Creatures Guide to Caring

This is a new book. Condition: Brand New.

What unites us with frogs ferrying tadpoles on their backs, beetles regurgitating food into the mouths of their larvae, or a shorebird luring a predator away from her nest by pretending her wing is broken? Creatures around the world have strategies to keep their offspring alive that are varied and surprising - and often familiar.

In this compelling and entertaining study, science journalist Elizabeth Preston explores the biology, brain circuitry, and behaviours we share with species across the animal kingdom that care for young. In the field and in the lab, readers will also meet scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding these animals, often while juggling families of their own.

Alongside animal parents that range from lonely octopuses to warfare-waging mongooses, we'll encounter our own species in a new way. Elizabeth Preston argues that Homo sapiens' history of caring for children cooperatively has left a legacy in all of us, parents and non-parents alike, and is the basis for our caring human society.

'Reading this book is like sitting at a dinner table with your smartest, funniest friend. Elizabeth Preston's writing shimmers with wit, charisma, and infectious delight, as she shows how the act of caretaking connects us to the rest of the animal kingdom.'
-Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World

'This fascinating, compelling, and comforting book convincingly argues that whether we choose to become parents or not, we - as well as many other animals - were born pre-programmed to care for others. At a time when human overpopulation threatens all the earth's species, it's great to know we can harness our inborn genius for love to do more than just churn out more and more baby humans - we can extend that love to care for life in all its glorious forms.'
-Sy Montgomery, bestselling author of What the Chicken Knows

'Elizabeth Preston is an engaging, brilliant, often hilarious guide to the WTF world of non-human parenting. This book is astonishing - for the breadth of Preston's research and the eye-opening, jaw-dropping things it uncovers- dads who incubate their young in their throats and burp them out. Babies that survive by peeling and eating their mother's skin. Gender-changing fish! Lactating male bats! The message is clear- there is no one way to be a parent. A must read for mothers (and fathers) and everyone who has one.'
-Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Replaceable You

Book details and technical specifications

Format: Paperback / softback
ISBN13: 9781761380792
Published: April 2026

Number of pages: 416
Width: 155 mm
Height: 232 mm
Depth: 30 mm

Publisher: Scribe Publications