Provides an exploration of adolescent and young adult animal life on Earth. Trekking the globe and drawing from their latest research, Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers discovered that all animals and humans on the journey to adulthood face four core challenges: how to stay safe, negotiate status, navigate sexuality, and cultivate self-reliance. How human and animal adolescents meet these challenges shapes their adult destinies. The authors illuminate these four challenges through the real-life experiences of four wild animals tracked by scientists around the world: Ursula, a naive king penguin; Shrink, a charismatic hyena; Salt, an adventurous humpback whale, and Slavc, a restless wolf who takes off on a solo quest across the Alps. Through their stories--and those of countless others, from rebellious eagles and stressed-out high soldiers--readers get a portrait of adolescents as a planetwide tribe sharing behaviors and challenges, setbacks and triumphs. --From publisher description.