Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2006

The wondrous, remarkable, and outlandish activities of animals have long captured our curiosity, and no one has better explored or illuminated our fascination than Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, bestselling author of the groundbreaking Dogs Never Lie About Love and When Elephants Weep. Masson’s genuine passion for our two- and four-legged, invertebrate, flippered, and finned friends has turned into his life’s calling–and earned him a reputation as one of our most provocative authorities on animal behavior.

Now Masson shares his vast knowledge in this comprehensive and charming volume featuring one hundred of his favorite animals. Drawing upon this affable expert’s own experience and extensive research, Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras offers fascinating facts, colorful anecdotes, and surprising tidbits on familiar creatures (bottlenose dolphins, hummingbirds, kangaroos) as well as lesser-known, yet equally entrancing critters (bonobos, kakapos, and wombats). Inside you’ll discover that

• armadillos are the only mammals who routinely give birth to genetically identical quadruplets
• frogs can mate for months at a time
• koalas have tiny brains, possibly because they sleep for twenty hours a day
• a newborn kangaroo is the size of a small bean
• lobsters, if allowed to, can live for nearly a century
• the manatee is one of the most gentle and inoffensive of animals

No one interprets the inner workings and idiosyncrasies of animal behavior quite like Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, nor does anyone else translate them to the page so engagingly. What’s more, this guide includes gorgeous photographs and links to educational websites. Irresistible and illuminating, Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras will forever change the way you view our world’s most amazing creatures.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In a series of short essays, psychoanalyst and animal-loving author Masson (When Elephants Weep, 1995; Dogs Never Lie About Love, 1997) examines his 100 favorite animals--actually more than 100, as many accounts (pigeons, beetles) cover an entire group of animals. In impressionistic prose, Masson conveys snippets of information along with his own feelings and views about each animal. In taxonomically wide-ranging discourse, Masson looks at animals ranging from octopus to okapi, from spider to tuatara, from chicken to sturgeon. Typically, each essay touches on the aspects of the animal in question that Masson finds most fascinating, leading to musings on emotions and ethics engendered by each species. An essay on jellyfish discusses the dangers of their venom and the wonders of their eyes, revealing that the more we know, the less anthropocentric we become. Although Masson's emotional writing style is not for everyone, his breathless passion for the other lives that share our planet is infectious, and the short-essay format makes for interesting, bite-size reading. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Praise for Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

When Elephants Weep

“This is not only an important book, it is marvelous! If animals could read they would be filled with joy and gratitude to the author–it is scholarly, vivid, and compelling.”
–Dr. Jane Goodall

The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats

“Fascinating . . . a book full of uncommon insight.”
–O: The Oprah Magazine

Dogs Never Lie About Love

“Compelling . . . a veritable valentine to man’s best friend.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review


The Pig Who Sang to the Moon

“An intellectual feast . . . a banquet of ideas and ideals.”
–The Washington Post

Raising the Peaceable Kingdom

“Thought-provoking [and] totally delightful . . . will captivate any animal lover.”
–St. Louis Post-Dispatch

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345478819
• ISBN-13: 978-0345478818
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,126,880 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Masson has had at least four lives: first as a boy raised to become a "spiritual leader" (see his denunciation of such a life in My Father's Guru). While in the middle of his disillusion, he became a professor of Sanskrit at the University of Toronto. At the same time he trained to become a Freudian analyst. Upon graduation he became Projects Director of the Freud Archives, and was scheduled to move into Freud's house in London when fate intervened: Masson found documents which seemed to show that Freud was right in believing that many women had been sexually abused as children, and that he was wrong to give up this belief, perhaps impelled by societal displeasure at his discoveries. Saying this publicly turned Masson into a psychoanalytic pariah, and he gave up both his professorship and his analytic career to delve into the far more fascinating world of animal emotions. Two of his books, WHEN ELEPHANTS WEEP and DOGS NEVER LIE ABOUT LOVE, were New York Times best-sellers. He became vegetarian as a result of his research, and later, when he looked into the feelings of farm animals, he became even stricter, and no longer eats or uses any animal product (vegan). Harpercollins published his most recent book: THE DOG WHO COULDN'T STOP LOVING: HOW DOGS HAVE CAPTURED OUR HEARTS FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. He lives on a beach in New Zealand with his two sons, Ilan and Manu, and his German wife, Leila, a pediatrician who works with children on the autistic spectrum (using the bio-medical approach), Benjy, a golden lab, and three cats. They often travel to the States, Europe, and Australia. He is now fascinated in the "us/them" phenomenon, between humans but also between humans and animals.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not What I Expected, November 25, 2006

By 

M.L. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals (Hardcover)

The Booklist review gives a far more accurate picture of this book than the description on the book jacket. I agree with the Booklist reviewer who says the "emotional writing style is not for everyone." It was not for me. I picked up this book to learn more about the animals and their natural behaviors. The summary on the book jacket promised facts and anecdotes. Instead of learning about 100 animals, I learned about Masson's opinion on the 100 animals. There were facts and anecdotes, but they overshadowed by Masson's strong opinions. Being such a popular author, I am sure many will be interested in his opinions. Many strong animal lovers will also be grateful to read such a book. If you like the sound of the Booklist review, you will probably enjoy this book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 100 Fascinating Stories, November 28, 2006

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals (Hardcover)

Descriptions, stories, and opinions about a hundred different kinds of animans, all interesting. Well not quite all.

The first animal is the armadillo (It's the national bird of Texas - I know, it's not a bird.) You see them lying beside the road. A car goes over them, it scares them, they jump straight up, hit the bottom of the car which kills them. Armadillos are the only animals that catch leprosy. And they routinely have genetically identical quadruplets, after having had sex as long as three years ago. Now where else could you get all this information about armadillos.

Would you like to know about bats or beetles? What about the Yeti? Yes, even he asks about putting in such a creature/myth in an animal book, but then he gives what evidence there is. Some like octopuses are fascinating (200 seperate species, lay two to four hundred thousand eggs, and quite smart - equivalent say to about a dog). Some merely there - Okapi, the only know relative of the giraffe who has such a long tongue that it can clean its own ears.

Well by now you get the picture, 100 fascinating little stories.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Jam-packed with facts, a downer, October 11, 2009

By 

Janet Roper (Minneapolis, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals (Hardcover)

Before writing this review, I took a look at what some of the other reviewers have said. It seems that this book has gotten mixed reviews. My review is not overly positive or overly negative. Starting off with what I like, I am impressed by the wealth of knowledge that is kept inside this book. There are a lot of facts about animals that I did not know, and also some that I did. I also like that he covers so many animals, and that each chapter is easy to handle--not too short, not too long.

There is really only one thing that I don't like about it: It's depressing and has a dark tone to it. Instead of simply giving a lot of interesting information on the animals, Masson dwells on the darker aspects of the species, for instance animals that are going extinct. The entire chapter on the Bison was riddled with their horrible history in North America, how there was one remaining herd in Yellowstone of only a few hundred animals in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. He dwells on these bad things, completely ignoring how the Bison has flourished since then because of conservation efforts.

I think this is a great book for facts on animals if you can get past the dark tones of Masson's writing. It really does have a lot of interesting facts on 100 animals.

Harmony,
Janet Roper