Secret Lives of Animals

Updated June 7, 2026
Rochester Public Library RPL Staff
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Secret Lives of Animals

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Raising hare : the heart-warming true story of an unlikely friendship
Dalton, Chloe
Paper Book
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING WINNER OF THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION, HATCHARDS AND BIOGRAPHERS' CLUB FIRST...
The backyard bird chronicles
Tan, Amy
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the author of The Joy Luck Club comes a gorgeous and witty exploration of birding and nature. This inspiring work cultivates hope and connection, revealing the rhythms of our world and uncovering its beauty hidden in plain sight. * With a foreword...
Fuzz : when nature breaks the law
Roach, Mary
Paper Book
What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are...
An immense world : how animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us
Yong, Ed
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A "thrilling" (The New York Times), "dazzling" (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize-winning...
The sound of a wild snail eating
Bailey, Elisabeth Tova.
Ebook
Winner of The Saroyan International Prize for Writing, the John Burroughs Medal, and the National Outdoor Book Award in Natural History Literature   "Brilliant." --The New York Review of Books "Exquisite." --The Huffington Post ...
The tiger : a true story of vengeance and survival
Vaillant, John
Paper Book
It's December 1997 and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia's Far East. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. To their horrified astonishment it...
World of wonders : in praise of fireflies, whale sharks, and other astonishments
Nezhukumatathil, Aimee
Paper Book
"Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year." --NPR From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction--a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us. As a child,...
The elephant whisperer : my life with the herd in the African wild
Anthony, Lawrence.
Paper Book
Lawrence Anthony devoted his life to animal conservation, protecting the world's endangered species. Then he was asked to accept a herd of "rogue" wild elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand. His common sense told him to refuse, but he was the herd's last chance of survival: they...
The genius of birds
Ackerman, Jennifer
Paper Book
"Lovely, celebratory. For all the belittling of 'bird brains,' [Ackerman] shows them to be uniquely impressive machines . . ." --New York Times Book Review "A lyrical testimony to the wonders of avian intelligence." --Scientific American An award...
Inside of a dog : what dogs see, smell, and know
Horowitz, Alexandra
Paper Book
The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Temple Grandin meets Stephen...
What an owl knows : the new science of the world's most enigmatic birds
Ackerman, Jennifer
Paper Book
An instant New York Times bestseller! A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 Named a Best Book of 2023 by Publishers Weekly From the author of The Genius of Birds and The Bird Way, a brilliant scientific investigation into...
Fox and I : an uncommon friendship
Raven, Catherine
Paper Book
WINNER of the 2022 E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing PEN America Award   A solitary woman's inspiring, moving, surprising, and often funny memoir about the transformative power of her unusual friendship with a wild fox, a new window into the natural world,...
Running with Sherman : the donkey who survived against all odds and raced like a champion
McDougall, Christopher
Paper Book
Bestselling author of Born to Run rehabilitates a donkey to winning success.
The inner life of animals : love, grief, and compassion : surprising observations of a hidden world
Wohlleben, Peter
Paper Book
"Like The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben's The Inner Life of Animals will rock your world. Surprising, humbling, and filled with delight, this book shows us that animals think, feel and know in much the same way as we do--and that their lives are, to them, as precious...
American wolf : a true story of survival and obsession in the West
Blakeslee, Nate
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The enthralling true story of the rise and reign of O-Six, the celebrated Yellowstone wolf, and the people who loved or feared her.   Before men ruled the earth, there were wolves. Once abundant in North America, these majestic...
The book of eels : our enduring fascination with the most mysterious creature in the natural world
Svensson, Patrik
Paper Book
Part H Is for Hawk, part The Soul of an Octopus, The Book of Eels is a captivating work of narrative nonfiction that is both a meditation on the world's most elusive fish--the eel--and a reflection on the human condition Remarkably little is...
What the chicken knows : a new appreciation of the world's most familiar bird
Montgomery, Sy
Paper Book
A charming and eye-opening exploration of the special relationship between humans and chickens from Sy Montgomery, "one of our finest chroniclers of the natural world" (The New York Times). For more than two decades, Sy Montgomery--whose The Soul of an...
Animals make us human : creating the best life for animals
Grandin, Temple.
Paper Book
The best-selling animal advocate Temple Grandin offers the most exciting exploration of how animals feel since The Hidden Life of Dogs. In her groundbreaking and best-selling book Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin drew on her own experience with autism as well as her...
Wesley the owl : the remarkable love story of an owl and his girl
O'Brien, Stacey.
Paper Book
Written with the same heartwarming sentiment that made the memoir Marley & Me a runaway bestseller, biologist and owl expert O'Brien chronicles her rescue of an adorable, abandoned baby barn owl--and their astonishing and unprecedented 19-year life together.
What it's like to be a bird : from flying to nesting, eating to singing -- what birds are doing, and why
Sibley, David
Paper Book
The bird book for birders and nonbirders alike that will excite and inspire by providing a new and deeper understanding of what common, mostly backyard, birds are doing-and why- "Can birds smell?"; "Is this the same cardinal that was at my feeder last year?"; "Do robins 'hear' worms?"
