The Creatures' Guide to Caring
How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care
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- 予約注文
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- リリース予定日：2026年5月5日
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- ¥1,800
発行者による作品情報
What unites us with frogs ferrying tadpoles on their backs, beetles regurgitating food into the mouths of their larvae, or a shorebird luring a predator away from her nest by pretending her wing is broken? Creatures around the world have strategies to keep their offspring alive that are varied and surprising — and often familiar.
In this compelling and entertaining study, science journalist Elizabeth Preston explores the biology, brain circuitry, and behaviours we share with species across the animal kingdom that care for young. In the field and in the lab, readers will also meet scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding these animals, often while juggling families of their own.
Alongside animal parents that range from lonely octopuses to warfare-waging mongooses, we’ll encounter our own species in a new way. Elizabeth Preston argues that Homo sapiens’ history of caring for children cooperatively has left a legacy in all of us, parents and non-parents alike, and is the basis for our caring human society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Science journalist Preston debuts with an engrossing and accessible account of the evolution of caretaking, in which she demonstrates that the need for humans and animals to raise their young led to the creation of social structures. Humans are not the only caretakers, explains Preston, who shows how creatures from bromeliad crabs and clownfish to elephants and killer whales nurture and protect their young. Moms, dads, or both parents together may serve as primary caretakers, or an entire community may pitch in to lend a hand. Eusocial creatures, such as ants, honeybees, and naked mole rats, live in multigenerational communal groups in which adults who aren't parents themselves help care for offspring. Some species go to extraordinary lengths to make sure their babies survive: black lace-weaver spiderlings, for example, eat their mothers shortly after hatching. Cuckoos invade the nests of other birds to eliminate the competition. In mammals, parenting changes the makeup of caretakers' brains; according to scientists, such adaptations may have led to altruism, empathy, and an impetus to care for all. Preston stocks the account with astonishing examples of creatures caring for their offspring, proving herself an entertaining guide through the latest research on the subject. Readers will find this revelatory.
