An academic prides herself in her powers of observation, but finds herself unable to change the fate of those suffering around her—whether it be a microscopic rotifer in biology lab, a long-dead boy whose letters she reads from the 1800s, or her twenty-one-year old cousin.

When an out-of-work anthropologist’s toxically masculine, aquarist father falls ill with breast cancer, the son must take care of his father by covering his work at the Detroit Zoo. In doing so, he learns to care for his father’s best friends, the amphibians in his exhibit.

After a woman's paleontologist fiancé is attacked by five men in a bar and hospitalized, she imagines how their lives might have gone differently—if her fiancé were a dinosaur.

A man intently studies extinct mammals to escape his wife and mistress, who often vent to him about their daily worries and give him anxiety.

The crew aboard a freight ship are gruesomely murdered in a sacrificial and ritualistic manner.

A Jesuit biologist and his team work to uncover the mysteries of a planet in the hope that it can be inhabitable for humans. But as he interacts with the native inhabitants, he realizes he has a decision to make: protect the planet or let those on Earth use it for their own selfish needs.

A researcher and his assistant conduct neuropsychological experiments on dogs with the understanding that the dogs will be terminated immediately after, but the reality of their killing is much more difficult to cope with.

When a human couple loses their half-human, half-centaur child, the father must put aside his pain and mother her fear in order to bring the child back to safety.

A young, hungry girl disobeys the rules of her village and fails to provide "La Caridad," a monster who takes the form of an old lady, the proper offering of food one day. That night, the ten-year-old faces the terrible consequences of her actions.

A young man contracts an intestinal disease as he travels to a tropical island and chooses to fast for his physical and spiritual health. As he develops an intimacy with the island, he becomes convinced that this fast will cure his illness — despite what other Western travelers believe.