From reviews of previous editions:
“This is the standard reference about Texas mammals.” —Wildlife Activist
“A must for anyone seriously interested in the wildlife of Texas.” —Texas Outdoor Writers Association News
“[This book] easily fills the role of both a field guide and a desk reference, and is written in a style that appeals to the professional biologist and amateur naturalist alike. . . . [It] should prove useful to anyone with an interest in the mammal fauna of Texas or the southern Great Plains.” —Prairie Naturalist
The Mammals of Texas has been the standard reference since the first edition was coauthored by William B. Davis and Walter P. Taylor in 1947. Revised several times over the succeeding decades, it remains the most authoritative source of information on the mammalian wildlife of Texas, with physical descriptions and life histories for 202 species, abundant photographs and drawings, and distribution maps.
In this new edition, David J. Schmidly is joined by one of the most active researchers on Texas mammals, Robert D. Bradley, to provide a thorough update of the taxonomy, distribution, and natural history of all species of wild mammals that inhabit Texas today. Using the most recent advances in molecular biology and in wildlife ecology and management, the authors include the most current information about the scientific nomenclature, taxonomy, and identification of species, while also covering significant advances in natural history and conservation.
With their tonsured heads, white faces, and striking cowls, the monkeys might vaguely resemble the Capuchin monks for whom they were named. How they act is something else entirely. They climb onto each other’s shoulders four deep to frighten enemies. They test friendship by sticking their fingers up one another’s noses. They often nurse—but sometimes kill—each other’s offspring. They use sex as a means of communicating. And they negotiate a remarkably intricate network of alliances, simian politics, and social intrigue. Not monkish, perhaps, but as we see in this downright ethnographic account of the capuchins of Lomas Barbudal, their world is as complex, ritualistic, and structured as any society.
Manipulative Monkeys takes us into a Costa Rican forest teeming with simian drama, where since 1990 primatologists Susan Perry and Joseph H. Manson have followed the lives of four generations of capuchins. What the authors describe is behavior as entertaining—and occasionally as alarming—as it is recognizable: the competition and cooperation, the jockeying for position and status, the peaceful years under an alpha male devolving into bloody chaos, and the complex traditions passed from one generation to the next. Interspersed with their observations of the monkeys’ lives are the authors’ colorful tales of the challenges of tropical fieldwork—a mixture so rich that by the book’s end we know what it is to be a wild capuchin monkey or a field primatologist. And we are left with a clear sense of the importance of these endangered monkeys for understanding human behavioral evolution.
Martin Shubik brings classical oligopoly theory and research in mathematical economics close to new studies in industrial organization and simple game experiments in this imaginative and important new work. He engages the reader by creating a market model and by explaining its availability as a computer program, thus promoting interest in game experiments. In all, he admirably succeeds in increasing our understanding of the meaning of competitive and cooperative behavior and of market structure.
This unusual book covers a variety of topics: economic explanation, model building, analyses of duopoly and oligopoly, product differentiation, contingent demand, demand fluctuations, the study of non-symmetric markets, and advertising. All of these parts of Shubik's overall pattern of interpretation may also be used in a game which, more or less, coincides with the exposition of theory and the subject matter of accounting. A complete linking of basic accounting items to the oligopoly model and theory is made. Shubik bridges the gap between information as it appears to the businessman—the player in the game—and the economic model and abstraction of the market as it appears to the economic theorist.
Insects that are the least bit social may gather in modest groups, like the dozen or so sawfly larvae feeding on a pine needle, or they may form huge masses, like a swarm of migratory locusts in Africa or a cloud of mayflies at the edge of a midwestern lake or river. Why these insects get together and what they get out of their associations are questions finely and fully considered in this learned and entertaining look at the group behavior and social lives of a wide array of bugs.
The groups that Gilbert Waldbauer discusses here are not as complex or tightly organized as the better-known societies of termites, wasps, ants, and bees. Some, like the mayflies, come together merely because they emerge from the water in the same place at the same time. But others, like swarms of locusts, are loosely organized, the individual insects congregating to migrate together for distances of hundreds of miles. And yet others form a simple cooperative society, such as the colony of tent caterpillars that weaves a silken tent to house the whole group.
