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The Tapir’s\u00a0Morning Bath\nSolving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest<\/h3>\n
The Tapir’s\u00a0Morning Bath<\/p>\n
Praise<\/strong><\/p>\n The New York Times Book Review<\/i>\u00a0named\u00a0Tapir<\/em>\u00a0a Notable Book of 2001 and said, “Royte is a remarkable writer. Her book is a charmer; I loved it.”<\/p>\n E.O. WILSON<\/a>\u00a0liked Elizabeth’s book. This is what he said about it: “With the eye of an anthropologist and a journalist’s skills, Royte penetrates the world of the tropical biologists to explain their culture, passion, and above all their uniquely valuable work. As an exact and endearing chronicle, this book will have enduring value.”\u00a0BILL MCKIBBEN<\/a>\u00a0added that\u00a0The Tapir’s Morning Bath<\/i>“is as droll as it is moving, as fascinating as it is lighthearted. Equal parts\u00a0GERALD DURRELL<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Scientific American<\/i>, it deserves a wide audience.”<\/p>\n The New Yorker<\/em>: “In this mischievous report on Barro Colorado Island, a six-square-mile nature preserve in the middle of the Panama Canal, the tropical biologists who study the rain forest become themselves subjects for inspection and analysis. The author is a journalist, not a scientist, but she gamely tags along with researchers as they pursue spider-monkey dung and doctoral degrees, while stealthily collecting her own data on\u00a0Homo academicus<\/i>\u00a0and its mating habits in the wild. Inevitably, though, she’s distracted from the humans by the island’s more exotic species: iridescent bees as big as gumballs and \u00a0enterprising bats who construct tents out of heliconia leaves. By turns comic and poetic, the book delivers the pleasures of a long, meandering excursion, in which the act of observing is its own reward.”<\/p>\n About the Book<\/strong><\/p>\n One hundred and fifty years ago Charles Darwin asked how a rain forest could contain so many species: “What explains the riot?” The same question still occupies the scientists who toil on Panama’s Barro Colorado Island. Tropical and steamy, these six square miles comprise the best-studied rain forest in the world, a locus of scientific activity since 1923. In\u00a0The Tapir’s Morning Bath<\/i>, Elizabeth Royte weaves together her own adventures on Barro Colorado with tales of researchers struggling to parse the intricate workings of the rain forest, the most complicated natural system on the planet. Through the lens of the field station, she also traces the history of modern biology from its earliest days of collection and classification through the decline of the naturalist to the days of intense niche specialization and rigorous scientific quantification. As Royte counts seeds and sorts insects, collects monkey dung and radiotracks bats, she begins to wonder: what is the point of such arcane studies? The world over, rain forests are rapidly disappearing and species are going extinct. While humanizing the scientists in the field, she explores the tension between their research and the reality of a world that may not have time for the answers.<\/p>\n Hardcover\u00a0328 pages\u00a0Buy the book<\/a><\/p>\n Softcover (pictured)\u00a0336 pages\u00a0Buy the book<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Tapir’s\u00a0Morning Bath Solving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest Praise The New York Times Book Review\u00a0named\u00a0Tapir\u00a0a Notable Book of 2001 and said, “Royte is a remarkable writer. Her book is a charmer; I loved it.” E.O. WILSON\u00a0liked Elizabeth’s book. This is what he said about it: “With the eye of an anthropologist … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-73","page","type-page","status-publish"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.royte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.royte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.royte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.royte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.royte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.royte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151,"href":"https:\/\/www.royte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/73\/revisions\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.royte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}