"One super-fast grouper + one slender eel = a dynamic duo! Discover how two vastly different animal species team up for a successful hunt. With lightning-quick speed and razor-sharp teeth, groupers are skillful hunters of the sea - except when their prey hides in the tiny cracks of coral. Cue the moray eels! These slender and squiggly fish flush out prey from the hidey-holes. And when they do, this dream team feasts! With eye-popping photographs, quick facts, and beyond-the-book back matter, Groupers and Moray Eels Team Up! will have young research writers and wildlife fans rooting for these Animal Allies"--
Learn that even animals have best friends in this follow-up to The Not Bad Animals. Someone that’s always there for them through thick and thin, to help them out with all of the usual things that friends do. You know, like picking ticks off your back, letting you know when a lion is about to make you its dinner and helping you hunt down some tasty prey. The animal kingdom is full of odd couples that prove that sometimes it’s better to be together! Like the rhino and the African Oxpecker, the coyote and the badger, and the crocodile and the plover bird. This funny and informative book is a great way to teach your kids about some of the more interesting partnerships in the natural world, with pop out fact boxes and hilarious illustrations. Uncover some unlikely friendships from the world of animals and discover how creatures get through every day with a little help from their friends. This book is full of funny facts about animals and symbiotic relationships for children to explore.
Nature doesn't always play nice, and Things That Make You Go Yuck!: Crooked Critters showcases some of the worst offenders in the plant and animal kingdoms. You'll meet trespassing toads, insects in disguise, brood-borrowing cuckoos, and many more. It's a rogue's gallery of some of nature's roughest, meanest species. Whether it's nature's slimiest organisms or the weirdest mutations, Things That Make You Go Yuck! celebrates survival of the fittest, grossest, craziest, and creepiest things in nature, proving once and for all that life in the wild is anything but ordinary. Ages 9-12
Take a deep breath and dive into the mysteries of the ocean. Our understanding of ocean life has changed dramatically in the last decade, with new species, new behaviours, and new habitats being discovered at a rapid rate. Blue Planet II, which accompanies an epic 7-part series on BBC1, is a ground-breaking new look at the richness and variety of underwater life across our planet. From ambush hunters such as the carnivorous bobbit worm to cuttlefish mesmerising their prey with a pulsating light display, Blue Planet II reveals the never-before-seen secrets of the ocean. With over 200 breath-taking photographs and stills from the BBC Natural History Unit's spectacular footage, each chapter of Blue Planet II brings to life a different habitat of the oceanic world. Voyages of migration show how each of the oceans on our planet are connected; coral reefs and arctic ice communities are revealed as thriving underwater cities; while shorelines throw up continual challenges to those living there or passing through. A final chapter explores the science and technology of the Ocean enterprise – not only how they were able to capture these amazing stories on film, but what the future holds for marine life based on these discoveries.
How to Snog a Hagfish! explores the most bizarre, the most disgusting and the most fascinating creatures that inhabit the oceans. When attacked, the hagfish (also known as the slime eel) ties itself in a knot that travels the length of its body, squeezing out mucus by the bucketful and making it impossible for a predator to keep hold. To eat, a starfish regurgitates its stomach, digests its food then swallows its stomach back down again. Pearlfish stick close to sea cucumbers, whose bowels they swim into when danger's near. And with shark attacks and jellyfish encounters, the oceans take on another level of repulsiveness when man dips his toes in the water. We know more about the surface of the moon than we do the underwater world, but some of the species covered in this book are beyond even the imagination of science fiction writers. Entertaining yet informative, the idea of this book is not to wallow in grossness with the intention of putting people off their dinner, but to explore just how fascinating and 'alien' our own planet can be. Highly illustrated, and with stories and anecdotes that help bring a human perspective, this book demystifies the natural world beneath the waves, and shows how it's not quite so shocking when you understand why these creatures have developed the way they have.
