Elizabeth Preston

"I'm 40 years old; I can't be dealing with this" is such a mood

Americans Are Uniquely Infatuated With Bald Eagles. Too Bad Most of Us Have No Idea What They’re Actually Like. For one thing, there's the sound they make.

Ready for a new kind of animal book? A wildlife wonder-guide, if you will?

GRIZZLED: Love Letters to 50 of North America's Least Understood Animals drops NEXT WEEK! Get a taste over at @slate.com, which has published my bald eagle chapter in full! 🧪🦅

🦉🦑🐍🦊

slate.com/technology/2...

How to Find a Rare Bird (or Be One) They're hiding in plain sight.

If scientists can find a secret new species hiding behind every known animal, surely any of us can find new friends where we don't expect them: elizabethgpreston.substack.com/p/how-to-fin... 🧪

How to Find a Rare Bird (or Be One) They're hiding in plain sight.

Is the world twice as diverse as we think? A recent study says that for every known vertebrate species, there might one more species hiding in plain sight: elizabethgpreston.substack.com/p/how-to-fin... 🧪

I had a dream last night that I was preparing for one last high-school soccer practice. Let it go, brain! We suck at soccer and those girls aren't going to be friends with us!

The Creatures' Guide to Caring by Elizabeth Preston: 9780593657102 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books A lively and revelatory journey through the evolution of caretaking on Earth, from animal parents to modern-day humans, making the case that caring for children and each other made us who we are Pois...

I do! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741329...

Picture of a page from Harriet the Spy, with the line "Writers don't care what they eat. They just care what you think of them" highlighted

My daughter checked out Harriet the Spy from the library at my suggestion, but now I'm worried she's going to learn too much

In my area we have both, but they seem to have the neighborhood carved up block-by-block! The pigeons live right around the subway stations. I always wonder whether their territories are truly exclusive.

some of you are looksmaxxing when you need to be booksmaxxing

Elana Meyers Taylor signs to her son: "Mommy won." 🥇

#WinterOlympics

Handwritten card that says "Happy Valentine's Day! G+G" with an acrostic poem below: "Variation of cards Appetite of chocolate Love Excellent people Nice gifts Treasures Irresistable kindness No one being notty Egg salad"

"I couldn't think of anything for E." -my 9-year-old, after making this acrostic Valentine's card for her grandparents (she's not a perfectionist and I honestly love that for her)

The Creatures’ Guide to Caring by Elizabeth Preston | Waterstones Buy The Creatures’ Guide to Caring by Elizabeth Preston from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.

Now's your chance to snag the adorable UK edition of my book THE CREATURES' GUIDE TO CARING for 25% off! Preorder this week from @waterstones.bsky.social: www.waterstones.com/book/the-cre... 🧪

@joshgondelman.bsky.social and his wife can be a rhino and bird if they want! but they can also be a monogamous pair of titi monkeys, or geese, or porcupines, or storks, or termites...

Much more of that to come in my book this spring!

But I'll put on my pedant pants and point out that monogamy is all over the place in nature. There are heaps of animals—birds, mammals, creepy crawlies—in long-term committed partnerships. (Not always vanilla, though, like the cockroach lovers who chew each other's wings off.) 🧪

Love Can Look Like Anything, Even Marriage Comedian and writer Josh Gondelman on choosing a "structurally vanilla" life.

Really enjoyed this @joshgondelman.bsky.social essay, no surprise! playboy.substack.com/p/love-can-l...

four stick figures on sleds, one is sliding face first, face down, marked "skeleton", diagonally opposite to it is one sliding feet first, face up, marked "luge". The other two combinations are drawn and labeled with question marks

given the existence of skeleton and luge, i postulate the existence of two other, yet to be discovered, winter olympic sports

Interesting point—on the mainland the tortoises hatch in a balanced sex ratio (or female biased), so they know it’s not a climate change issue currently, but maybe a temperature anomaly a long time ago when the population was small could have made the difference.

omg

Constant Sexual Aggression Drives Female Tortoises to Walk Off Cliffs

North Macedonia's "Snake Island" is home to vipers, birds, several ancient churches, and some tortoises so horny that they're literally driving themselves to extinction: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/s... by me!🧪

Constant Sexual Aggression Drives Female Tortoises to Walk Off Cliffs

I swear it wasn't on purpose that my latest story ran on Valentine's Day: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/s... 🧪

Just because we're born with the capacity for something doesn't mean we act on it.

The Creatures’ Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care by Elizabeth Preston Science journalist Preston debuts with an engrossing and accessible account of the evolution of caretaking, in which she demonst...

Guess who got her first trade review?? www.publishersweekly.com/9780593657102 🧪

Your regular reminder that widespread reliance on AI, as currently configured, is fundamentally incompatible with a liberal democracy.

To be constantly urged to outsource our thinking to robots is to give away everything that makes us citizens:

Our morality.
Our cognition.
Our creativity.

I keep imagining being back in the studio where I recorded my audiobook last week. At first I thought this was Stockholm syndrome, but then I realized it's because I'm a mom and my fantasy is shutting myself into a noiseless box where no one can see or touch me and my work is taken seriously

valentine-style graphic depicting a red octopus with text that reads "I'm a sucker for you!"

Share this Aquarium valentine with someone you love to have in your arms 🐙 🧡

The one stupid arm move that ever male figure skater does at the end of his program is a metaphor for how you should delete the kicker to your story and stop talking one paragraph sooner.

Yes and yes, black-capped chickadee!

How to Stay On Trend and Stay Alive Some fads are worth it.

Your kids say 6-7 like it's a matter of life-and-death importance. But for humpback whales, following trends might actually help their populations survive in a warming world: elizabethgpreston.substack.com/p/how-to-sta... 🧪

How to Stay On Trend and Stay Alive Some fads are worth it.

This week we're talking about recording an audiobook, humpback whale trends, and why you shouldn't judge your kid for the whole 6-7 thing: elizabethgpreston.substack.com/p/how-to-sta... 🧪