Virginia Morell has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is Animal Wise.
Animal Wise
Summary
Noted science writer Virginia Morell explores the frontiers of research on animal cognition and emotion, offering a surprising and moving exploration into the hearts and minds of wild and domesticated animals. Did you know that ants teach, earthworms make decisions, rats love to be tickled, and chimps grieve? Did you know that some dogs have thousand-word vocabularies and that birds practice songs in their sleep? That crows improvise tools, blue jays plan ahead, and moths remember living as caterpillars? Animal Wise takes us on a dazzling odyssey into the inner world of animals, from ants to elephants to wolves, and from sharp-shooting archerfish to pods of dolphins that rumble like rival street gangs. With 30 years of experience covering the sciences, Morell uses her formidable gifts as a story-teller to transport us to field sites and laboratories around the world, introducing us to pioneering animal-cognition researchers and their surprisingly intelligent and sensitive subjects. She explores how this rapidly evolving, controversial field has only recently overturned old notions about why animals behave as they do. She probes the moral and ethical dilemmas of recognizing that even "lesser animals" have cognitive abilities such as memory, feelings, personality, and self-awareness - traits that many in the 20th century felt were unique to human beings. By standing behaviorism on its head, Morell brings the world of nature brilliantly alive in a nuanced, deeply felt appreciation of the human-animal bond, and she shares her admiration for the men and women who have simultaneously chipped away at what we think makes us distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities come from.
©2013 Virginia Morell (P)2013 Random House Audio
Becoming a Marine Biologist
Summary
Choosing a profession begins with imagining yourself in a career. Now New York Times best-selling author Virginia Morell dives into the adventures of a marine biologist team, allowing a much needed, in-depth look into the field. What’s it like to be a marine biologist? And how does one build a career in this field that has great environmental impact? For the last two decades, Robin Baird has been the leading expert on 25 species of the whales and dolphins of Hawaii. He and his team have discovered that many of the species have resident populations (they are not simply passing through the islands), and these residents are affected by human activities. For most young people, Baird’s trajectory may seem an impossible dream. Indeed, many of the researchers Virginia Morell met and interviewed didn’t set out to become marine biologists or to study marine mammals. Most of them had a lifelong passion for the natural world and by volunteering found themselves drawn to working with marine life or some other aspect of the sea. Morell tells their stories, and many others, here. Becoming a Marine Biologist explores how successful marine biologists curated their careers and what they suggest to young people today who feel called to protect our oceans by studying the sea and its inhabitants.
©2019 Virginia Morell (P)2019 Simon & Schuster