
Eat, Poop, Die
How Animals Make Our World
Joe Roman(Author)
Profile Books Ltd (Publisher)
Published on 3. April 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-1-80522-170-8 (ISBN)
Description
A Scientific American Top Ten Book of 2023
If forests are the lungs of the planet, then animals migrating across oceans, streams, and mountains-eating, pooping, and dying along the way-are its heart and arteries, pumping nitrogen and phosphorus from deep-sea gorges up to mountain peaks, from the Arctic to the Caribbean. Without this conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients, the world would look very different.
The dynamics that shape our physical world-atmospheric chemistry, geothermal forces, plate tectonics, and erosion through wind and rain-have been explored for decades. But the effects on local ecosystems of less glamorous forces-rotting carcasses and deposited feces-as well as their impact on the global climate cycle, have been largely overlooked. The simple truth is that pooping and peeing are daily rituals for almost all animals, the ellipses of ecology that flow through life. We eat, we poop, and we die.
From the volcanoes of Iceland to the tropical waters of Hawaii, the great plains of the American heartland, and beyond, Eat, Poop, Die takes readers on an exhilarating and enlightening global adventure, revealing the remarkable ways in which the most basic biological activities of animals make and remake the world-and how a deeper understanding of these cycles provides us with opportunities to undo the environmental damage humanity has wrought on the planet we call home.
If forests are the lungs of the planet, then animals migrating across oceans, streams, and mountains-eating, pooping, and dying along the way-are its heart and arteries, pumping nitrogen and phosphorus from deep-sea gorges up to mountain peaks, from the Arctic to the Caribbean. Without this conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients, the world would look very different.
The dynamics that shape our physical world-atmospheric chemistry, geothermal forces, plate tectonics, and erosion through wind and rain-have been explored for decades. But the effects on local ecosystems of less glamorous forces-rotting carcasses and deposited feces-as well as their impact on the global climate cycle, have been largely overlooked. The simple truth is that pooping and peeing are daily rituals for almost all animals, the ellipses of ecology that flow through life. We eat, we poop, and we die.
From the volcanoes of Iceland to the tropical waters of Hawaii, the great plains of the American heartland, and beyond, Eat, Poop, Die takes readers on an exhilarating and enlightening global adventure, revealing the remarkable ways in which the most basic biological activities of animals make and remake the world-and how a deeper understanding of these cycles provides us with opportunities to undo the environmental damage humanity has wrought on the planet we call home.
Reviews / Votes
Absolutely fascinating ... Roman writes so engagingly throughout ... [and] reveals the deep significance of animal defecation -- James McConnachie * Sunday Times * Biologist Joe Roman reveals more hidden aspects of nature in his entertaining book Eat, Poop, Die * Financial Times * Well written and full of fascinating stories ... Roman is an entertaining writer * Times Literary Supplement * One of those rare books that truly changes the way you look at the world -- Lucy Cooke * Scientific American * Fascinating. Deserves the widest possible readership -- Elizabeth Kolbert You read it with an entirely new appreciation and respect for the animals on this earth -- Bill McKibben A series of great and important stories about the threads that bind together the living world ... and his writing is so good that he sweeps a reader along -- Carl Safina With expert knowledge and wry humor, Roman returns animals to their rightful place at the center of the environment * Kirkus *More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
238 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80522-170-8 (9781805221708)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
04/2024
Profile Books Ltd
€11.49
Available for download

Book
04/2024
Profile Books Ltd
€24.00
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Person
Joe Roman is a conservation biologist, marine ecologist, and editor 'n' chef of eattheinvaders.org. Winner of the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award for Listed: Dispatches from America's Endangered Species Act, Roman has written for the New York Times, Science, Slate, and other publications. He is a fellow and writer in residence at the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont.