First Steps: How Walking Upright Made Us Human by Jeremy Desilva

The Black Ridge: Amongst the Cuillin of Skye by Simon Ingram

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/415433 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/415433] to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Black Ridge: Amongst the Cuillin of Skye Author: Simon Ingram Narrator: Richard Burnip Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 24 hours 32 minutes Release date: August 19, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Animals & Nature Publisher's Summary: ‘Will undoubtedly become a classic narrative of this scenically magnificent, legend-rich and geologically unique part of Scotland’ Cameron McNeish, The Herald Rising a kilometre out of the storm-scoured waters around Scotland’s Isle of Skye is a dark battlement of pinnacles and ridgelines: the Cuillin. Plagued by ferocious weather and built from rock that tears skin and confounds compasses, a crossing of the Cuillin is the toughest mountaineering expedition in the British Isles. But the traverse is only part of its lure. Hewn from the innards of an ancient volcano, this mountain range stands like a crown on an island drenched in intrigue. While nineteenth-century climbers flocked to the Alps, the ridge lay untrodden and unyielding. When a generation of mountaineers did come, they found a remarkable prize: the last peaks of Britain to be climbed – peaks that would be named after those who climbed them. Along the way, many others, from artists and poets to mystics and wanderers, have been lured by the Cuillin’s haunting beauty and magic. Those who have been seduced by the deadly magic of these mountains attest to the complexity of humans’ relationship with the intrigue of our wildest, most dangerous places. The Black Ridge is a journey through the history and into the heights of the Cuillin of Skye – from the ridge’s violent birth to the tales of its pioneers, its thrills, its myths and its monsters. From a night spent in a cave beneath its highest peak to the ascent of its most infamous pinnacle, this is an adventure on foot through all seasons across the most mesmerising mountain range in Britain.

Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World's Most Successful Insects by Jonathan Balcombe

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/426080 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/426080] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World's Most Successful Insects Author: Jonathan Balcombe Narrator: Jonathan Balcombe Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 41 minutes Release date: May 25, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 2.5 of Total 2 Genres: Animals & Nature Publisher's Summary: Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History and a New York Times Editors Choice Pick 'After reading Super Fly, you will never take a fly for granted again. Thank you, Jonathan Balcombe, for reminding us of the infinite marvels of everyday creatures.'  —Sy Montgomery, Author of How to Be a Good Creature From an expert in animal consciousness, a book that will turn the fly on the wall into the elephant in the room. For most of us, the only thing we know about flies is that they're annoying, and our usual reaction is to try to kill them. In Super Fly, the myth-busting biologist Jonathan Balcombe shows the order Diptera in all of its diversity, illustrating the essential role that flies play in every ecosystem in the world as pollinators, waste-disposers, predators, and food source; and how flies continue to reshape our understanding of evolution. Along the way, he reintroduces us to familiar foes like the fruit fly and mosquito, and gives us the chance to meet their lesser-known cousins like the Petroleum Fly (the only animal in the world that breeds in crude oil) and the Chocolate Midge (the sole pollinator of the Cacao tree). No matter your outlook on our tiny buzzing neighbors, Super Fly will change the way you look at flies forever. Jonathan Balcombe is the author of four books on animal sentience, including the New York Times bestselling What A Fish Knows, which was nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Science Writing. He has worked for years as a researcher and educator with the Humane society to show us the consciousness of other creatures, and here he takes us to the farthest reaches of the animal kingdom.

Swifts and Us: The Life of the Bird that Sleeps in the Sky by Sarah Gibson

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400541 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400541] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Swifts and Us: The Life of the Bird that Sleeps in the Sky Author: Sarah Gibson Narrator: Janine Cooper-Marshall Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 56 minutes Release date: May 13, 2021 Genres: Animals & Nature Publisher's Summary: Swifts live almost entirely in the air. They eat, drink, sleep, mate and gather their nesting materials on the wing, fly thousands of miles across the world, navigating their way around storms, never lighting on tree, cliff or ground, until they return home with the summer. Sarah Gibson has written a fascinating story of discovery, exploring what is known about these mysterious birds, their ancient ancestry and how they have been regarded through history. But the swifts are in real danger: often unintentionally, we are sealing our homes against wildlife of any kind. Cracks, gaps and crevices which for thousands of years have offered nesting space in buildings, are being closed off, while new housing rarely offers entry holes for nesting birds. Loss of breeding places is considered to be a significant factor in the steep decline of these birds over the last twenty years. Thankfully, there are people in the UK and across Europe striving to ensure a future for swifts. Their actions and stories are woven into the narrative, demonstrating how change is brought about by passionate, determined individuals, whose actions show that everyone can do something to keep these superb birds screaming through our skies.

Restoring the Wild: Sixty Years of Rewilding Our Skies, Woods and Waterways by Roy Dennis

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400544 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400544] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Restoring the Wild: Sixty Years of Rewilding Our Skies, Woods and Waterways Author: Roy Dennis Narrator: Roger Davis Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 23 minutes Release date: April 15, 2021 Genres: Animals & Nature Publisher's Summary: The RSPB’s Book of the Season The distinctive white-tailed sea eagle was driven to extinction in Britain more than 200 years ago, but this immense predator is making a return to our skies, thanks to Roy Dennis, an ornithologist, conservationist and arguably the driving force behind the UK’s reintroduction agenda. Roy was instrumental in returning the Osprey, red kite and golden eagle to the British Isles, but the road to reintroduction isn’t an easy one. In what will surely be the seminal book on British reintroductions, Roy details the painstaking process of returning the Goldeneye to Scotland, one duckling at a time, the die-hard determination needed to make a dazzling success of the red kite reintroduction and the leap of faith we will all need to make to accept sharing our forests and skies with large carnivores again. He also illustrates all that we have to gain by restoring our ecosystems to balance. Filled with a lifetime’s worth of stories from the front lines of conservation, Reintroduction offers an eye-opening insight into the complexities of reintroducing extinct animals to Britain. It’s also an intimate portrait of these apex predators and a reminder of why we need them.

First Steps: How Walking Upright Made Us Human by Jeremy Desilva

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/410006 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/410006] to listen full audiobooks. Title: First Steps: How Walking Upright Made Us Human Author: Jeremy Desilva Narrator: Kaleo Griffith Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 16 minutes Release date: April 6, 2021 Genres: Animals & Nature Publisher's Summary: Humans are the only mammals to walk on two, rather than four, legs. From an evolutionary perspective, this is an illogical development, as it slows us down. But here we are, suggesting there must have been something tremendous to gain from bipedalism. First Steps takes our ordinary, everyday walking experience and reveals how unusual and extraordinary it truly is. The seven-million-year-long journey through the origins of upright walking shows how it was in fact a gateway to many of the other attributes that make us human—from our technological skills and sociality to our thirst for exploration. DeSilva uses early human evolution to explain the instinct that propels a crawling infant to toddle onto two feet, differences between how men and women tend to walk, physical costs of upright walking, including hernias, varicose veins and backache, and the challenges of childbirth imposed by a bipedal pelvis. And he theorises that upright walking may have laid the foundation for the traits of compassion, empathy and altruism that characterise our species today and helped us become the dominant species on this planet.