Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

Written by Mary Roach

Narrated by Mary Roach

One of Audible's Best of 2021
One of AudioFile Magazine's Best Audiobooks of 2021
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
#1 Los Angeles Times Bestseller
#1 Indie Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller
A Washington Post and Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of 2021
Longlisted for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Join "America’s funniest science writer" (Peter Carlson, Washington Post), Mary Roach, on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet.

What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.

Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter’s Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem―and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Sep 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781978680562

Mary Roach

Mary Roach is the New York Times-bestselling author of several popular science books including Packing for Mars and Gulp, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton prize. Grunt was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Science & Technology Book Prize. She has written for the Guardian, Wired, BBC Focus, GQ and Vogue. Her most recent book is Animal, Vegetable, Criminal.

Reviews for Fuzz

[jamesmikealhill · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A quick read on the vagrancies of wildlife and humans and the quest to outsmart each other.

[jill.mackin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mary Roach has been called "America's Funniest Science Writer." Her books are so well researched and have taught me a lot of quirky things about quite a few subjects:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.

She's my favorite nerd!

[boundtogetherforgood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have enjoyed other books by Mary Roach much more. The other two I have read were published in 2010 and 2008, so perhaps her style has changed.

[flowercreek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hang on for the rollercoaster ride this read takes your emotions on: first I'm laughing, then horrified, then fascinated, then disgusted. I'm now excited about a penguin I had never heard of that is (very likely) going to go extinct, blown away by humans nearly consistent ability to not interact well with non-human animals, and have a small amount of hope that we will stop being such blunderheads in some cases. Mary Roach - thank you for being persistent and putting it all out there in a readable/listenable way. P.S. Even the footnotes are fascinating and sometimes funny.

[steve02476 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The usual funny and entertaining Mary Roach. Not sure I’d call it “science writing” exactly, although there certainly is some science in it. Is “science humor” a genre? Fun to read, sometimes educational, but mostly filled with interesting tidbits that make you chuckle or want to share the anecdotes with others.

[librarycin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars

In this book, Mary Roach takes a look at wild animals and their “relationships” with humans, primarily breaking human laws (like attacking them, breaking into houses, stealing, etc.). She talks to and follows along with fish and wildlife officers, and other scientists that study these animals (oh, and trees and plants, too!) and their interactions with humans (and how humans are trying to mitigate these interactions).

I liked this. Despite being about animals, I didn’t like it as much as I like some of her other books, but it was still interesting. I don’t think there was as much humour in this one as some of her others, either, but there were bits of it, too.

[maggieflo_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mildly interesting stories about how human kind has tried to rid, tame or displace the world of all kinds of “pests”. These include bears in the US, monkeys in India, rabbits in New Zealand and countless birds. The problem is that animals are smart and quickly re adapt to the threat. Quite often when a vacuum is created through killing or displacement, another “pest” can move, creating the same problem.
I found the chapters repetitive and skimmed through many.

[sandydog1_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Roach found another fun topic, another wonderful piece of non fiction investigative reporting entertainment. Certainly as good as her previous works.

[greeniezona · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Most of what you expect to get from a Mary Roach book is here: a curious person investigating areas they don't know much about, conversations with experts in areas it perhaps had not previously occurred to you there would be experts in, and lots of engaging/funny anecdotes you will want to repeat to those around you.

That said, a lot of what humans do in the name of animal control is just depressing, and some of that wore on me after a while. Also, this felt less structured than Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, still my favorite book of hers that I've read, and I sometimes wondered where we were going and why.

[daumari · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

whoops this is overdue but hey, I have the day off so I can binge today.

Fuzz is the most recent of Mary Roach's monosyllabic popular science works, but the subtitle feels a little misleading because it's not so much nature breaking laws as being nuisances to humans (often when humans encroach on space previously occupied by wildlife). The opening chapter on wildlife forensics does fit the title, but then we go on to examine elephants and macaques in India, whether or not birds are pests (and the futile efforts to eradicate them in spaces which is then reversed when considering introduced mammals in New Zealand). Plants are not exempt: tree falls and poisonous compounds are also described here.

[troymcc-76795 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've read a lot of books about science for the layman and this book is marketed as one, but it's really not. It's more like the diary of an annoying writer who tags along with people who do unusual things. Sometimes I laughed but sometimes I cringed.

