Sy Montgomery has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 28 ratings. The most-rated is Soul of an Octopus.
Soul of an Octopus
Summary
Sy Montgomery's popular 2011 Orion magazine piece, "Deep Intellect", about her friendship with a sensitive, sweet-natured octopus named Athena and the grief she felt at her death, went viral, indicating the widespread fascination with these mysterious, almost alien-like creatures. Since then Sy has practiced true immersion journalism, from New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, pursuing these wild, solitary shape-shifters. Octopuses have varied personalities and intelligence they show in myriad ways: endless trickery to escape enclosures and get food; jetting water playfully to bounce objects like balls; and evading caretakers by using a scoop net as a trampoline and running around the floor on eight arms. But with a beak like a parrot, venom like a snake, and a tongue covered with teeth, how can such a being know anything? And what sort of thoughts could it think? The intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees was only recently accepted by scientists, who now are establishing the intelligence of the octopus, watching them solve problems and deciphering the meaning of their color-changing camouflage techniques. Montgomery chronicles this growing appreciation of the octopus, but also tells a love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about consciousness and the meeting of two very different minds.
©2015 Recorded by arrangement with Atria, a Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc. (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
How to Be a Good Creature
Summary
Understanding someone who belongs to another species can be transformative. No one knows this better than author, naturalist, and adventurer Sy Montgomery. To research her books, Sy has traveled the world and encountered some of the planet's rarest and most beautiful animals. From tarantulas to tigers, Sy's life continually intersects with and is informed by the creatures she meets. This restorative memoir reflects on the personalities and quirks of 13 animals - Sy's friends - and the truths revealed by their grace. It also explores vast themes: the otherness and sameness of people and animals; the various ways we learn to love and become empathetic; how we find our passion; how we create our families; coping with loss and despair; gratitude; forgiveness; and most of all, how to be a good creature in the world.
©2018 Sy Montgomery (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind
Summary
Extraordinary new insights into the minds and lives of our fellow creatures from two of the world's top animal authors, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Sy Montgomery. Tamed and Untamed - a collection of essays penned by two of the world's most celebrated animal writers, Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas - explores the minds, lives, and mysteries of animals as diverse as snails, house cats, hawks, sharks, dogs, lions, and even octopuses. Drawing on stories of animals both wild and domestic, the two authors, also best friends, created this book to put humans back into the animal world. The more we learn about what other animals think and do, they explain, the more we understand ourselves as animals, too. Writes Montgomery, "The list of attributes once thought to be unique to our species - from using tools to waging war - is not only rapidly shrinking, but starting to sound less and less impressive when we compare them with other animals' powers." With humor, empathy, and introspection, Montgomery and Thomas look into the lives of all kinds of creatures - from man's best friend to the great white shark - and examine the ways we connect with our fellow species. Both authors have devoted their lives to sharing the animal kingdom's magic with others, and their combined wisdom is an indispensable contribution to the field of animal literature.
©2017 Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (P)2017 Chelsea Green Publishing
The Hummingbirds' Gift
Summary
From the beloved New York Times best-selling author of the “fascinating...entertaining” (The Daily Beast) National Book Award finalist The Soul of an Octopus, a charmingly perfect gem of a book about the most exquisite and extraordinary of winged creatures - hummingbirds. As one of the most beautiful and intriguing birds found in nature, hummingbirds fascinate people around the world. The lightest birds in the sky, hummingbirds are capable of incredible feats, such as flying backwards, diving at speeds of 61 MPH, and beating their wings more than 60 times a second. Miraculous creatures, they are also incredibly vulnerable when they first emerge from their eggs. That’s where Brenda Sherburn comes in. With tenderness and patience, she rescues abandoned hummingbirds and nurses them back to health until they can fly away and live in the wild. In The Hummingbird’s Gift, the extraordinary care that Brenda provides her peanut-sized patients is revealed and, in the process, shows us just how truly amazing hummingbirds are. With Sy Montgomery’s signature “joyful passion” (Library Journal), and including 16 pages of gorgeous color photos, this inspiring little book celebrates the profound gift that hummingbirds are to our planet and is the ultimate gift for nature lovers and bird watchers everywhere.
©2021 Sy Montgomery (P)2021 Simon & Schuster Audio