Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn [Hardcover]

John A. Byers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0674011422 | ISBN-13: 978-0674011427

North America's fastest mammal, the pronghorn can accelerate explosively from a standing start to a top speed of 60 miles per hour--but it can also cruise at 45 miles per hour for many miles. What accounts for the speed of this extraordinary animal, a denizen of the American outback, and what can be observed of this creature's way of life? And what is it like to be a field biologist dedicating twenty years to studying this species? In Built for Speed, John A. Byers answers these questions as he draws an intimate portrait of the most charismatic resident of the American Great Plains.

The National Bison Range in western Montana, established in 1908 to snatch bison from the brink of extinction, also inadvertently rescued the largest known remnant of Palouse Prairie. It is within this grassland habitat--home to meadowlarks, rattlesnakes, bighorn sheep, coyotes, elk, snipe, and a panoply of wildflowers--that Byers observes the pronghorn's life from birth to death (a life often as brief as four days, sometimes as long as fifteen years) and from season to season. Readers will also experience the vicarious pleasures of a biologist who is eager to race a pronghorn in his truck, scrutinize bison dung through binoculars, and peer through the gathering dusk of a rainy evening to count the display dives of snipe.

A vivid and memorable tale of a first-rate scientist's twenty-year encounter with a magnificent animal, the story of the pronghorn is also a reminder of the crucial role we can play in preserving the fleeting life of the native American grassland.

(20031101)

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

"Pronghorn are unquestionably the fastest mammal in North America. They accelerate explosively from a standing start to quickly reach a top speed close to 60 miles per hour. Pronghorn also can cruise at 45 miles per hour for several miles." Byers, professor of zoology at the University of Idaho, has spent 20 years closely observing pronghorn on the National Bison Range in Montana. His account of the animal's ways is thorough and fascinating. He tells of racing a male pronghorn with his truck; after two miles at 45 mph, the pronghorn "wasn't even breathing hard." Byers also recounts the difficulty of finding and catching fawns, which he does in order to tag them for long-term study. They hide in the grass until they are about three weeks old. "If I'm in reasonable physical condition, I can usually run down a 5-day-old fawn. A contest against a 7-day-old fawn is a toss-up, and a 10-day-old fawn can in effect thumb its nose at me with impunity."

Editors of Scientific American

From Booklist

The pronghorn is the fastest animal in North America, capable of reaching a top speed of 60 mph from a standing start. What accounts for this blinding speed, as the coyote, its main predator, cannot begin to match this pace? How do these companions of the lumbering bison and majestic elk live today on their much-reduced range, and how might they have lived in the past? Byers, a biologist, has studied pronghorns on a refuge in western Montana for more than 20 years, and this firsthand account of fieldwork in the high-plains grasslands evokes the wonder and beauty of the region as well as the mechanics of how to study such an alert and speedy animal. Whether detailing the subtleties of identifying more than 60 individual pronghorn females or watching snotty little 30-day-old fawns racing around their mothers, Byers ultimately makes the reader yearn to join him and watch animals for a living. This vivid account of pronghorn biology and the scientists who study them is an excellent example of popular-science writing. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (September 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674011422
• ISBN-13: 978-0674011427
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,063,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Byers is Professor of Zoology at the University of Idaho. He was educated at Swarthmore College, West Virginia University, and the University of Colorado. His long-term study of pronghorn, that amazingly speedy American antelope-like creature, began in 1981. He studies pronghorn at the National Bison Range, a beautiful preserve in the southern end of the Flathead Valley in Montana. Byers also has a longstanding interest in the evolution and function of animal play behavior. His first book, American Pronghorn, was awarded the Book of the Year Award by the Wildlife Society. Byers is a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society and was recently named Exemplar by that Society.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read and excellent science, September 27, 2005

By 

Curt Walker "walker868" (Ivins, UT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn (Hardcover)

Byers has written an unusual book here, appropriate for a very wide audience and yet full of science. More importantly, his book shows how scientists think, in wonderful, almost lyrical, prose. The layperson can catch a glimpse of how science works, and the beauty that scientists can see in the natural world. The book gives a unique portrayal of how and why science actually gets done which is quite different from the way scientists and their work are often portrayed elsewhere. A wonderful addition to any bookshelf, library, or classroom. His more technical book, still very readable, is jammed with all sorts of research about pronghorn. It is titled American Pronghorn: Social Adaptations and the Ghosts of Predators Past.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deer and antelope don't only play, August 8, 2006

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn (Hardcover)

On a thirty square mile reserve in western Montana, John A. Byers studied pronghorn antelope in their natural habitat over many years. He accumulated a lot of knowledge and in addition to publishing a scientific work, he also wrote this beautiful, almost lyrical `ode' to the life of antelope. In addition to antelope birth, fawn life, pecking order, survival rates, enemies, abilities, reproductive rituals, and diet, Byers writes very ably about the natural beauty of the area and many of the myriad other creatures that inhabit it along with the pronghorns, creatures such as bison, elk, bighorn sheep, coyotes, meadowlarks, snipe, and grasshoppers. His own experiences over the years, doing the study, also form an enjoyable part of text. Many black and white photos and a sense of humor grace the pages of this slim book. Readers with general interests can easily absorb the scientific explanations of plant/animal ratios or biomass. A theme that has not been emphasized, but is very interesting nonetheless, is that many inherited characteristics of pronghorn antelope stem from a not-so-distant (in evolutionary terms) era when speedy, large predators roamed the North American grasslands. After a mass extinction some 10,000 years ago, antelopes no longer needed the 60 mph speed, urge to be in groups, embryo disposability and aggressive `displacement behavior' they still exhibit. Modern coyotes cannot catch an antelope any more than Wyl E. Coyote can ever catch Road Runner. Antelope harems, hawk kettles, bison ruts, beautiful sunsets---BUILT FOR SPEED is one of those books of which you will be sorry to reach the end.

5.0 out of 5 stars well done!, June 7, 2010

By 

Philip E. Bowles (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn (Hardcover)

Here is a fascinating animal with little popular literature, other than anecdotal accounts by guides and hunters. Those observations are often correct, but uninformed more generally. This animal's behaviors and natural history are unappreciated, not because it is rare, but because it lives in places where most of us do not, and it can require some effort to view. There is a good body of information out there for biologists (and for most of us, those technical papers are more than we care to know), but little for amateurs (in the ancient sense of the word). This book is an intelligent and well-written guide for general readers. Pronghorn country may be an acquired taste, but it is addictive.