[dabble58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I would read a menu written by Mary Roach for a diner that served only breakfast. Her research, combined with a truly memorable dry wit and a lovely writing style, makes everything she writes worth the happy hours you will devote to reading it.
This book is somewhat less focused than some of her others, but I found it fascinating to learn about the ways we humans try to impose a “law” on nature- and about the humans who are charged with enforcing said law. In so many ways it is a completely ridiculous thought. In others, wildlife management is necessary, for their health and ours.
It’s tempting to quote Roach’s Bon mots and footnotes, many of which made me laugh out loud, but that would ruin the pleasure of reading along some fascinating nugget of information only to be slapped upside the head with something so ludicrous it leaves you gasping.
Anyone who even thinks of venturing into the wilds (even the alleyways of Aspen Colorado) should read this book. It will give you a picture of a world you’ve likely never thought about. As after all of Roach’s books, I feel educated, entertained, and just a little sore in the abdomen from giggling.

[othemts · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mary Roach has built a career on writing humorous science books that seem to come from the point of view of the 12-year-old who thinks gross things are cool.  In this book, Roach examines the conflicts between humans and wild animals.  As humans occupy more and more of the territory of wild animals, more of the critters are being seen as "pests" and a hard to deal with regardless of whether people take a human approach or attempt to cruelly exterminate them.

Roach investigates animal killers, bears raiding homes in Aspens, elephants, leopards, and macaques in India, gulls and rats in Vatican City, and various strategies for capturing, frightening, or biologically altering wild animals.  I didn't find this book as engaging as Roach's other books.  I also found it a little sad which doesn't jibe with Roach's jokes.

Favorite Passages:
"The upside, if it can be said there is one, is that natural selection favors the Fat Alberts. Aggressive bears are likely to be put down before they have much opportunity to pass on their genes. With a growing percentage of Fat Alberts, will coexistence eventually become a possibility? Or even a policy? Could we live with bears in the backyard the way we live with raccoons and skunks?"

In the words of an American rancher I met last year who is also, improbably, a mountain lion activist, “When you have livestock, there’s going to be some deadstock.”

Naturalists were the original biologists, and hunters and trappers were the original naturalists. No one knew more about a species—the wheres, whens, and whys of its movements through the land and the seasons, its relationships with prey and rivals and mates—than a person whose livelihood depended on that knowledge.

Here’s the thing with killing as a wildlife damage control tool. It isn’t just mean. It doesn’t—barring wholesale eradication—work.

Robinson had landed on the phenomenon of compensatory reproduction. Destroy a chunk of a population, and now there’s more food for the ones who remain. Through a variety of physiological responses—shorter gestation periods, larger broods, delayed implantation—a well-fed individual produces more offspring than one that’s struggling or just getting by. With ample food, both the well-fed parents and their well-stuffed young are more likely to survive and reproduce

[nmele_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is fascinating, funny and somehow fat though it clocks in at under 300 pages. It felt to me that at some point Mary Roach thought she had said enough but needed maybe 10,000 more words to make a book. I wish I had enjyed it a much as her previous books, but I didn't.

[schant-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I like Mary Roach's work, and this contains many fascinating facts and sympathetic interviews with workers in areas that might seem esoteric to many of us, but I found her trademark bright and breezy style somewhat jarring when the subject of the book is the wholesale slaughter of animals and birds who happen to impinge on humans. It made me feel uncomfortable.

[kalliegrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This wasn't quite what I was expecting, but it was still an enjoyable look at human/nature interactions around the world.
I grew up in the Absaroka/Beartooth wilderness in Montana, and encountered every type of wildlife during my childhood there. I remember coming home from taking the SAT in town (a two hour drive away) one December night and finding a grizzly on our back porch looking through the sliding glass door. He was already tagged so we just waited for him to scoot. The first few chapters of this book were pretty familiar to me because of that, but told with the wit of Mary Roach they are a strong start.
Some chapters focus on nature causing harm to humans, like trees falling on people, predators attacking, elephants trampling, monkeys biting. That's what I was expecting. Some chapters focused on problems that we really created for ourselves. Birds trying to eat (gasp) bird seed growing in the fields, invasive species of rodents and other critters throwing ecosystems out of whack. Those chapters, while still informative, were not quite the direction I was interested in exploring with this book. I was hoping we'd learn about more singularly odd animals, like the squirrel that regularly raided the candy store in Waterton, Alberta. Or those drunk monkeys in St. Kitts. I wanted more stories about rascally animals I hadn't heard of before, but I learned about new ways to kill the entire stoat population of New Zealand instead.

