The Creatures’ Guide to Caring

‘Reading this book is like sitting at a dinner table with your smartest, funniest friend. Elizabeth Preston’s writing shimmers with wit, charisma, and infectious delight, as she shows how the act of caretaking connects us to the rest of the animal kingdom.’ Ed Yong

What unites us with frogs ferrying tadpoles on their backs, beetles regurgitating food into the mouths of their larvae, or a shorebird luring a predator away from her nest by pretending her wing is broken? Creatures around the world have strategies to keep their offspring alive that are varied and surprising — and often familiar.

In this compelling and entertaining study, science journalist Elizabeth Preston explores the biology, brain circuitry, and behaviours we share with species across the animal kingdom that care for young. In the field and in the lab, readers will also meet scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding these animals, often while juggling families of their own.

Alongside animal parents that range from lonely octopuses to warfare-waging mongooses, we’ll encounter our own species in a new way. Elizabeth Preston argues that Homo sapiens’ history of caring for children cooperatively has left a legacy in all of us, parents and non-parents alike, and is the basis for our caring human society.