JACKAL WOMAN

By the author of Bearman and Batman, another outstanding study of a contemporary scientist: the training, career, and daily activities of Patricia D. Moehlman, a behavioral ecologist who has spent two decades studying jackals on Tanzania's Serengeti Plain. Pringle's text and his subject's striking color photos capture her admiration and affection for this wild relative of the dog, often dismissed as a sneaky scavenger. Moehlman describes the jackals' daily life and importance in the Plain's ecology. The tools of a modern field biologist include a laptop computer to record behavior; using radio transmitter collars to track jackals is more problematic, as Moehlman candidly discusses. Appealing and intriguing; a winner. Further reading (mostly journal articles by Moehlman); index. (Nonfiction. 8-12)