Playing Possum

By Susana Monsó,

Book cover of Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death

Book description

How animals conceive of death and dying-and what it can teach us about our own relationships with mortality

When the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralyzed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse. Playing…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Playing Possum as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book gave me the dose of reality I needed: a big slap in the face! Our way of feeling, suffering, and worrying about death is just one among many ways of facing it.

Put bluntly, we don’t have an exclusivity agreement with life or death; we are simply another form of life on planet Earth—a much-needed blow.

From Paco's list on we, humans, are not that special.

Want books like Playing Possum?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Playing Possum.

Browse books like Playing Possum

Book cover of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
Book cover of And the Birds Rained Down
Book cover of How to Love the Universe: A Scientist's Odes to the Hidden Beauty Behind the Visible World

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,355

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in death, Ethology, and animals?

Death 394 books
Ethology 35 books
Animals 234 books