[formerenglishteacher · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is my third Mary Roach book. I don’t think there is a dud in the stable. She writes like the journalist she is but in a completely entertaining way. Her style is funny and very conversational. As a reader you get the feeling early on that you somehow know her. And don’t let her levity fool you. She’s among the best science writers out there. This book filled my head with all kinds of useless yet fun information about how humans get along with (or don’t) animals of all kinds. Maybe the most disgusting story Roach told was of her friend who picked up a discarded water bottle from the floor of her truck after a particularly dehydrating run. After noticing an unusual taste, the friend realized there was a decomposing mouse in what was left of the water. A call to an on-demand nurse told her she probably didn’t have to worry about disease (she didn’t swallow), but she might need a shrink. That story was one Roach told to illustrate how small an opening a mouse can get through. A mere listing of the dimensions of the opening isn’t good enough for Mary Roach. No, she has to come up with the grossest story she can dig up to make her point. That’s what makes her so good. I actually enjoyed “Stiff” more than this book, but I recommend “Fuzz” to anyone who wonders about how we’ve managed to live with these creatures for so long.

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Typical Roachian quirkiness here about animals and plants that get into trouble for just doing what they do. Funny and fascinating.

[jennybeast · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoy Mary Roach's work -- not so much because of her humor, although there were definitely some funny moments in this book, but because of her ability to explain big scientific problems and current work in a way that I find easy to understand.

This is kind of a tough book, in the sense that it is about the deaths of animals, often on a horrifically large scale, which I find distressing. What I appreciated about it is that it is equally a book about trying to find alternatives to the deaths of animals, and particularly a book that illustrates the utter futility of trying to exterminate "pests", as it has been proven ineffective over and over again. I love the way Roach brings history into the narrative, and the way she links it to current science and concerns. I was really excited about the portion of the book on New Zealand, as I have often wondered if there was a better solution to the mass poisoning of forests that they practice in order to try and preserve their native species.

Fascinating.

Advanced Readers's Copy provided by Edelweiss.

[norabelle414 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mary Roach investigates human-animal interactions of all kinds, from bears breaking into houses in Aspen, Colorado to Macaques stealing food in Delhi to gulls destroying the Pope’s flowers to the attempted eradication of invasive species in New Zealand.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read a Mary Roach book. Her writing is just as funny as ever, and her footnotes just as long. I love the way she leaves no question unanswered, even if it’s completely irrelevant to what she was just investigating. She’s a much more human-focused writer than many authors who write about animals, so she brought a bit of a new perspective, but also might leave a little to be desired for readers who are really into animals. I enjoyed how she pushes back against the usual western ideas that we should control all of nature (for example, many people believe that farmers should keep birds away from their plants because the birds will eat all of the crops, but investigations have shown that birds eat so many insects and rodents that they actually save more crops than they eat). I would say it’s a quick enjoyable read (boy does she know how to lead from one chapter to another) but not groundbreaking.

[sheila1957 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mary Roach takes a look at animals in their habitats where we have encroached to change the way they live and adapt to humans. She talks of how humans have introduced non-native animals into areas where there are no natural predators and how they are wiping out the native animals. She also talks of how we want animals removed from where we live but we want the natural beauty of the areas preserved.

I enjoyed this book. It was laugh out loud funny as she snarks her way through humans and the animal kingdom. All too often it is humans causing the problems. She goes into detail and history of human/animal interaction not just in the U.S. but also in India and New Zealand. While some of the ways to handle these interactions is the same no matter where you are, there are differences through countries.

She also talks about animals being accused of murder when it is a human who did it and an animal covered it up later (not intentionally but as it scavenged for food.) It was fun as she talked about bears and how humans do not follow the rules to safely disposed of their garbage. I also liked when she spoke of the bear going into a house, finding the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, and taking the eggs out without breaking them. The humans used the wrong doorknobs!

There is a lot of interesting stuff here. It may be science, but it is explained easily and humorously. This is not the science books we had in school. Worth the read--even your pre-teens and teens. will be able to understand and enjoy this book.

[cougargirl1967 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another informative and thought provoking book by the delightful Mary Roach. She is so thorough with her research and always having fun with her topics.

[xaverie_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I did like this book quite a bit, it just didn't fully coalesce into the level of quality I've read from other non-fiction authors this year.

[ladycato · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's been awhile since I read one of Mary Roach's books, and reading Fuzz reminds me that I should do so more often. Her curious, wry tone makes all subjects approachable. This book, addressing everything from animal attacks carnivorous and mischievous to toxic plants to beans bloating up where they ought not was a fun, breezy read. This is a book I'll keep on my shelf for future research needs.

