Search for the Golden Moon Bear: Science and Adventure in Pursuit of a New Species

Sy Montgomery--acclaimed author of The Soul of an Octopus and best-selling memoir The Good Good Pig --has shared her amazing encounters with intelligent octopi, great apes, man-eating tigers, and pink river dolphins with listeners, but here her muse is an animal whose name and appearance evoke another world altogether. Southeast Asia's golden moon bear--with its luminous coat, lionlike mane, and Mickey Mouse ears--was unknown to science until Montgomery and her colleagues got on the trail at the dawn of the new millennium.

Search for the Golden Moon Bear recounts Montgomery's quest--fraught with danger and mayhem--to reconstruct an evolutionary record and piece together a living portrait of her little known subject. This beautiful animal is not just a scientific eureka! It is also a powerful symbol of conservation. Search for the Golden Moon Bear is a field report from the frontiers of science and the ends of the earth, seamlessly weaving together folklore, natural history, and contemporary research into a fantastic travelogue.