Richly Deserved Love Letters to Misconstrued Wild Neighbors
Jason Bittel's book tells us about our wild neighbors and why they need respect.
Updated May 18, 2026 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
A vast majority of people live among or near a wide array of wild neighbors without even knowing they're trying to make their homes close to ours. I'm constantly asked questions about who they are, various aspects of their behavior, and why they are there, among other queries about these very interesting and important beings.
These are among the many reasons I was pleased to read a book by science journalist Jason Bittel, a National Geographic Society Explorer. His latest beautifully illustrated book is Grizzled: Love Letters to 50 of North America's Least Understood Animals. In this eye-opening book, he offers fascinating science-based and easy-to-read stories about the behavior of these all too often misunderstood animals, including a collection of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, all sentient beings whose lives must be appreciated and matter. Appreciating and understanding these wild creatures is important for rewilding our hearts and minds. When I lived in the mountains outside of Boulder, I often met some of these animals and learned many valuable life lessons about who they are and h ow to coexist with them .
Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Grizzled ?
Jason Bittel: I’ve always been in love with wildlife, from the big, fluffy things to the itty-bitty creepy crawlies. But over the course of 15 years as a science journalist specializing in the animal beat, I’ve often been surprised at how little each of us knows about the animals all around us. Plenty of ink and documentary film footage has been spilled for the pandas and penguins of the world—and no wonder, these animals are amazing—but what I want people to understand is that opossums and hummingbirds and crayfish are amazing, too!
MB: Who do you hope to reach?
JB: Truthfully, I wrote this book for a wide audience. From tweens and teens to the middle-aged and elderly, I think everyone could use a little boost of knowledge about the animals living around us. I’ve also tried to write it with a voice that everyone can enjoy. I want you to experience the wonder and excitement I do when talking to an expert and learning something new. I don’t want you to feel like you’re enduring a lecture. I’d rather it feel like we’re having a beer and I’m telling you about the time I got to stand in the middle of 10 million pregnant bats as they swirled up into the sky in a bat-nado. Or when we dropped beavers out of airplanes over Idaho? You definitely want to sit down for that one!
MB: What are some of the topics you consider and your major messages?
JB: With 50 different animals found all across this continent and spanning the tree of life, from mammals all the way down to mollusks, this book dances across an enormous amount of material. Did you know, for instance, that you can trace the near extinction of bald eagles back to the Nazis? Or that armadillos always give birth to four identical quadruplets, each a genetic clone? Bison are pollinators, vultures save us from disease outbreaks, and hummingbirds can sometimes kill. With the chapters on rattlesnakes, grizzlies, and great white sharks, we learn that, yes, animals can be dangerous, but knowing a little bit about their biology and ecology can actually keep us safe.
With the white-tailed deer and hellbender chapters, I talk about how our perceptions of wildlife can and have changed over the decades and centuries, and discuss some of the forces that have driven those shifts. The coyote chapter grapples with where several hundred years of anti-predator propaganda have gotten us. (Spoiler: There are more coyotes now than ever before.) Meanwhile, the freshwater mussel and axolotl chapters stare down the reality of what it means for an animal to go extinct under our watch. I cover why skunks are black and white, how porcupine quills work, and why manatees aren’t stupid, even though their brains have no wrinkles.
MB: How does your work differ from others concerned with some of the same general topics?
JB: I won’t lie to you. We’re living in the golden age of science writing, and my own personal bookshelves are lined with dozens of amazing books about animals—many written by friends and colleagues. But I do think Grizzled stands apart in its format and delivery. I wrote the kind of book I always wanted to read, one that is stuffed full of animal facts, but also stories. Inside, we don’t just learn how big an animal is, where it lives, or what it eats. We do learn these things, but we also discover what makes it special, the evolutionary trajectory of what it is today, or how it fits into its food web and ecosystem. To quote my introduction, “This book is a love letter for the oft-maligned tarantulas, condors, and jellyfish just as much as it is for the ever-popular orcas and hummingbirds. It’s a pump-up speech for the opossums we sometimes hit with our cars and a power ballad for the ants that form assembly lines across our kitchen counters. And unfortunately, for some of the animals featured—I’m looking at you, axolotls and freshwater mussels—these pages may one day soon read like a heartfelt eulogy as their subjects disappear from Earth altogether.”
Each chapter begins with a Joel Sartore photograph rendered into artwork by illustrator Lisa Monias. Readers of National Geographic will know Sartore as one of the most prolific wildlife photographers in the world, and nearly all of these images come from his Photo Ark Project, in which he documents as many species as he can.
MB : Are you hopeful that, as people learn more about these animals, they will treat them with more respect and dignity?
JB: I’m going to go back to my introduction again, because I think it answers this question perfectly: “In short, I hope this book serves as a recalibration for the ways we view and engage with the living things all around us. But at the end of the day, if for you, dear reader, it’s just a book full of weird facts about mountain goats and Gila monsters, I’m okay with that, too. Who knows, maybe learning more about these wild animals will even reveal something about the grizzled thing each of us carries around inside ourselves. Either way, I hope you fall in love with that part of yourself, as I have with all the wild things within.”
Bekoff, Marc. The Emotional Lives of Wild Neighbors and Why They Matter ; The Joys of Doing Citizen Science With Wild Neighbors ; The Perks of Appreciating Wild Neighbors as Sentient Beings ; Close Encounters Of A Lion Kind: Meeting Cougars, Foxes, Bears ... and Bear Poop ; Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence .
Mangelsen, Thomas D. Grizzly 399 the World’s Most Famous Bear: Dreams of a Grizzly: What 399 Teaches Us about Coexisting with Wildness . January 27, 2026. (For more information on 399 see Love in Their Hearts: A Celebration of Animal Emotions and a Guide to Compassionate Action .)
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Marc Bekoff, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.