Our Wild Familiars
How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World
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Our Wild Familiars
Narrated by:
Dan Werb
Pre-order Now for £14.25
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Narrated by:
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Dan Werb
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By:
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Dan Werb
About this listen
Synanthropes have always been an immutable part of the tapestry of our lives. They are the reason we hear birdsong in the morning and skittering throughout the day, and why we take such pains to fix lids to our garbage cans. But they are so much more than that, too: epidemic vectors, churners of soil, ecosystem evolvers, spiritual lodestars, and, sometimes, sharp-toothed marauders making their way through our most intimate spaces with cruel intent. But beyond their quotidian impact on our lives, synanthropes have a critical part to play in how our communities are shaped and how sustainably they function. These creatures are ambassadors from nature, arbiters of our planet’s future, and a key influence on our species’ ongoing evolution; and recently, something essential has shifted with them.
We are in a fraught era of environmental disruption, habitat destruction, and human population expansion that is ravaging formerly wild and untouched habitats. That’s caused us to become ever more inundated with synanthropes, which are bringing delight, chaos and danger to our doorstep. These species, so long dismissed, are forcing us to reckon with them—from the hundreds of thousands of raccoons in urban spaces that spread our refuse no matter how many "raccoon-proof" bags and bins we invent, to the invasive kudzu plants that grow a foot a day, enveloping houses, telephone poles, trees, and any other structures into their green abyss. Now, as urban spaces increasingly become wild spaces, we have a choice: continue to resist them by any means necessary, or take the opportunity to promote a more harmonious coexistence.
Through vivid storytelling, Our Wild Familiars brings to spectacular life the world’s most successful synanthropes, from bats, raccoons, and crows, to some of its weirdest, including the Giant Pacific Octopus. Acting as a guide to the curious, Werb reveals how the cracks in our millennia-long efforts to shield ourselves against the outside world might just lead us to a new and necessary balance with nature—or to an ever more savage future.
Critic reviews
“In Our Wild Familiars, Dan Werb invites us to explore the challenging new world of synanthropes, the plants and animals that now share our urban species with us. And explore it you should, if not to learn about these fascinating new relationships with nature, then simply to enjoy spectacular writing and thorough research. Highly recommended!”—Douglass Tallamy, New York Times bestselling author of Bringing Nature Home and Nature’s Best Hope
“Our Wild Familiars delivers a revealing tour of civilization’s hidden corners—the untamed niches in our human-dominated landscapes. The book is dazzling, astute, and desperately needed. At a time when the global environment hangs in the balance, Dan Werb offers a welcome message of hope. Look closely at our broken world and you’ll find resilience amid the wreckage.”—David Baron, author of The Beast in the Garden
“[A] buoyant overview of how animals adapt to urban spaces, framing cities as sites of biodiversity and evolutionary change . . . Enlightening and entertaining, this is a winning snapshot of wildlife that thrives in not-so-wild spaces.”—Publishers Weekly
“Our Wild Familiars delivers a revealing tour of civilization’s hidden corners—the untamed niches in our human-dominated landscapes. The book is dazzling, astute, and desperately needed. At a time when the global environment hangs in the balance, Dan Werb offers a welcome message of hope. Look closely at our broken world and you’ll find resilience amid the wreckage.”—David Baron, author of The Beast in the Garden
“[A] buoyant overview of how animals adapt to urban spaces, framing cities as sites of biodiversity and evolutionary change . . . Enlightening and entertaining, this is a winning snapshot of wildlife that thrives in not-so-wild spaces.”—Publishers Weekly
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