Professor Penguin

Meet 'Bill Bryson in Antarctica' in this engaging book by one of the world's authority on penguins.Part memoir, partly the research of a field biologist, Professor Penguin could be called How Penguins Shaped My Life . Based on journals kept during Davis s years of working with penguins in the wild, the story takes readers to remote locations: Antarctica, the Galapagos, the deserts of Chile and Peru, the Falkland Islands, the wild coasts of Argentina and South Africa, and New Zealand. Davis, a world authority on penguins, reveals that these box-office favourites are not the cute mate for life animals we ve been led to believe. He also reveals that penguins are a lot like humans sometimes disturbingly so when it comes to their basic needs: sex, food, shelter, marriage, family and travel. Over the years that Davis studies penguins, he realises that they are far more complex and nuanced than he imagines at his first encounter. 'They really don t deserve to be seen as so black and white. He expertly marries scientific knowledge with his own anecdotes told with humour, hard-earned knowledge and insight. He also includes stories about those who have helped advance our knowledge of penguins other 'Professor Penguins'. Implicit throughout is Davis s philosophy the more we learn about the natural world, and specifically penguins, the more we learn about ourselves. And he asks: Is the isolation of Antarctica sufficient to protect penguins from us?