Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death

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For those of us with endless curiosity and persistence, Bernd Heinrich always offers, without striving, a fresh and original way of looking at the world. He roots his biology in the growing revelation of connectedness among all living things, and in this book, uses vultures, dung beetles, sawdust, and hummingbird moths, among many other things, to show that our world, chemically speaking, depends upon the reuse and transformation of once-living tissue in order to survive. Nothing is wasted, nothing is lost, and in this process, our planet has survived and evolved over millennia.Read this book and, true, you'll never again look on death in quite the same way. But more interestingly, you'll never again look on life in the same way either. Take insect metamorphosis - that transformation of various (but as Heinrich points out, by no means all) insect families. Many of us, having learned long ago about these "stages" of development, may be tempted to say, "Ho-hum, caterpillar to butterfly again."But no. Here is something new. And along the way to deeper understanding of this familiar biological process, Heinrich reminds us of ancient myths of human metamorphosis, which we so easily tend to dismiss as superstition. Suddenly these antiquated attempts at unraveling a mystery show themselves as metaphors, hints at a world we are just now beginning to explore. How brilliant of biologists and chemists to look beneath the surface, to wonder just how pupa turns into imago! It seems that the best of humans have always had a kind of Ariadne thread to the truth, and over the eons, learned to observe well and not to be afraid when they didn't understand what they were seeing.This is as good an answer to anti-evolutionist arguments as I can think of: Just because we, as individuals, do not understand something, does not mean that we, alone and together, cannot and someday will not understand. We may never unravel life entirely, but the journey for each of us, however long or short it lasts, will be unutterably rewarding.Start with Heinrich. And as a bonus, one of the best gifts of this book is a full, rich bibliography, so we can go on exploring.

Like all Bernd books, I very much enjoyed this effort. While the subjects were a bit eclectic the story lines of certain death processors (such as the dung beetles) was fascinating. A great read while camping in the Maine woods as it gives one a chance to pause and consider nature more deeply. Probably the most depressing feature is the fact we don't recycle the organic matter of humans in our culture though it is easy to understand indiscriminate placement of carcasses can lead to the spread of some disease and other less desirable realities. The work of the Compost School affiliated with University of Maine Cooperative Extension and many Maine State Agencies with using compost as a way to treat and contain some undesirable characteristics of disintegration of large animals could have added to the story line and created some more relevant and timely insight into the present situation of "recycling" animals.

What caught my attention was the author had a friend, who wanted to be recycled back to the earth. Not an easy thought in today's society. I have not read the whole book as I read it in spurts so that I can think about the deeper meaning. Will I finish the book, most definitely. But 2 weeks ago a skunk was hit by a vehicle and in less than 3 hours, 2 vultures had made him disappear. There are only small bits of fur to mark his passing. Reality check for most people who do not think about all the animals, or insects that inhabit this planet to make it a better place. Author is matter of fact writing so you don't have nightmares thinking about death and disposal of said bodies. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more the natural world.

You are a model citizen who recycle, compost the kitchen non-animal residue, hunts for a place to recycle plastic shopping bags, signs petitions to protect endangered species... You thought falsely that you really did all the good you could do for the planet and it's denizens. Of course you did good but there is more to do, much more. Here comes the hard part, maybe the most important part because it involved some of the most cherished set of belief's humans are infected with: religion and clean and neat which is about similar non-sense. Nature is not clean and neat. Someone even described it to have bloody teeth if I remember correctly. Here comes environmental Preacher Bernd Heinrich with his sermon: Life Everlasting. It is not from thousands of year when people knew less than today's first graders about the environment. This comes from today's latest scientific knowledge. Please read Bernd Heinrich latest, Life Everlasting. The one that moved me the most of his books, the one I learned the most from. I just found out that I wasn't alone in my, some would call, way out there thinking. You can do it, it's only 200 pages long and learn stuff about the environment no one told you about.

You say you've never thought about which critters feed on other critters when they die? Perhaps not surprising, but maybe you should. It turns out to be a fascinating subject and one that's explained as clearly and pleasantly as possible by the author, who is an ornithologist, biologist or some other kind of -ologist.An animal lover friend of mine who keeps a virtual zoo on his California estate routinely practices "sky burial" when one of his animals dies, a term neither he nor I had heard of prior to running across this book. It amounts to leaving the departed on the side of a hill somewhere. A few weeks later, little remains but the bones. The creature has been reunited with the earth, ecosystem, cosmos or whatever you choose to call it.This is not a mushy, New Agey piece of romantic puffle. It's a scientific look at a process that's as old as anything on earth and a very entertaining and informative one. Highly recommend it.

fab

Such a rich perspective on life and death. I was riveted and delighted throughout. I recommend this book

I enjoy reading Bernd Heinrich's books and have four of his books in my home library of which I have re-read several times. He is a wonderful writer of nature. His illustrations of which I believe he does the sketches himself are like charcoal drawings. I love that because to me its like a journal where one writes their love of nature and observes in such detail that the illustrations go side by side with the writing.The book is divided into five sections beginning with beetles that bury mice to the larger animals and he talks about the recycling of life and death. The next section is on birds, then trees and dung eaters, watery deaths e.g salmon. The final section is metamorphosis into a new life and lives.Heinrich's good friend was diagnosed with a severe illness and the conversation of death and burial surfaces in a letter from his friend. Heinrich is led to the subject of the web of life and death and our relationship to it. He does quote some Biblical passages in Ecclesiastes, and Genesis - we're probably all familiar with "dust that shall return to the earth and the spirit shall return to God"The book brings awareness of life's inter-connectness and cycles of life. This is a good read as are all his books. Collect his books and you won't be disappointed at all.

This book is of most interest to those which a primary interest in biology - if you know the Latin names of most insects - this is the book for you. My main interest, as an Historian, was less well served but still interesting - how early hominids evolved, how we are part of the “natural world” - would have liked more development of the intersections between nature, cosmology, and philosophy. A worthwhile read but …

Bernd Heinrich hat hier wieder ein hervorragendes Buch geschrieben. Der Tod wird als natürlichen Vorgang geschildert, und seine Rolle in der Tier- und Pflanzenwelt: die Lebewesen, die anfallende Kadaver verwerten, Der Grundgedanke ist, dass aus dem Tod eines Einzelwesens wieder neues Leben ermöglicht wird. . Entgegen den wahrscheinlichen Erwartungen potentieller Leser wird das Thema nicht makaber behandelt, sondern mit Würde und respektvoller Akzeptanz. Der Autor begleitet seinen Text , wie auch in seinen anderen Büchern, mit eigenen Illustrationen der Lebewesen, von denen er berichtet.Ein sehr empfehlenswertes Buch.