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The exultant arkA Pictorial Tour of Animal PleasureJonaThan BalcoMBe

“it is rare to find a scientist writing with such delight about, of all things, joy in the animal world! i have rarely experienced such pleasure in reading a book. i recommend it to all animal lovers, and even challenge a few skeptics, whose minds may be changed by this extraordinary work.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of When Elephants Weep

Nature documentaries often depict animal life as a grim struggle for survival, but this visually stunning book opens our eyes to a dif-ferent, more scientifically up-to-date way of looking at the animal kingdom. In more than one hundred striking images, The Exultant Ark celebrates the full range of animal experience with dramatic por-traits of animal pleasure ranging from the charismatic and familiar to the obscure and bizarre. These photographs, windows onto the inner lives of pleasure seekers, show two polar bears engaged in a bout of wrestling, hoary marmots taking time for a game of chase, Japanese macaques enjoying a soak in a hot spring, a young bull elk sticking out his tongue to catch snowflakes, and many other amuse-ments. Biologist and best-selling author Jonathan Balcombe is our guide through the images, interpreting them within the scientific context of what is known about animal behavior. In the end, old atti-tudes fall away as we gain a heightened sense of animal individual-ity and sentience, and of the pleasures of life on planet Earth.

Jonathan Balcombe is formerly Senior Research Scientist at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. His books include Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals, and Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good.

225 pages, 8-1/2 x 10”, 132 color illustrationsNatural History/Animal Behavior/PhotographyWorld$34.95 cloth 978-0-520-26024-5

Forthcoming in mAY

A dog being groomed by langurs, Rajasthan, India. Photo by Cyril Russo/Minden Pictures.

Giraffes and their calf, Bronx Zoo, New York. Photo by Vicki Puluso.