[judygibson-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A little more miscellaneous than other books of hers I've read. Fair coverage of a wide range of animal-human conflicts.

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Remove the dust jacket from Mary Roach's newest book and look at the spine. You'll see that it reads "ROACH FUZZ," which, accident or not, suggests the sense of humor that has made her books bestsellers.

In “Fuzz” (2021) Roach turns her attention to the eternal struggle of humans versus animals, or as her subtitle puts it, "When Nature Breaks the Law." Some animals kill and even eat people. Rats and other pests eat crops. Birds get in the way of planes and rockets. She doesn't tackle mosquito bites or the fly in your soup, but she travels the world to explore more significant points of conflict.

In their quest for easy food, bears wander into homes and supermarkets, and this problem sends her to the Canadian Rockies. Elephants kill a lot more people than bears or lions do, so Roach goes to India to see attempts at a solution. At the Vatican she explores what's being done, in a very Christian way, to battle bothersome gulls and rats.

Animal behavior interests Roach, but she is even more interested in how scientists and others are trying to solve these problems without going to the extreme of killing troublesome animals. Scientists, for example, are looking for a way to get mice to produce only male babies. And what might the unintended consequences be if these experiments prove successful? She asks about that, too.

Scarecrows don't really work, or at least not for long. Smart birds soon realize that a scarecrow means food, so it actually attracts them. What will scare them away? Noise? Motion? Dead birds? Scientists are looking into all these things.

Roach is as much a humorist as she is a science writer, and her books never fail to be as fun as they are informative. Readers, in fact, may be more likely to take away odd bits of amusing trivia from “Fuzz” than anything else. (Much of this is to found in footnotes, so don't ignore them.) For example:

There is such a thing as a chicken gun, but it's not for shooting chickens. Rather it's for shooting supermarket chickens at plane engines to test the effects of bird strikes.

As dangerous as elephants can be when they're sober, they are even more dangerous when drunk. And they like to get drunk.

The Vatican is the only nation in the world where no one has ever been born.

When you were a kid you probably came across books with titles like “Science Can Be Fun.” Mary Roach proves again and again that that is true.

[albertgoldfain · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

About as good a book possible on a topic that never really held my interest: the variety of confrontation points between humans and wildlife. The writing is journalistic, without positive or negative "spin" on either symbiotic adaptations or adversarial confrontations between us and the wild. Roach's humor shines through...there is gold in some of the footnotes...so do read those.

[aliceap-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mary Roach will forever be linked in my mind to my time as a Library Sciences student because I used her book Stiff to create my very first (and only) book trailer for an assignment. And that marked the beginning of my obsessive interest in death culture and funerary practices. So when I saw that she was coming out with a new nonfiction book focusing on animals who are up to no good you know I had to check that book out. Now that makes it sound like it's a book full of animal hijinks when in actuality this is more about the strained relationship between people and wild animals. She opens the book with a brief history of legal battles fought against wild animals (yes, this is real). A large chunk of the complaints come from farmers (this is true of the past as well) because wild animals like rats and birds are known to consume large quantities of crops. However, there are also those animals like bears and cougars that wander into populated areas looking for food (open garbage cans being like a buffet) and what started out as foraging quickly turns into defending of resources...and oftentimes the destruction of the wild animal. This is a fascinating and well-researched look into conservationism and the problems caused by human-wildlife conflict. It's a subtopic of conservationism that I hadn't really given much thought to but Roach certainly gives the reader plenty to ponder.

[msf59 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had not read Mary Roach in a few years, so I was delighted that her new book dealt with nature colliding with humanity. A subject that fascinates and horrifies me. There is her usual humor here but she mostly takes an informative dive into many areas, where animals and even trees, cross deadly paths with people. She covers bears, mountain lions, deer, elephants, albatross, macaques and mice. She also offers some solutions, for a better co-existence with this wildlife. A good, solid read and Roach does a fine job narrating the audiobook.

[wdwilson3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mary Roach consistently produces entertaining fact-based books – books that your learn from and have a few chuckles in the process. Not many authors can do that. Only Bill Bryson comes to mind, actually. In this instance, she investigates the confrontation between mankind and the natural world. More specifically, the way humans deal with the often troublesome, pesky relations with animals and birds. Loosely linked reports of mankind's issues with bears, gulls, rodents, leopards, elephants, and many others, pose the practical and ethical problems that scientists face in understanding how to cope with the interface. I learned things and I had a good time.