Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World - Hardcover

Werb, Dan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593799631 ISBN 13: 9780593799635

Publisher: Random House Inc, 2026

Synopsis

A dazzling journey into the hidden lives of synanthropes, the wild animals who’ve found ingenious ways to survive and thrive in human communities—from award-winning writer and scientist Dan Werb

Synanthropes have always been an immutable part of the tapestry of our lives. They are the reason we hear birdsong in the morning and skittering throughout the day, and why we take such pains to fix lids to our garbage cans. But they are so much more than that, too: epidemic vectors, churners of soil, ecosystem evolvers, spiritual lodestars, and, sometimes, sharp-toothed marauders making their way through our most intimate spaces with cruel intent. But beyond their quotidian impact on our lives, synanthropes have a critical part to play in how our communities are shaped and how sustainably they function. These creatures are ambassadors from nature, arbiters of our planet’s future, and a key influence on our species’ ongoing evolution; and recently, something essential has shifted with them.

We are in a fraught era of environmental disruption, habitat destruction, and human population expansion that is ravaging formerly wild and untouched habitats. That’s caused us to become ever more inundated with synanthropes, which are bringing delight, chaos and danger to our doorstep. These species, so long dismissed, are forcing us to reckon with them—from the hundreds of thousands of raccoons in urban spaces that spread our refuse no matter how many "raccoon-proof" bags and bins we invent, to the invasive kudzu plants that grow a foot a day, enveloping houses, telephone poles, trees, and any other structures into their green abyss. Now, as urban spaces increasingly become wild spaces, we have a choice: continue to resist them by any means necessary, or take the opportunity to promote a more harmonious coexistence.

Through vivid storytelling, Our Wild Familiars brings to spectacular life the world’s most successful synanthropes, from bats, raccoons, and crows, to some of its weirdest, including the Giant Pacific Octopus. Acting as a guide to the curious, Werb reveals how the cracks in our millennia-long efforts to shield ourselves against the outside world might just lead us to a new and necessary balance with nature—or to an ever more savage future.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Werb, PhD is an award-winning writer and epidemiologist whose work—which primarily investigates the link between the spread of disease and social conditions—has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Believer Magazine, and many other outlets. He is an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego and in the School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Werb is the author of two previous books, City of Omens and the award-winning The Invisible Siege.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593799631
• ISBN 13: 9780593799635
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336