologist undergoes a physical and spiritual transformation that forces her to confront the tenuous distinction between animal and human. In the Eye of the Wild begins with an account of the French anthropologist Nastassja Martin’s near fatal run-in with a Kamchatka bear in the mountains of Siberia. Martin’s professional interest is animism; she addresses philosophical questions about the relation of humankind to nature, and in her work she seeks to partake as fully as she can in the lives of the indigenous peoples she studies. Her violent encounter with the bear, however, brings her face-to-face with something entirely beyond her ken—the untamed, the nonhuman, the animal, the wild. In the course of that encounter something in the balance of her world shifts. A change takes place that she must somehow reckon with. Left severely mutilated, dazed with pain, Martin undergoes multiple operations in a provincial Russian hospital, while also being grilled by the secret police. Back in France, she finds herself back on the operating table, a source of new trauma. She realizes that the only thing for her to do is to return to Kamchatka. She must discover what it means to have become, as the Even people call it, medka, a person who is half human, half bear. In the Eye of the Wild is a fascinating, mind-altering book about terror, pain, endurance, and self-transformation, comparable in its intensity of perception and originality of style to J. A. Baker’s classic The Peregrine. Here Nastassja Martin takes us to the farthest limits of human being.
Vivid nature photos and simple, clear text describing bear behavior in the wild will delight young animal lovers. Bears around the world are shown in their wild habitats, giving young readers a glimpse into the lives of these diverse species. Fun facts add information and create a multi-level reading experience. A glossary, a list of further resources, and an index make these books good resources for early report writers. Presents information about the sun bears of Southeast Asia, their rain forest habitats, and their climbing skills.
