Book excerpt: "This book explores the fascinating and complex lives of the honey badger, the African jackals (black-backed jackal and side-striped), African golden wolves and Eurasian golden jackals. In recent years, interest in these creatures has grown exponentially, through wildlife documentaries and media clips showing the aggressive, fearless and tenacious behaviour of the honey badger, with jackals often presented in a supporting role. Written by renowned journalist and educator Keith Somerville, this accessible volume includes historical narratives, folklore, and contemporary accounts of human-wildlife relationships and conflicts. It traces the evolution of the species, their foraging, diet, the development of their relationships with humans and their commensal, kleptocratic and symbiotic relationships with other carnivores, raptors and birds. It also charts the recent expansion in European jackal numbers and ranges, now including as far west as the Netherlands and as far north as Finland. Blending historic observations by non-scientists, colonial officials, administrators and early conservationists with contemporary scientific accounts, it presents a new multi-disciplinary approach that will interest researchers, scientists, and students in wildlife conservation, human-wildlife relations, zoology, biology and environmental science"--