At dawn on a brutally cold January morning, Joel Berger crouched in the icy grandeur of the Teton Range.  It had been three years since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone after a sixty-year absence, and members of a wolf pack were approaching a herd of elk. To Berger’s utter shock, the elk ignored the wolves as they went in for the kill. The brutal attack that followed—swift and bloody—led Berger to hypothesize that after only six decades, the elk had forgotten to fear a species that had survived by eating them for hundreds of millennia.

Berger’s fieldwork that frigid day raised important questions that would require years of travel and research to answer: Can naive animals avoid extinction when they encounter reintroduced carnivores? To what extent is fear culturally transmitted? And how can a better understanding of current predator-prey behavior help demystify past extinctions and inform future conservation?

The Better to Eat You With is the chronicle of Berger’s search for answers.  From Yellowstone’s elk and wolves to rhinos living with African lions and moose coexisting with tigers and bears in Asia, Berger tracks cultures of fear in animals across continents and climates, engaging readers with a stimulating combination of natural history, personal experience, and conservation. Whether battling bureaucracy in the statehouse or fighting subzero wind chills in the field, Berger puts himself in the middle of the action.  The Better to Eat You With invites readers to join him there. The thrilling tales he tells reveal a great deal not only about survival in the animal kingdom but also the process of doing science in foreboding conditions and hostile environments.

Joel Berger is John J. Craighead Professor of Wildlife Conservation at the University of Montana and senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He is coauthor of Horn of Darkness and author of Wild Horses of the Great Basin, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

“The complex and nuanced interplay between predator and prey is an essential thread in the fabric of nature. Joel Berger’s substantial contributions to this emerging world view have been rendered through simplicity and elegance—by observing prey and their predators across global landscapes in a purposeful way. This book, delivered in the personalized style of a life’s journey, tells an absorbing story of how big animals alter their behavior so as to manage the risk of being eaten.”

“How long do the ghosts of monsters linger before their misty essence evaporates?  And when the monster itself (wolf, tiger, men) returns with meat hunger, how long before prey rediscover terror? What created the singular fleetness and visual acuity of pronghorn antelope? How necessary are predators and the fear of them in maintaining the resilience of wild places? Joel Berger has written a stirring adventure of wildness, prey naiveté, animal culture, and science.”

“The Better to Eat You With offers a very novel, important, and global view of the complex interrelationships between predators and prey. Science, culture, and practical issues meet head on, as they must, in a book that surely will change existing views about the role of fear in the evolution of behavior. Only world-renowned and indefatigable field biologist Joel Berger could pull off such a comprehensive analysis of how past and present must be studied as we try to figure out how all animals—nonhuman and human—will be able to share harmoniously our one and only planet in the future. Berger’s book is a landmark contribution to the study of behavior and conservation.”

“Joel Berger is a world-class conservation scientist with a rare ability to transform knowledge into conservation action. In The Better to Eat You With he conveys the mysteries and wonder of wildlife behavior in a fast-paced narrative that both informs and inspires.”

"The Better to Eat You With builds upon the canon of important natural history literature that includes the writings of Leopold, the Muries, the Craigheads, George Shaller, E. O. Wilson, and Jacques Cousteau. . . . The book is that fine a read."

"[The] extraordinary first-hand accounts of elk standing placidly as wolves approach in full view and promptly slaughter them make for gripping reading. They also have profound implications for programmes seeking to reintroduce top carnivores to habitats where they have long been absent. . . . A refreshing change from the dry and preachy tone often found in conservation books."

"Berger reports solid scientific information then goes beyond it in an extraordinary effort to understand animal fear and its role in survival and reproduction. The result is a luminous account of animal individuality and emotion."