Best buds, frenemies, freeloaders, bullies, copycats, hangers-on. We’re accustomed to all types of people and human interactions. But animal relationships can be just as weird and complex. For anyone who’s ever felt a bit awkward in their relationships, wait until you hear about how complicated things get in the animal world. This funny and enlightening gift book depicts charming and unusual symbiotic animal relationships in all their awkward glory. Through delightful watercolor illustrations and funny yet scientifically accurate text, Iris Gottlieb explores the symbiotic relationships of 35 odd, cute, and unpredictable animal pairs. Here are stories of vampires, cannibalism, mimicry, parasites, and more. You’ll learn a lot about nature--and human nature--as you recognize traits of your own friends, frenemies, and enemies in this insightful, amusing look into the secret lives of animals.
This is a coral reef. A living, limestone necklace beneath the sea – multi-coloured, ever-changing and full of animals. A Coral Reef Story brings together a spellbinding narrative, breathtaking illustrations and fascinating facts about the astonishing creatures that live in one of our planet’s most precious environments. Travelling through the seasons over the course of one year, we meet great white sharks, bright parrotfish, graceful green turtles and more amazing animals as they hunt for food and play. See the stripy clown fish fiercely guarding his babies, the eel spitting out a spiky porcupinefish, and a queue of hermit crabs jostling to move into their new shells. With lyrical text by Jane Burnard combining with Kendra Binney's evocative illustrations to show readers the magical beauty of the coral reef, this is a story sure to inspire wonder in the natural world.
An eye-opening introduction to the complexity, wonder, and vital roles of coral reefs "Part memoir, part popular science, part call to action on climate change, the book makes a compelling case for why coral reefs deserve more attention. Sale's argument is as simple as it is powerful: as coral reefs go, so goes the rest of the planet." --Bryan P. Galligan, Commonweal When mass coral bleaching and die-offs were first identified in the 1980s, and eventually linked to warming events, the scientific community was sure that such a dramatic and unambiguous signal would serve as a warning sign about the devastating effects of global warming. Instead, most people ignored that warning. Subsequent decades have witnessed yet more degradation. Reefs around the world have lost more than 50 percent of their living coral since the 1970s. In this book, distinguished marine ecologist Peter F. Sale imparts his passion for the unexpected beauty, complexity, and necessity of coral reefs. By placing reefs in the wider context of global climate change, Sale demonstrates how their decline is more than simply a one-off environmental tragedy, but rather an existential warning to humanity. He offers a reframing of the enormous challenge humanity faces as a noble venture to steer the planet into safe waters that might even retain some coral reefs.
First Minds: Caterpillars, 'Karyotes, and Consciousness presents a novel theory of the origins of mind and consciousness dubbed the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC). It argues that sentience emerged with life itself. The most primitive unicellular species of bacteria are conscious, though it is a sentience of a primitive kind. They have minds, though they are tiny and limited in scope. Hints that cells might be conscious can be found in the writings of a few cell biologists but a fully developed theory has never been put forward before. Other approaches to the origins of consciousness are examined and shown to be seriously or fatally flawed, specifically approaches based on: (a) the assumption that minds are computational and can be captured by an Artificial Intelligence, (b) efforts to discover the neuro-correlates of mental experiences and, (c) looking for consciousness in less complex species by identifying those that have precursors of those neuro-correlates. Reber shows how each of these approaches is shown to be either essentially impossible (the AI models) or so burdened by philosophical and empirical difficulties that they are effectively unworkable. The CBC approach is developed using standard models of evolutionary biology. The remarkable repertoire of single-celled species that micro- and cell-biologists have discovered is reviewed. Bacteria, for example, have sophisticated sensory and perceptual systems, learn, form memories, make decisions based on information about their environment relative to internal metabolic states, communicate with each other, and even show a primitive form of altruism. All such functions are indicators of sentience. Finally, the implications of the CBC model are discussed along with a number of related issues in evolutionary biology, philosophy of mind, the possibility of sentient plants, the ethical repercussions of universal animal sentience, and the long-range impact of adopting the CBC stance.
