All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned In Loehmann's Dressing Room

For nearly thirty years, America's favorite humorist, Erma Bombeck, has given us her take on the behavioral patterns of her favorite animal species -- "us." Much in the same way that Jane Goodall devoted her life to living with and recording the behavioral patterns of the wild mountain chimps of Gombi, so has Bombeck recorded our mating habits, maternal instincts, reproductive cycles, how we handle trends and technology, what makes us laugh, and what makes us cry. In her inimitably warm and witty style, Bombeck has discovered that the odd habits of the animal kingdom are strikingly similar to our own, and she reports her downright hilarious findings in "All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann's Dressing Room." Bombeck shows how close animals in the wild and humans really are, and how much we can learn from one another. The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track? From the garter snake transvestite, to the barn swallow who can't make a commitment, to the lion who mates eighty-six times a day, Bombeck reveals that we're not all that far removed from the animal world. An African monkey who picked the lock on every cage he'd ever been in got twenty minutes on a "National Geographic" special. Bombeck had a cousin with the same skill; he got two years.Bombeck proves that a behaviorist need not wear a safari jacket and live in a tent in order to be an expert on every facet of a species' behavior. From the aerobics classroom -- where humans defend their territory to the death by spraying their mates with their own personal perfume -- to our migratory patterns -- where, likea certain species of butterfly, we fly to Miami in hordes the minute the temperature dips below sixty, Bombeck demonstrates in her quintessential style that while animals may have more fun, longer tails, and better sex lives, the gap that separates us from the animal kingdom is closing... "fast."