Kategoria BISAC: Nature >> Animals - General

Street elephants are a common sight in Thailand. Some carry tourists on their backs, but most spend their days begging for food or money, urged on by their mahouts ? their grooms and riders. The animals are often undernourished, in bad health, sleep next to garbage dumps, and walk along overcrowdedhighways with wounded feet.

In the green pastures of the Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary in northern Thailand, traumatized elephants can recover and begin to enjoy life. Antointette van de Water worked as a volunteer in this park and, with the dream of getting every elephant off the...

Every researcher or diagnostician working with reptiles has faced the challenge of identifying reptile hemoparasites and then determining whether they are of importance or merely incidental. Another challenge is how to easily find the information required to make the proper identification. A distillation of knowledge from world-renowned expert Sam R. Telford, Jr, Hemoparasites of the Reptilia: Color Atlas and Text provides a comprehensive compilation of information on how to differentiate between the myriad species of reptile hemoparasites.

The atlas...

Echinodermata have a rich fossil record, play major ecological roles in marine benthic communities from the intertidal to the deep sea, have economic importance in fisheries and aquaculture, show unique biological characteristics and have become important models in biomedical research.

These proceedings of the 12^th International Echinoderm Conference (Durham, New Hampshire, USA, 7-11 August 2006) includes recent advances made in research of echinoderms, and is organized into six sections:

- Paleontology

- Systematics and Morphology

- Physiology and...

Scientists have long counseled against interpreting animal behavior in terms of human emotions, warning that such anthropomorphizing limits our ability to understand animals as they really are. Yet what are we to make of a female gorilla in a German zoo who spent days mourning the death of her baby? Or a wild female elephant who cared for a younger one after she was injured by a rambunctious teenage male? Or a rat who refused to push a lever for food when he saw that doing so caused another rat to be shocked? Aren t these clear signs that animals have recognizable emotions and moral...