Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)

Charles Foster. (2016). Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide. Unabridged Books on Tape.

Charles Foster. 2016. Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide. Books on Tape.

Charles Foster, Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide. Books on Tape, 2016.

Charles Foster. Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide. Unabridged Books on Tape, 2016.

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Being a Beast

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1. • role: Author
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   • bioText: Charles Foster is a Fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford. He is a qualified veterinarian, teaches medical law and ethics, and is a practicing barrister. Much of his life has been spent on expeditions: he has run a 150-mile race in the Sahara, skied to the North Pole, and suffered injuries in many desolate and beautiful landscapes. He has written on travel, evolutionary biology, natural history, anthropology, and philosophy.
   • name: Charles Foster
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   • bioText: Charles Foster is a Fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford. He is a qualified veterinarian, teaches medical law and ethics, and is a practicing barrister. Much of his life has been spent on expeditions: he has run a 150-mile race in the Sahara, skied to the North Pole, and suffered injuries in many desolate and beautiful landscapes. He has written on travel, evolutionary biology, natural history, anthropology, and philosophy.
   • name: Charles Foster

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2016-06-21T00:00:00-04:00

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title

Being a Beast

fullDescription

A passionate naturalist explores what it’s really like to be an animal―by living like them

How can we ever be sure that we really know the other? To test the limits of our ability to inhabit lives that are not our own, Charles Foster set out to know the ultimate other: the non-humans, the beasts. And to do that, he tried to be like them, choosing a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer, and a swift. He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a sett in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes. He caught fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter; rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox; was hunted by bloodhounds as a red deer, nearly dying in the snow. And he followed the swifts on their migration route over the Strait of Gibraltar, discovering himself to be strangely connected to the birds.
A lyrical, intimate, and completely radical look at the life of animals―human and other―Being a Beast mingles neuroscience and psychology, nature writing and memoir to cross the boundaries separating the species. It is an extraordinary journey full of thrills and surprises, humor and joy. And, ultimately, it is an inquiry into the human experience in our world, carried out by exploring the full range of the life around us.

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1. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content: Consciousness hasn't been proven in animals, but Charles Foster has tried to approximate it with his immersive experiences in wildness. He's sampled the lives of badgers, otters, foxes, red deer, and swifts and here shares his thoughts. Foster's narration is often amusing, delivered with self-mockery in his British accent. For example, he likens the tastes of worms that make up most of a badger's diet to wines and recalls being sneered at by a vole while attempting fox-like behavior. At other times, he waxes philosophical on the way animals "inhabit the instant" and on the unfair methods hunters use to kill deer. Listeners may not get a full understanding of being a beast, as the title promises, but the author's insights are entertaining and thoughtful. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     May 16, 2016
     "Nature writing has generally been about humans striding colonially around," writes Foster, a qualified veterinarian and research fellow at Oxford University. He instead opts for the four-legged approach, writing about nature through his experience mimicking the lifestyles of badgers, otters, foxes, red deer, and swifts. His book is an extraordinary account of his time spent traversing the forest near his home, digging into the earth to build an underground sett to live in as a badger (which also involved eating lots of earthworms), enlisting six children to help replicate the otter's use of dung to mark territory (and the otter's extraordinary metabolic rate), and substituting himself in lieu of a deer being hunted by hounds. In lesser hands this could come off as trite or patronizing, but Foster is quick to acknowledge his shortcomings and errors in perspective regarding his project, and he projects a healthy sense of humor; his account of encountering a police officer while attempting to recreate a fox's experience by sleeping next to a busy road is particularly rich. This approach, along with his willingness to address and avoid the temptation for anthropomorphism, makes his book interesting and informative.

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173

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A passionate naturalist explores what it’s really like to be an animal―by living like them

How can we ever be sure that we really know the other? To test the limits of our ability to inhabit lives that are not our own, Charles Foster set out to know the ultimate other: the non-humans, the beasts. And to do that, he tried to be like them, choosing a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer, and a swift. He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a sett in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes. He caught fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter; rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox; was hunted by bloodhounds as a red deer, nearly dying in the snow. And he followed the swifts on their migration route over the Strait of Gibraltar, discovering himself to be strangely connected to the birds.
A lyrical, intimate, and completely radical look at the life of...

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Books on Tape

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1. • code: NAT010000
   • description: Nature / Ecology
2. • code: NAT024000
   • description: Nature / Essays
3. • code: NAT037000
   • description: Nature / Animals / Wildlife