Works by
Sy Montgomery
(Writer)

Walking With the Great Apes: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas (1991)
Here is the story of three gifted women trained by the famed Louis Leakey. This book tells of three women who each gave her mature life to the love, study, and defense of another primate species.

The Snake Scientist (1999) with Nic Bishop, Photographer
Dr. Robert Mason, the current recipient of the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Award, has been studying a mysterious phenomenon for over fifteen years: the reemergence of tens of thousands of red-sided garter snakes the world's largest concentration of snakes after a winter spent in a state of suspended animation in subterranean caverns. This gathering each spring in the forests of Manitoba, Canada, is one of the most extraordinary events of the natural world and is the subject of study for Dr. Mason, a.k.a. the Snake Scientist.

Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest (2001)
Scientists call them Inia geoffrensis, an ancient species of toothed whale whose origin dates back about 15 million years. To the local people of the Amazon, pink river dolphins are "botos," shape shifters that, in the guise of human desire, can claim your soul and take you to the Encante, an enchanted underwater world.

Encantado: Pink Dolphin of the Amazon (2002) with Dianne Taylor-Snow, Photographer
Welcome to a forest filled with water. In the wet season, the swollen Amazon becomes a looking glass into another world, where pink dolphins swim like something from a dream. In Peru they are called bufeo colorado—the ruddy dolphin. Their color ranges from white to gray to a vivid pink. These astonishing mammals, actually river-dwelling whales, easily navigate their way through the complex, hazardous world of the Amazon rain forest.
Encantado invites readers on the adventure of a lifetime as we travel into one of the world"s most lush and beautiful jungles in search of these magical creatures. Our guides include scientists and researchers as well as the local people, who have lived with the encantados—the enchanted ones—literally at their doorsteps for centuries.
Our main guides are the dolphins themselves. They lead us into myth. They take us back in time to a prehistoric era. They alone can show us the depth of the Amazon"s beauty, diversity, and magic—and help us to keep our planet rich and whole.

Search for the Golden Moon Bear: Science and Adventure in Pursuit of a New Species (2002)
Sy Montgomery "is a modern miracle," says Book magazine, "bawdy, brave, inventive, prophetic, hell-bent on loving this planet." Writing as she does about animals and people at a turning point in our history, Montgomery has shown us that we share our planet with the most outlandish creatures. She's documented great apes, man-eating tigers, and pink river dolphins, but her latest muse, the golden moon bear, is an animal whose name and appearance evoke another world altogether.

Only eight bear species are known to science: the American black bear; the grizzly; the polar bear; the South American spectacled bear; Asia's sun bear, moon bear, and sloth bear; and the Chinese panda. The moon bears' lineage (most similar to that of the American black bear) as black-coated mountain dwellers had never been challenged -- until, on the edge of the new millennium, Montgomery and her scientific colleagues turned up this new golden form.

Search for the Golden Moon Bear (2004)
Join Sy Montgomery as she travels far and wide in search of the golden moon bear. Along with her research companions, she delves deep into the jungles of the Elephant Mountains, visits the bustling streets of Cambodian cities, explores remote villages, and attends a Club Med for bears in Thailandall while carrying marshmallows and tweezers for her encounters with the bears along the way. The quest for the golden moon bear takes us on an exhilarating journey and chronicles the detective work and science behind tracking a new species in a different part of the world, where bears are kept as pets and where sometimes things aren't quite what they seem . . .

The Tarantula Scientist (2004) with Nic Bishop, Photographer
Yellow blood, silk of steel, skeletons on the outside! These amazing attributes don't belong to comic book characters or alien life forms, but to Earth's biggest and hairiest spiders: tarantulas. Here you are invited to follow Sam Marshall, spider scientist extraordinaire (he's never been bitten), as he explores the dense rainforest of French Guiana, knocking on the doors of tarantula burrows, trying to get a closer look at these incredible creatures. You'll also visit the largest comparative spider laboratory in Americawhere close to five hundred live tarantulas sit in towers of stacked shoeboxes and plastic containers, waiting for their turn to dazzle and astound the scientists who study them.

Quest for the Tree Kangaroo: An Expedition to the Cloud Forest of New Guinea (2006)
It looks like a bear, but isn’t one. It climbs trees as easily as a monkey— but isn’t a monkey, either. It has a belly pocket like a kangaroo, but what’s a kangaroo doing up a tree? Meet the amazing Matschie’s tree kangaroo, who makes its home in the ancient trees of Papua New Guinea’s cloud forest. And meet the amazing scientists who track these elusive animals.

The Good Good Pig (2006)
A naturalist who spent months at a time living on her own among wild creatures in remote jungles, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart to a sick piglet who had been crowded away from nourishing meals by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive but flourish–and she soon found herself engaged with her small-town community in ways she had never dreamed possible. Unexpectedly, Christopher provided this peripatetic traveler with something she had sought all her life: an anchor (eventually weighing 750 pounds) to family and home.

The Good Good Pig celebrates Christopher Hogwood in all his glory, from his inauspicious infancy to hog heaven in rural New Hampshire, where his boundless zest for life and his large, loving heart made him absolute monarch over a (mostly) peaceable kingdom. At first, his domain included only Sy’s cosseted hens and her beautiful border collie, Tess. Then the neighbors began fetching Christopher home from his unauthorized jaunts, the little girls next door started giving him warm, soapy baths, and the villagers brought him delicious leftovers. His intelligence and fame increased along with his girth. He was featured in USA Today and on several National Public Radio environmental programs. On election day, some voters even wrote in Christopher’s name on their ballots.

But as this enchanting book describes, Christopher Hogwood’s influence extended far beyond celebrity; for he was, as a friend said, a great big Buddha master. Sy reveals what she and others learned from this generous soul who just so happened to be a pig–lessons about self-acceptance, the meaning of family, the value of community, and the pleasures of the sweet green Earth. The Good Good Pig provides proof that with love, almost anything is possible.