This lively and entertaining book provides a fascinating and thought-provoking look at the ecology of animals, plants, and their habitats and promotes awareness of pressing environmental issues. The eight informative chapters deliver effective environmental messages and supply compelling insight into the natural world and the ecologists who investigate its many mysteries.

From a concerned ecological stance, the authors show that human relationship with other organisms and the environment is always complex and can be exhilarating, inspiring, humorous, and irritating, depending on perspectives and circumstances. Writing truly to inform and delight, they give a captivating variety of examples from the natural world in hopes of making readers of all ages more compassionate, more tolerant, and more sensitive to other living organisms and their interrelationships. The book celebrates the intrinsic worth of all plants and animals in order to motivate people in a unified effort to preserve the Earth's rich array of life forms. The preservation of the integrity of our planet's biodiversity is, the authors illustrate, critical to our own survival.

Whit Gibbons is Professor of Ecology at the University of Georgia, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. His natural history publications include Their Blood Runs Cold: Adventures with Reptiles and Amphibians and Poisonous Plants and Venomous Animals of Alabama and Adjoining States (as co-author). Anne R. Gibbons is a free-lance editor and indexer. John Cairns, Jr., is University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Biology Emeritus at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.