Eat, Poop, Die
How Animals Make Our World
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
NAMED A TOP-TEN BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
A “fascinating” exploration (Elizabeth Kolbert) of how ecosystems are sculpted and sustained by animals eating, pooping, and dying—and how these fundamental functions could help save us from climate catastrophe.
If forests are the lungs of the planet, then animals migrating across oceans, streams, and mountains—eating, pooping, and dying along the way—are its heart and arteries, pumping nitrogen and phosphorus from deep-sea gorges up to mountain peaks, from the Arctic to the Caribbean. Without this conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients, the world would look very different.
The dynamics that shape our physical world—atmospheric chemistry, geothermal forces, plate tectonics, and erosion through wind and rain—have been explored for decades. But the effects on local ecosystems of less glamorous forces—rotting carcasses and deposited feces—as well as their impact on the global climate cycle, have been largely overlooked. The simple truth is that pooping and peeing are daily rituals for almost all animals, the ellipses of ecology that flow through life. We eat, we poop, and we die.
From the volcanoes of Iceland to the tropical waters of Hawaii, the great plains of the American heartland, and beyond, Eat, Poop, Die, “compulsively readable” (Shelby Van Pelt), takes readers on an exhilarating and enlightening global adventure, revealing the remarkable ways in which the most basic biological activities of animals make and remake the world—and how a deeper understanding of these cycles provides us with opportunities to undo the environmental damage humanity has wrought on the planet we call home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this enjoyable study, biologist Roman (Listed) explores the vital roles animals play in ecosystems across the globe. In the forests of northwestern North America, Roman explains, trees next to salmon-filled streams grow faster than their counterparts because salmon carry nutrients from the ocean as they swim inland, where bears consume them and deposit those nutrients in the soil through their urine, fostering the growth of plants that, by providing shade, keep the stream cool and conducive to salmon reproduction. Roman also describes how whales redistribute nutrients in the ocean by feasting in deep waters and expelling the remains near the surface, and how parrotfish "build" beaches by chewing up coral and limestone and excreting it as sand. Surveying the positive and negative ways humans influence their environment, Roman notes that conservationist efforts to reintroduce sea otters to Southeast Alaska revived the region's kelp forests because the otters ate the urchins that had overrun the kelp. Animal farming, on the other hand, has been disastrous, with liquid manure from factory farms polluting groundwater and contributing to acid rain. The prose is pleasantly lighthearted ("Does a bear crap in the woods? Sometimes") and the big-picture perspective illuminates the intricate ways organisms interact to shape their environments. This playful pop science outing satisfies. Photos.
