Book cover of What the Chicken Knows

Book description

A charming and eye-opening exploration of the special relationship between humans and chickens from Sy Montgomery, "one of our finest chroniclers of the natural world" (The New York Times).

For more than two decades, Sy Montgomery-whose The Soul of an Octopus was a National Book Award finalist-has kept a flock…

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Why read it?

1 author picked What the Chicken Knows as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Chickens are ubiquitous—they outnumber humans by a ratio of more than 3-to-1—yet they’re one of the world’s most underestimated and misunderstood creatures.

Did you know that hens communicate with at least twenty-four distinct calls that convey specific information, like what type of predator is approaching and how quickly? Or that they will choose not to peck a button that rewards them with food if it means they'll get more food later?

Through personal stories and scientific studies, Sy Montgomery pieces together a new picture of the world’s most common birds as surprisingly complex and intelligent—and, one might argue,…

If you love What the Chicken Knows...

Book cover of What's Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body's Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner

What's Gotten Into You by Dan Levitt,

What's Gotten Into You is a wondrous, wildly ambitious, and vastly entertaining work of popular science that tells the awe-inspiring story of the elements that make up the human body, and how these building blocks of life travelled billions of miles and across billions of years to make us who…

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