Skip to main content

David Toomey

Biography

David Toomey

David Toomey is a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he teaches courses in writing and in the history of science. He is the author of several books of nonfiction, including WEIRD LIFE and THE NEW TIME TRAVELERS. In his lifetime, he has known and played with a great many animals, both human and non-human.

David Toomey

Books by David Toomey

Kingdom of Play: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself
by David Toomey - Nature, Nonfiction

In KINGDOM OF PLAY, critically acclaimed science writer David Toomey takes us on a fast-paced and entertaining tour of playful animals and the scientists who study them. From octopuses on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to meerkats in the Kalahari Desert to brown bears on Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, we follow adventurous researchers as they design and conduct experiments seeking answers to new, intriguing questions: When did play first appear in animals? How does play develop the brain, and how did it evolve? Are the songs and aerial acrobatics of birds the beginning of avian culture? Is fairness in dog play the foundation of canine ethics? And does play direct and possibly accelerate evolution? Through a close examination of both natural selection and play, Toomey argues that life itself is fundamentally playful.