This "fact-filled and amusing trek through nature's dark side" (Kirkus
Reviews) reveals the fascinating, weird, and often perverted ways that
Mother Nature fends only for herself.It may be a wonderful world, but as
Dan Riskin (host of the Animal Planet's TV show Monsters Inside Me)
explains, it's also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At
every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use
our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother
Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our tour guide through the
natural world at its most gloriously ruthless. Using the seven deadly
sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that
illuminate how brutal nature can truly be. From slothful worms that hide
in your body for up to thirty years to wrathful snails with poisonous
harpoons that can kill you in less than five minutes to lustful ducks
that have orgasms faster than you can blink, these fascinating accounts
reveal the candid truth about "gentle" Mother Nature's true colors.
Riskin's passion for the strange and his enthusiastic expertise bring
Earth's most fascinating fauna and flora into vivid focus. Through his
adventures--which include sliding on his back through a thick soup of
bat guano just to get face-to-face with a vampire bat, befriending a
parasitic maggot that has taken root in his head, and coming to grips
with having offspring of his own--Riskin makes unexpected discoveries
not just about the world all around us but also about the ways this
brutal world has shaped us as humans and what our responsibilities are
to this terrible, wonderful planet we call home.
