A gorilla shrewdly sells back a missing key chain to the highest bidder. An orangutan picks a lock to let himself out of his zoo enclosure and two elephants adopt a tag-team strategy to keep their handlers from putting them back into theirs. In The Parrot's Lament, noted environmentalist Eugene Linden offers more than one hundred true anecdotes about animal acts of cooperation, heroism, escape—even tales of deception or manipulation of human beings. Drawing on the first-person experiences of veterinarians, field biologists, researchers, and trainers, Linden has compiled a warmly entertaining and powerfully persuasive argument for animal consciousness that, while not human, far exceeds what humans usually grant animals. Scientifically sound and emotionally compelling, The Parrot's Lament contains remarkable stories that are sure to resonate with animal lovers, turning skeptics everywhere into believers.

The ancient novel, previously relegated to the margins of literary study, has recently taken its place at centre stage. Petronius' Satyricon, the oldest surviving work of prose fiction, is in many respects an arrestingly modern ancient novel but the inclusion within it of thirty short poems and two long ones introduces an alien feature in need of investigation. In this study, Catherine Connors draws on developments in Latin literary criticism to take a comprehensive approach to the Satyricon's poems, reminiscences of poetic texts, and the figure of the poet, assessing the ways in which they fragment and refashion established literary forms into a new amalgam of prose fiction. This book will be of interest to students of Latin literature, Neronian culture, and the early history of the novel. All Latin and Greek is translated.

A gorilla shrewdly sells back a missing key chain to the highest bidder. An orangutan picks a lock to let himself out of his zoo enclosure and two elephants adopt a tag-team strategy to keep their handlers from putting them back into theirs. In The Parrot's Lament, noted environmentalist Eugene Linden offers more than one hundred true anecdotes about animal acts of cooperation, heroism, escape—even tales of deception or manipulation of human beings. Drawing on the first-person experiences of veterinarians, field biologists, researchers, and trainers, Linden has compiled a warmly entertaining and powerfully persuasive argument for animal consciousness that, while not human, far exceeds what humans usually grant animals. Scientifically sound and emotionally compelling, The Parrot's Lament contains remarkable stories that are sure to resonate with animal lovers, turning skeptics everywhere into believers.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

One of the more nonconformist figures in the animal kingdom, the parrot is linked to humans by its ability to speak—a trait many have found unsettling, though this discomfort is offset by its gorgeous plumage, which makes it one of the most popular members of the avian family. Unlike previous studies that have treated parrots as simply a curious oddity, Paul Carter offers here in Parrot a thoughtful yet spirited consideration of the natural and cultural history of parrots, discussing parrot portraiture, the role and significance of parrots' mimicry in human culture, and parrot conservation, as well the parrot's role in literature, folklore and mythology, film, and television worldwide. Parrot takes three different approaches to the squawker: the first section, "Parrotics," examines the historical, cultural, and scientific classification of parrots; "Parroternalia," the second part, looks at the association of parrots with the different languages, ages, tastes, and dreams of society; and, finally, "Parrotology" investigates what the mimicry of parrots reveals about our own systems of communication. Humorously written and wide-ranging in scope, this volume takes readers beyond pirates and "Polly wants a cracker" to a new kind of animal history, one conscious of the critical and ironic mirror parrots hold up to human society.

Weep Not O Widow is a journal of fifty poems written from the heart and soul during that tough first year. Because the poems show the process Jean went through, this book will especially help the recently widowed. The poems contain beautiful imagery of weeping, memories of their shared life, and crying out to God. There are continuous references to natures beauty and the wildlife of Gods magnificent creation. With support and comfort, Jean hopes to help the grieving widow find her way to God and His will, and to the joy of living.

Examining the place of nature in Victorian women's poetry, Fabienne Moine explores the work of canonical and long-neglected women poets to show the myriad connections between women and nature during the period. At the same time, she challenges essentialist discourses that assume innate affinities between women and the natural world. Rather, Moine shows, Victorian women poets mobilised these alliances to defend common interests and express their engagement with social issues. While well-known poets such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti are well-represented in Moine's study, she pays particular attention to lesser known writers such as Mary Howitt or Eliza Cook who were popular during their lifetimes or Edith Nesbit, whose verse has received scant critical attention so far. She also brings to the fore the poetry of many non-professional poets. Looking to their immediate cultural environments for inspiration, these women reconstructed the natural world in poems that raise questions about the validity and the scope of representations of nature, ultimately questioning or undermining social practices that mould and often fossilise cultural identities.

The acclaimed author’s memoir of life with an African grey parrot offers “a thoughtful and generous celebration of minds and bodies different from our own” (Times Literary Supplement, UK). For thirty years, Brian Brett shared his office and his life with Tuco, a remarkable parrot given to asking questions such as “Whaddya know?” and announcing “Party time!” when guests showed up at Brett’s farm. Although Brett bought Tuco on a whim, he gradually realized the enormous obligation he has to his pet, learning that the parrot is far more complex than he thought. In Tuco and the Scattershot World, Brett not only chronicles his fascinating relationship with Tuco, but uses it to explore the human tendency to “other” the world, abusing birds, landscapes, and each other. Brett sees in Tuco’s otherness a mirror of his own experience contending with Kallman syndrome, a rare genetic condition that made him the target of bullies—and nurtured his affinity for winged creatures. Brett’s meditative digressions touch on topics ranging from the history of birds and dinosaurs to our concepts of knowledge, language, and intelligence—and include commentary from Tuco himself. By turns provocative and deeply moving, Tuco and the Scattershot World “is not a straight memoir—it’s something much more wondrously weird . . . a view of the human predicament that is hilarious, sobering and profound” (Globe & Mail, UK).

As Charles Darwin suggested more than a century ago, the differences between animals and humans are “of degree and not of kind.” Not long ago, ethologists denied that animals had emotions or true intelligence. Now, we know that rats laugh when tickled, magpies mourn as they cover the departed with greenery, female whales travel thousands of miles for annual reunions with their gal pals, seals navigate by the stars, bears hum when happy, and crows slide down snowy rooftops for fun. In engaging text, photographs, and infographics, Inside Animal Hearts and Minds showcases fascinating and heart-warming examples of animal emotion and cognition that will foster wonder and empathy. Learn about an orangutan who does “macramé,” monkeys that understand the concept of money, and rats that choose friendship over food. Even language, math, and logic are no longer exclusive to humans. Prairie dogs have their own complex vocabularies to describe human intruders, parrots name their chicks, sea lions appear capable of deductive thinking akin to a ten-year-old child’s, and bears, lemurs, parrots, and other animals demonstrate numerical cognition. In a world where a growing body of scientific research is closing the gap between the human and non-human, Inside Animal Hearts and Minds invites us to change the way we view animals, the world, and our place in it.