HarperCollins presents Janaki Lenin's new book Every Creature Has a Story

Do good singers make the best dads? Why don't elephants get cancer? Which is the oddest bird in the world? Can fathers get pregnant? From voting in African wild dogs to creatures feigning death to avoid sex. We are surrounded by an astounding variety of lifeforms. Over millennia, they have evolved to exploit unique niches, in the process developing features and skills that set them apart.

Have you ever wondered what price the giraffe pays for its long neck? The neck increases its blood pressure to pump blood up to its brain, which endangers its life every time it bends down to drink. Or have you thought about how female nightingales decide which male will share the burdens of parenthood with them? They listen to prospective candidates' songs to gauge if they'd make good fathers. And did you know that glassfrogs pee on their eggs and the gender of bearded dragons is fixed by sex chromosomes or temperature?

In the book, 'Every Creature Has a Story', Janaki Lenin draws us towards the wonders of the natural world with evocative and witty words. She uncovers the surprising, sometimes bizarre, but always amazing ways in which creatures breed and survive, from spiders salivating during sex and snails entombing their parasites into their shells to elephants developing immunity to cancer. After reading this book, you'll never look at nature in the same way again.

Janaki Lenin lives in a village near Chennai, Tamil Nadu, with her husband, Romulus Whitaker. Her freelance journalism career began in 2004. Prior to that, she produced wildlife documentaries for National Geographic Television with Romulus, and before that, she edited endless soap opera sagas and run-of-the-mill commercials.

Janaki served as the Coordinator of the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station from 2005 until 2009. In 2007, she co-authored an action plan for easing conflict with elephants in farmlands across India. She was the Regional Chair of IUCN's Crocodile Specialist Group for South Asia and Iran between 2008 and 2012. She helped to draft an action plan for managing non-human primates in ublic spaces (2005) and guidelines for handling confrontations with leopards (2011). These opportunities enabled her to understand wildlife conservation science, policy, and practice in India.

While Janaki recognized the urgency of protecting wildlife, she noticed any talk of the subject made the eyes of audiences glaze over. She sought to bring a whiff of the wilderness into urban homes with lively and fun stories.

Between 2010 and 2014, she wrote a weekly column, My Husband and Other Animals, for The Hindu. She was a columnist for Firstpost and The Wire. Today, the author writes columns for The Hindu Sunday Magazine and RoundGlass Sustain.