In 'Wildhood,' Scientists See Similarities In Adolescent Humans And Other Animals
Do you worry over a young-adult family member, just out of college or in-between jobs, who has moved back home? Or a teenager who faces bullying at school?
In Wildhood: The Epic Journey from Adolescence to Adulthood in Humans and Other Animals, Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers invite you to find wisdom in the ways that penguins, hyenas, whales, wolves, and other animals experience adolescence.
In their best-selling earlier book Natterson-Horowitz, an evolutionary biologist and professor of medicine, and Bowers, a science writer and animal behaviorist, examined ways in which they team up again to look across species at adolescence, that in-between stage of life when one is neither a young child nor a full adult. Puberty, they explain, is about physical development, whereas adolescence "combines body and behavior. It is about learning to think, act, and even feel like a mature member of a group." Because animals have been doing this for millions of years, we can take a lesson or two from them about the process.
