Here Am I--Where Are You?: The Behavior of the Greylag Goose [Hardcover]

Konrad Lorenz (Author), Michael Martys (Author), Angelika Tipler (Author), Robert D. Martin (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1991

Konrad Lorenz, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1973, was an important 20th-century pioneer of ethology, the investigation of animal behavior in the wild. Here Am I--Where Are You?, all about geese, is ultimately a very human book and a fitting conclusion to a brilliant thinker's career.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers who have enjoyed Lorenz's earlier books ( Man Meets Dog ; On Aggression ) may find this study a bit technical, as it appears to be directed more to students in the field than to the general public. Lorenz and his assistants worked with a colony of tame geese that were allowed to fly free. Originally located in Bavaria, the group--geese and people--moved to the Alm River valley of Austria in 1973. In the first part of the book Lorenz introduces individual geese and examines their relationships to other members of the colony. The second part analyzes behavior patterns, from locomotion to communication. Finally, Lorenz, who died in 1989, notes analogies between greylag goose and human behavior. The anecdotes and descriptions of specific geese are entertaining and enlightening. Illustrations.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

First published in German in 1988, this book not only "represents the most complete investigation to date of the ethnology of a higher organism and its system," but is also in a sense a personal memoir of Lorenz (1903-1989), whose studies of graylag geese in Germany and Austria spanned almost his whole life. Beginning with some general observation on animal behavior studies and a discussion of his own methodology, Lorenz continues with life histories of typical birds and two "ethograms" cataloging individual and social behaviors, and concludes with a philosophical chapter on goose-human analogies. Not an easy book, but accessible to informed laypersons as well as trained biologists, it belongs in most science collections.
- Paul B. Cors, Univ. of Wyoming Lib., Laramie
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 270 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1st Us Edition edition (October 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151400563
• ISBN-13: 978-0151400560
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,200,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Soap writers have nothing on Lorenz!, October 30, 2001

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Manola Sommerfeld (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Here Am I--Where Are You?: The Behavior of the Greylag Goose (Hardcover)

This book is a piece of academic research, and at times it is hard to follow if you do not have the scientific background necessary. However, there are sections in this book more entertaining that network TV. When you read about the disagreements, battles, breakups, infidelities and romances that take place in a community of Greylag geese, you'd think you are reading a script for a new daytime soap opera. Konrad Lorenz could have easily moonlighted as a Hollywood writer. In addition to the hilarious antics of the geese, I finished the book with certainly more knowledge than before, and with a sense of admiration for these animals and the humans who painstakingly observed them.