Wildhood : the epic journey from adolescence to adulthood in humans and other animals

Title:

Author:

Natterson-Horowitz, Barbara, author.

Added Author:

Bowers, Kathryn,

Personal Author:

Natterson-Horowitz, Barbara, author.

ISBN:

9781501164699

Edition:

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Physical Description:

xi, 354 pages : illustrations, maps, charts ; 24 cm

Abstract:

" In their critically acclaimed bestseller, Zoobiquity, the authors revealed the essential connection between human and animal health. In Wildhood, they turn the same eye-opening, species-spanning lens to adolescent young adult life. Traveling around the world and drawing from their latest research, they find that the same four universal challenges are faced by every adolescent human and animal on earth: how to be safe, how to navigate hierarchy; how to court potential mates; and how to feed oneself. Safety. Status. Sex. Self-reliance. How human and animal adolescents and young adults confront the challenges of wildhood shapes their adult destinies"--Amazon.

Subject Term:

Adolescence.

Adolescent psychology.

Mammals.

Parent and teenager.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
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Summary

Publishers Weekly Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2019
A New York Times Editor's Pick
People Best Books Fall 2019
Chicago Tribune 28 Books You Need to Read Now
Booklist 's Top Ten Sci-Tech Books of 2019

"It blew my mind to discover that teenage animals and teenage humans are so similar. Both are naive risk-takers. I loved this book!" --Temple Grandin, author of Animals Make Us Human and Animals in Translation

A revelatory investigation of human and animal adolescence and young adulthood from the New York Times bestselling authors of Zoobiquity.

With Wildhood , Harvard evolutionary biologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and award-winning science writer Kathryn Bowers have created an entirely new way of thinking about the crucial, vulnerable, and exhilarating phase of life between childhood and adulthood across the animal kingdom.

In their critically acclaimed bestseller, Zoobiquity, the authors revealed the essential connection between human and animal health. In Wildhood, they turn the same eye-opening, species-spanning lens to adolescent young adult life. Traveling around the world and drawing from their latest research, they find that the same four universal challenges are faced by every adolescent human and animal on earth: how to be safe, how to navigate hierarchy; how to court potential mates; and how to feed oneself. Safety. Status. Sex. Self-reliance. How human and animal adolescents and young adults confront the challenges of wildhood shapes their adult destinies.

Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers illuminate these core challenges through the lives of four animals in the wild: Ursula, a young king penguin; Shrink, a charismatic hyena; Salt, a matriarchal humpback whale; and Slavc, a roaming European wolf. Through their riveting stories--and those of countless others, from adventurous eagles and rambunctious high schooler to inexperienced orcas and naive young soldiers--readers get a vivid and game-changing portrait of adolescent young adults as a horizontal tribe, sharing behaviors and challenges, setbacks and triumphs.

Upending our understanding of everything from risk-taking and anxiety to the origins of privilege and the nature of sexual coercion and consent, Wildhood is a profound and necessary guide to the perilous, thrilling, and universal journey to adulthood on planet earth.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

How adolescents across species learn to become grown-ups.There's a time in most parents' lives when they're tempted to throw their teenage children into the nearest well. So it is across the animal kingdom when puberty sets in and profound changes shape the adolescent being. Write Harvard evolutionary biologist Natterson-Horowitz and science journalist Bowers (co-authors: Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing, 2012), although puberty is thought of as a sexual transformation, it "exerts its hormonal effects on every organ system in the body," enlarging the heart, lungs, head, and other features and adding strength and power to the form. This allows a human runner to race at newfound speeds and affords the great white shark the wherewithal to bite something and mean business. Adulthood among all species is not confined to just this transformation but also requires the initiate to become part of the group. The authors focus closely on four quite distinct animalsa king penguin, a spotted hyena, a humpback whale, and a wolfto examine the changes attendant in becoming an adolescent on the way to adulthood, with all its perils. As those who were once teenagers well know, it's a time fraught with danger, to which animal species have exhibited similar responsesthe phenomenon of shoaling, for instance, a "fundamental, lifesaving skill set" that illustrates the adage of there being strength in numbers and, more to the point, in concerted action, whether for a group of reef fish or a squadron of fighter pilots. Sometimes such actions are automatic or nearly so, but many require an awareness of hierarchy: "Each individual has a place. And the social energy that goes into determining those positions is also what holds together the hierarchy." The authors steer clear of excesses of ethology or anthropomorphism, and they emphasize that maturity is not a goal but a process.A lucid, entertaining account of how creatures of many kinds learn to navigate the complex world that adulthood opens. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.