Otherlands : journeys in earth's extinct ecosystems
Halliday, Thomas (Paleobiologist)
Paper Book
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES CROPPER WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING* *LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE* Shortlisted for Waterstones's "Book of the Year 2022" One of:The New Yorker's "The Best Books of 2022 So Far" ...
On animals
Orlean, Susan
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Magnificent." --The New York Times * "Beguiling, observant, and howlingly funny." --San Francisco Chronicle * "Spectacular." --Star Tribune (Minneapolis) * "Full of astonishments." --The Boston Globe
The mosquito : a human history of our deadliest predator
Winegard, Timothy C.
Paper Book
"Hugely impressive, a major work."--NPR A pioneering and groundbreaking work of narrative nonfiction that offers a dramatic new perspective on the history of humankind, showing how through millennia, the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining...
The good good pig : the extraordinary life of Christopher Hogwood
Montgomery, Sy.
Paper Book
“Christopher Hogwood came home on my lap in a shoebox. He was a creature who would prove in many ways to be more human than I am.” –from The Good Good Pig A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always...
Spying on whales : the past, present, and future of earth's most awesome creatures
Pyenson, Nick
Paper Book
"A palaeontological howdunnit...[Spying on Whales] captures the excitement of...seeking answers to deep questions in cetacean science." --Nature   Called "the best of science writing" (Edward O. Wilson) and named a best book by Popular Science, a dive into...
A world on the wing : the global odyssey of migratory birds
Weidensaul, Scott
Paper Book
In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations--how billions of birds...
Spineless : the science of jellyfish and the art of growing a backbone
Berwald, Juli
Paper Book
"A book full of wonders" --Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk "Witty, insightful. . . .The story of jellyfish. . . is a significant part of the environmental story. Berwald's engaging account of these delicate, often ignored creatures shows how much they matter...
Animal wise : the thoughts and emotions of our fellow creatures
Morell, Virginia
Audiobook
Noted science writer Virginia Morell explores the frontiers of research on animal cognition and emotion, offering a surprising and moving exploration into the hearts and minds of wild and domesticated animals.      Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a fish? Or a parrot,...
Slither : how nature's most maligned creatures illuminate our world
Hall, Stephen S.
Paper Book
In this "wise and wondrous" (David Quammen) exploration, a science writer reintroduces readers to The Snake, encouraging our initial reaction to the slithery creature to be one of awe rather than disgust. For millennia, depictions of snakes as...
Fathoms : the world in the whale
Giggs, Rebecca
Paper Book
Winner of the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction * Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction * Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A "delving, haunted, and poetic debut" (The New York Times Book Review) about the...
Endless forms : the secret world of wasps
Sumner, Seirian.
Ebook
"A book that draws us in to the strange beauty of what we so often run away from." -- Robin Ince, author of The Importance of Being Interested In this eye-opening and entertaining work of popular science in the spirit of The Mosquito, Entangled Life, and The Book of Eels, a...
How to speak whale : a voyage into the future of animal communication
Mustill, Tom
Paper Book
What if animals and humans could speak to one another? Tom Mustill--the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty‑ton humpback whale breached onto his kayak--asks this question in his thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication. ...
Why animals talk : the new science of animal communication
Kershenbaum, Arik
Paper Book
"Animal communication doesn't need to resemble human language to be full of meaning and nuance. Arik Kershenbaum delivers an expert overview of the astonishing discoveries made in the last few decades" --Frans de Waal From leading zoologist Arik Kershenbaum, a delightful and...
Tamed & untamed : close encounters of the animal kind
Montgomery, Sy
Paper Book
Extraordinary new insights into the minds and lives of our fellow creatures from two of the world's top animal authors, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Sy Montgomery. A Mail on Sunday "Critic's Pick" Best Read of the Year "In their writing and in their...
Beyond words : what animals think and feel
Safina, Carl
Paper Book
I wanted to know what they were experiencing, and why to us they feel so compelling, and so-close. This time I allowed myself to ask them the question that for a scientist was forbidden fruit: Who are you? Weaving decades of field observations with exciting new...
In defence of dogs
Bradshaw, John W. S.
Paper Book
John Bradshaw is one of the world's leading dog experts, and In Defence of Dogsgives us a uniquely authoritative insight into what dogs would ask us for, if only they knew how. The dog has been mankind's faithful companion for tens of thousands of years, yet today finds...
When elephants weep : the emotional lives of animals
Masson, J. Moussaieff
Paper Book
This national bestseller exploring the complex emotional lives of animals was hailed as "a masterpiece" by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and as "marvelous" by Jane Goodall. The popularity ofWhen Elephants Weephas swept the nation, as author Jeffrey Masson appeared onDateline NBC, Good Morning America...
Of cockroaches and crickets : learning to love creatures that skitter and jump
Nischk, Frank
Paper Book
This deep dive into the wonderful world of insects teaches us to love the tiny, seemingly terrifying creatures all around us. For many people, cockroaches are the most pesky of pests. Not so for entomologist Frank Nischk. In this funny and fascinating book, Frank reveals his love...
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