Basra contributed substantially to al-Jahiz's intellectual development. It was there that he first went to school – studying under some of the most eminent scholars of Islam. Even after he migrated to Baghdad -attracted by the greater scope of the capital. he never lost his affection for his home; after some 50 years in Baghdad, he returned to Basra, and it was there that he died. According to legend he was crushed to death by a collapsing pile of books in the year 868.

There is a lot to cover here and obviously not every animal can be covered in detail so there is some disappointment when the animal you want to hear about is glossed over (I could have used way more birds and cephalopods.) Some sections are stronger than others and while I don't mind the insertion of Grice's personal experience there were a couple occasions where it felt unnecessary to the topic although I would say that the majority of his transitions are really good. An Immense World by Ed Yong is an epic exploration of the unique “umwelt” of other creatures, from tree hoppers to singing frogs, who sense the world in vastly different ways to humans. It is also a plea for greater empathy with other species.Yong has interviewed all kinds of scientists during his career writing for the Atlantic magazine but sensory biologists are his favourite.

A celebration of people all shapes and sizes, and of the beauty and mystery of our Earth.-- Booklist Ok, that is an extreme example, and there is only one other similar case mentioned in the book of a slightly younger woman who received twice as many stings and similarly died, but still in theory you could end up being killed by ants!i'm not sure what else i have to say about this book. i loved it and i am horrified by it and greg wrote a review of it here which is not to say that grice is an alarmist by any means. he takes great pains to illustrate the rarity of death by poisonous or aggressive animal (in certain parts of the world, like where i live, anyway), and in fact is insistent upon implicating willful or ignorant humans in situations that ended badly due to said willfulness or ignorance. the history of nature writing and reporting is fraught with bias, with animals anthropomorphized to meet some human standard of evil- or where the animal is exculpated wrongfully, the aggression dismissed as an aberration despite its abundant presence in the history of that species' interactions with man- both approaches dismissing the essential nature of, well, wild nature, and also discounting the inevitable miscommunication and confusion involved when humans tangle with wild things. our understanding is limited to what we know- what that charging bear knows and perceives as a threat may be totally different. In 2006, a visitor to the Kiev Zoo proclaimed, 'God will save me, if he exists,' and entered the lion enclosure, where a lioness instantly sliced his carotid artery.