Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Dan Riskin, PhD
Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Dan Riskin, PhD
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Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You
A Lively Tour Through the Dark Side of the Natural World

Author: Dan Riskin, PhD

Narrator: Dan Riskin

Unabridged: 5 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/31/2014


Synopsis

It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin explains, it's also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless.

Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be. From slothful worms that hide in your body for up to thirty years to wrathful snails with poisonous harpoons that can kill you in less than five minutes to lustful ducks that have orgasms faster than you can blink, these fascinating accounts reveal the candid truth about "gentle" Mother Nature's true colors.

Riskin's passion for the strange and his enthusiastic expertise bring Earth's most fascinating flora and fauna into vivid focus. Through his adventures— which include sliding on his back through a thick soup of bat guano just to get face-to-face with a vampire bat, befriending a parasitic maggot that has taken root on his head, and coming to grips with having offspring of his own—Riskin makes unexpected discoveries not just about the world all around us but also about the ways this brutal world has shaped us as humans and what our responsibilities are to this terrible, wonderful planet we call home.

About Dan Riskin, PhD

Dan Riskin, PhD, is an evolutionary biologist and passionate ambassador of science to popular audiences. He co-hosts Daily Planet on Discovery Canada and has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, Evolve, and Bedbug Apocalypse. He is also the host of Animal Planet's Monsters Inside Me. Dan graduated from Cornell University with a PhD in zoology. He lives in Toronto, Canada, with his family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kuszma

Ez a könyv azért született, mert Riskin szeretett volna egy klinkertéglát lóbálva végigkergetni mindenkit a városon, aki a "természetes" szót abban az értelemben használja, hogy "erkölcsös", "szép" vagy "tiszta". Ugyanis ilyen alapon mi sem természetesebb, mint megfogni az élő csirkét, és addig haji......more

Goodreads review by Carrie

3.5 STARS I was initially quite excited to read this book, because from the way the synopsis made it sound, it was supposed to be about all the devices (be they animal, weather, disease, etc.) that nature has waiting around every corner to lead to your possible demise. After I got past the introducti......more