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133 books match the query 'Mammals' and 3 start with n

cover of Natchiq Grows Up: The Story of an Alaska Ringed Seal Pup and Her Changing Home

Natchiq Grows Up

The Story of an Alaska Ringed Seal Pup and Her Changing Home

Donna D.W. Hauser

University of Alaska Press, 2023

This is the story of Natchiq, the ringed seal pup, growing up in her snow cave on the sea ice in northern Alaska with her mom Siku. Interwoven with Indigenous Knowledge from Qikiktagruk Elders from northwest Alaska, Iñupiaq terms, and scientific findings, readers follow Natchiq’s daring escapes from predators and seal dogs specially trained to help biologists find ringed seals.
 
Beginning in the 1980s, scientists started traveling to northwest Alaska to research the lives of ringed seals, bringing Labrador retrievers who could sniff out seals and their snow cave homes (called lairs) on the sea ice. Decades later, scientists partnered with the Iñupiaq people of
Qikiktaġruk (Kotzebue) to learn more about ringed seals. They relied on a combination of Indigenous Knowledge and scientific techniques to capture and apply tags to understand the movements and behavior of ringed seals.
 
But the Arctic homes of ringed seals are changing, and the long history of ringed seal science in the Kotzebue Sound proved to be just the beginning of long and cooperative relationships melding science and Indigenous knowledge. During 2018 and 2019, with unprecedented sea ice conditions, Qikiktagrumiut Elders and scientists returned to the ice to measure changes in the habitat available for ringed seal pups in the region.
 
 
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cover of Neotropical Rainforest Mammals: A Field Guide

Neotropical Rainforest Mammals

A Field Guide

Louise H. Emmons and François Feer

University of Chicago Press, 1997

Neotropical Rainforest Mammals, the first color-illustrated field guide to these marvelously diverse and elusive creatures, has enjoyed tremendous success since its initial publication in 1990. Ecotourists and field researchers alike have applauded this guide's compact size, light weight, and durability. More important, they have appreciated its clear and concise accounts of the mammals of this broad region. Each species account includes information on identifying characteristics, similar species, vocalizations, behavior and natural history, geographic range, conservation status, local names, and references to the scientific literature.

In this completely revised and updated second edition:

A total of 226 species are treated in full (206 were included in the first edition).

All species accounts retained from the first edition have been updated to include the most recent research.

All 195 maps showing the distribution and geographic range of each species have been revised to reflect the most current information.

Twenty-nine beautiful color plates illustrate more than 220 species (including significant color variants between males and females or adults and young). Seven black-and-white plates contain more than 60 images of individual species, mainly bats.

A compact disc of mammal vocalizations—crucial to identifying nocturnal and otherwise cryptic animals that sometimes may be heard rather than seen—will be available for purchase separately.

Praise for the first edition:

"If you can't go to the Central and South American rain forests to see firsthand their threatened ecosystems, here is the next best thing."—Washington Post Book World

"A large amount of information is presented concisely and in a way that is easy to use."—Choice

"The presentation and wealth of information contained in this field guide is outstanding and will satisfy the needs of both the 'tourist' and 'researcher' traveling to the Neotropics."—Canadian Field-Naturalist
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cover of Now Is the Time to Collect: Daniel Giraud Elliot, Carl Akeley, and the Field Museum African Expedition of 1896

Now Is the Time to Collect

Daniel Giraud Elliot, Carl Akeley, and the Field Museum African Expedition of 1896

Paul D. Brinkman

University of Alabama Press, 2024

The rediscovery of a curator’s lost journal illuminates the astonishing African journey that formed the basis of the Chicago Field Museum’s famed collections

“Now” Is the Time to Collect tells the fascinating story of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History’s zoological expedition to Africa in 1896, the source of many of the museum’s foundational collections and an astounding episode in nineteenth-century science. After the well-publicized extinction of the dodo and Carolina parakeet and the collapse of the American bison population, late nineteenth-century naturalists expected many more vulnerable species to die out with spread of Western-style industrialization. This triggered a race to collect rare species of animals expected soon to be lost forever.

Established in 1893, Chicago’s ambitious Field Museum aimed to become a global center of study. Zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot persuaded museum patrons to fund an immediate expedition to British Somaliland (contemporary Somalia). There, his team hunted and killed hundreds of animals for the growing collection. On the trip was groundbreaking taxonomist Carl Akeley. Back in Chicago, Akeley created captivating lifelike dioramas of rare animal groups that enhanced the museum’s fame and remain popular to this day.

Enriched with illuminated passages from Elliot’s journal, only recently rediscovered, “Now” Is the Time to Collect is the first book of its kind by an American museum and a case study in what author Paul D. Brinkman calls “salvage zoology”—the practice of aggressively collecting rare animal specimens for preservation just prior to the birth of the modern conservation movement. It is a riveting account of the expedition, the travelers’ experiences in Somalia during its colonial period, and the astonishing origins of one of Chicago’s classic museum experiences.
 

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