Waldbauer tells us how individuals in these and other insect aggregations communicate (or don't), how they coordinate their efforts, how some congregate the better to mate, how some groups improve the temperature and humidity of their microenvironment, and how others safeguard themselves (or the future of their kind) by amassing in such vast numbers as to confound predators.
As engaging and authoritative as Waldbauer's previous books, Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles will enlighten and delight those who know their insects well and those who wish to know them better.
Understanding the chimpanzee mind is akin to opening a window onto human consciousness. Many of our complex cognitive processes have origins that can be seen in the way that chimpanzees think, learn, and behave. The Mind of the Chimpanzee brings together scores of prominent scientists from around the world to share the most recent research into what goes on inside the mind of our closest living relative.
Intertwining a range of topics—including imitation, tool use, face recognition, culture, cooperation, and reconciliation—with critical commentaries on conservation and welfare, the collection aims to understand how chimpanzees learn, think, and feel, so that researchers can not only gain insight into the origins of human cognition, but also crystallize collective efforts to protect wild chimpanzee populations and ensure appropriate care in captive settings. With a breadth of material on cognition and culture from the lab and the field, The Mind of the Chimpanzee is a first-rate synthesis of contemporary studies of these fascinating mammals that will appeal to all those interested in animal minds and what we can learn from them.
Horses were first domesticated about 6,000 years ago on the vast Eurasian steppe extending from Mongolia to the Carpathian Mountains. Yet only in the last two decades have scientists begun to explore the specific mental capacities of these animals. Responding to a surge of interest in fields from ethology to comparative psychology and evolutionary biology, Michel-Antoine Leblanc presents an encyclopedic synthesis of scientific knowledge about equine behavior and cognition. The Mind of the Horse provides experts and enthusiasts alike with an up-to-date understanding of how horses perceive, think about, and adapt to their physical and social worlds.
Much of what we know--or think we know--about "the intelligence of the horse" derives from fragmentary reports and anecdotal evidence. Putting this accumulated wisdom to the test, Leblanc introduces readers to rigorous experimental investigations into how horses make sense of their world under varying conditions. He describes the anatomical and neurophysiological characteristics of the horse's brain, and offers an evolutionary perspective by comparing these features with those of other species. A horseman himself, Leblanc also considers the opinions of renowned riding masters, as well as controversies surrounding the extraordinary powers of the horse's mind that have stirred in equestrian and scientific circles.
Although scientists understand more today about how horses think than at any time in our species' long acquaintance with these animals, much remains in the dark. The Mind of the Horse brings together the current state of equine research and will likely stimulate surprising new discoveries.
Doris Herrmann was born deaf in 1933 in Basel, Switzerland, and from the age of three, she possessed a mystical attraction to kangaroos. She recalls seeing them at that age for the first time at the Basel Zoo, and spending every spare moment visiting them from then on. Eventually, her fascination grew into passionate study of their behavior. Her dedication caught the attention of the zookeepers who provided her greater access to these extraordinary animals. Despite her challenges with communication, Herrmann wrote a scientific paper about the kangaroo’s pouch hygiene when raising a joey. Soon, experts from around the world came to visit this precocious deaf girl who knew about kangaroos.
Herrmann appreciated the opportunities opening up to her, but her real dream was to travel to Australia to study kangaroos in the wild. For years she worked and yearned, until Dr. Karl H. Winkelsträter a renowned authority on kangaroos, suggested an independent study in Australia at a place called Pebbly Beach. In 1969, at the age of 35, Herrmann finally traveled to the native land of kangaroos. During the next four decades, she would make many more trips to observe and write about kangaroos.
My Life with Kangaroos explores every facet of Herrmann’s connection to these engaging marsupials. Her single-minded devotion not only made her a leading self-made scholar on kangaroos, it transformed her own personality and her relationships with others. As she forged bonds with kangaroos named Dora, Jacqueline, Manuela, and many others, she engendered great affection and respect in the people around her, truly a remarkable story of success.
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