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| Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild | 
| Author: Susan Mccarthy
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $0.01
You Save: $13.94 (100%)
New (32) from $0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 807835
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0060934840
Dewey Decimal Number: 591.514
EAN: 9780060934842
ASIN: 0060934840
Publication Date: August 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New, unread, unused and in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages, may have a remainder mark.
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 10 | | NEXT » |
 Anecdotal and scrupulously accurate November 17, 2007
If you are interested in learning, teaching, training, animals, or stories, this is your book.
Reading about how animals learn lets one suddenly see the subject from a different perspective, and discover what one knew all along. For example, when McCarthy explains the various ways in which animals learn by imitation, one realizes how little we learn in classrooms taking notes, and how much by imitation.
Anyone who teaches or trains can profit from the parts about how animals teach their offspring and about how wildlife rehabilitators teach orphaned animals. It turns out that animals learn best when copying another beginner of their own kind, rather than some incomprehensibly competent alien creature.
Finally, what is most charming about this book is that it tells true stories about animals. The only minds besides our own that we will ever know are those of animals, and this books gives us glimpses into them. Often these glimpses make one laugh with astonished delight. Sometimes, they give one the little shiver that old fairy tales do: the adolescent cuckoo hearing another cuckoo's cry and knowing suddenly that the creatures who raised him are not its kind; the mother lion and the baby gazelle trying and failing to be a family.
This is the kind of book that you follow family members around reading bits from it aloud till they take it from you and start reading it, and then follow you around reading bits of it aloud.
 She read the scholarly journals, so you don't have to July 26, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book consists of literally hundreds of vignettes. McCarthy has read widely in the literature on animal behavior and learning, and she summarizes the findings here. One after another. After another.
Each summary is one or two pages, and they are grouped into chapters by the lessons they tell (identifying your species, communication, and so forth). Many of these summaries involve great stories or fascinating anecdotes. But the organization of the book makes these whole lesser than the sum. It is mind-numbing to read these vignettes one after another. Instead, I found myself reading this book, putting it away for a while, and then coming back. It would be a good book to bring on a bus or train if you commute that way.
Each vignette is well-written. McCarthy also likes making witty asides, and these are generally quite funny. So this is an enjoyable way to take your medicine - - it's certainly easier than reading the academic literature in the journals!
Her footnotes were hilarious! April 18, 2005
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I love books about animals. Love all the little trivia. Susan is an excellent, engaging writer - nothing boring or pompous about her style. If I could have another sister, I'd sure pick her. Obviously, she is strong, independant, positive, caring and her own woman who appears to be hugely happy in living a GOOD LIFE. Most of all, loved her crazy little footnotes - uplifting and silly - and sometimes passages in the book also shared this humor. I get tired of stodgy, know-it-all types and Susan surely ISN'T one. She doesn't come across as the snotty "expert". That is appreciated! The only downside for me was in not knowing a portion of the animals she was writing about. Some were pretty obscure for this gal from Kenosha, WI. Great job to Susan. You're a credit to YOUR species.
She wades through the mundane - so we don't have to! February 18, 2005
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a book I took out from the library, couldn't quite finish before it was due and found it so fun that I logged onto Amazon and bought my OWN copy! I found Ms. McCarthy's writing buoyant in a genre that seems to arc gracelessly from pedantic to smarmy and back again. Here's an author who has done we animal lovers a great service in wading through piles of research papers, theses, and obscure writings - filtering through, collecting the gems. She seems to have made a life's work out of talking about animals with those who spend a lot of time with them (researchers, zookeepers, breeders, etc). All without being judgmental. Thus we are allowed to enjoy the observed grace and earthy dignity of the animals as they make they ways through their lives, whatever their circumstances. There are those who adopt an in-your-face method of alerting all to their opinions, and then there is this unique book that allows us to glean an ethic that beckons from in between the lines. It's deceptively light tone only just softens a deep and abiding respect. And her asides crack me up.
 Bunch of too short anecdotes January 14, 2005
3 out of 10 found this review helpful
As was described in other reviews, This book in big, unorganized heap of too short anecdotes (half page), which become boring very quickly. One of worst kind of popular science book. May be her talent are better suited for other fields.
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Wildlife, nature and the Environment
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