The body of a sea cucumber doesn't have many parts. Yet sea cucumbers help to clean the world's ocean floors and even help to reduce the effects of global warming. They do all of this without a brain. Exploring the life cycle of this invertebrate, this book covers some of the odd qualities of a sea cucumber, including the ability to expel part of its own intestine in order to escape predators. Sea cucumber abilities will boggle your readers' minds.
Sea urchins don't have brains, and yet sea urchin bodies are well-developed to detect the environment. This book explores body parts sea urchins use instead, including an interior water pump that allows the creatures to move about and hold on to food. Fun and bizarre facts are spread throughout the narrative, like how a sea urchin turns itself inside out upon growing into its adult stage. Young readers will be delighted by these ocean creatures.
Jellyfish are the often transparent, graceful creatures that float beautifully across the sea. Readers can try, but they're not going to find a brain in any jellyfish. They don't have spinal cords or bones either. This book explores how jellyfish survive and the parts they have that have allowed them to spread to oceans all over the world. With full-color pictures and amusing language, this book will engage the budding marine enthusiast and avid beach-goer.
The World of Sea Cucumbers: Challenges, Advances, and Innovations provides broad coverage of sea cucumber biology, ecology, fisheries, aquaculture, and trade while also bringing forward novel cultural, socioeconomic and scientific topics related to commercial and non-commercial species worldwide. Written by international experts in their respective fields, the book offers a unique outlook into the fascinating world of sea cucumbers while also providing valuable information to various stakeholders and researchers. Commercial fisheries and aquaculture programs are addressed, especially as they relate to emerging species, but the book also covers novel, understudied or lesser-known biological, ecological, and commercial aspects. The involvement of Indigenous peoples and minorities in various community-level initiatives and on the cultural significance/impact of sea cucumbers in many regions are also examined. Finally, breakthroughs and emerging biotechnologies centered on sea cucumbers are presented. - Brings together a network of experts covering broad sea cucumber topics, from basic biology and commercial trade to socioeconomic value and novel biotechnologies - Offers worldwide coverage, including Asia, the Indo-Pacific, Africa, Northern Europe, North and South America, and the poles - Raises global awareness on little-known facts of sea cucumber importance
Readers will learn just how amazing sea cucumbers can be. The many species of this ocean invertebrate may not look like other undersea animals, but they have some amazing adaptations and behaviors that help them survive. Without faces, limbs, bones, blood, or a brain, sea cucumbers have incredible ways eating, moving, reproducing, and defending themselves.
Regenerative animals are survivors. Species with this ability can regrow limbs, skin, organs, and more! Find out how these animals use regeneration to evade predators and stay alive. Meets Next Generation Science Standards.
From the fiercest predator to the lowliest plant, every member of an ecosystem is immeasurably important to the survival of their environment. Although they're not regarded as a keystone species, sea urchins play a pivotal role in maintaining healthy marine environments. Without sea urchins to consume algae, entire coral reef ecosystems could collapse. This educational text invites readers to imagine a world without sea urchins, delving into curricular science concepts, such as interdependence of species, with accessible language and real-world examples.
A New York Times, USA Today, and national indie bestseller. A Feast of Wonder! Created by the ever-curious minds behind Atlas Obscura, this breathtaking guide transforms our sense of what people around the world eat and drink. Covering all seven continents, Gastro Obscura serves up a loaded plate of incredible ingredients, food adventures, and edible wonders. Ready for a beer made from fog in Chile? Sardinia’s “Threads of God” pasta? Egypt’s 2000-year-old egg ovens? But far more than a menu of curious minds delicacies and unexpected dishes, Gastro Obscura reveals food’s central place in our lives as well as our bellies, touching on history–trace the network of ancient Roman fish sauce factories. Culture–picture four million women gathering to make rice pudding. Travel–scale China’s sacred Mount Hua to reach a tea house. Festivals–feed wild macaques pyramid of fruit at Thailand’s Monkey Buffet Festival. And hidden gems that might be right around the corner, like the vending machine in Texas dispensing full sized pecan pies. Dig in and feed your sense of wonder. “Like a great tapas meal, Gastro Obscura is deep yet snackable, and full of surprises. This is the book for anyone interested in eating, adventure and the human condition.” –Tom Colicchio, chef and activist “This exquisite guide kept me at the breakfast table until dinner time.” –Kyle Maclachlan, actor and vintner
Rise, Ye Sea Slugs! is a book of many faces. First, it is a book of translated haiku and contains over 900 of these short Japanese poems in the original (smoothly inserted in the main body),with phonetic and literal renditions, as well as the authors English translations and explanations. All but a dozen or two of the haiku are translated for the first time. There is an index of poets, poems and a bibliography. Second, it is a book of sea slug haiku, for all of the poems are about holothurians, which scientists prefer to call sea cucumbers. (The word cucumber is long for haiku and metaphorically unsuitable for many poems, so poetic license was taken.) With this book, the namako, as the sea cucumber is called in Japanese, becomes the most translated single subject in haiku, surpassing the harvest moon, the snow, the cuckoo, butterflies and even cherry blossoms. Third, it is a book of original haiku. While the authors original intent was to include only genuine old haiku (dating back to the 17th century), modern haiku were added and, eventually, Keigu (Gills haiku name) composed about a hundred of his own to help fill out gaps in the metaphorical museum. For many if not most modern haiku taken from the web, it is also their first time in print! Fourth, it is a book of metaphor. How may we arrange hundreds of poems on a single theme? Gill divides them into 21 main metaphors, including the Cold Sea Slug, the Mystic Sea Slug, the Helpless Sea Slug, the Slippery Sea Slug, the Silent Sea Slug, and the Melancholy Sea Slug, giving each a chapter, within which the metaphors may be further subdivided, and adds a 100 pages of Sundry Sea Slugs (scores of varieties including Monster, Spam, Flying, Urban Myth, and Exploding). Fifth, it is a book on haiku. E ditors usually select only the best haiku, but, Gill includes good and bad haiku by everyone from the 17th century haiku master to the anonymous haiku rejected in some internet contest. This is not to say all poems found were included, but that the standard was along more taxonomic or encyclopedic lines: poems that filled in a metaphorical or sub-metaphorical gap were always welcome. Also, Gill shows there is more than one type of good haiku. These are new ways to approach haiku. Sixth, it is a book on translation. There are approximately 2 translations per haiku, and some boast a dozen. These arearranged in mixed single, double and triple-column clusters which make each reading seem a different aspect of a singular, almost crystalline whole. The authors aim is to demonstrate that multiple reading (such as found in Hofstadters Le Ton Beau de Marot) is not only a fun game but a bona fide method of translating, especially useful for translating poetry between exotic tongues. Seventh, it is a book of nature writing, natural history or metaphysics (in the Emersonian sense). Gill tried to compile relevant or interesting (not necessarily both) historical -- this includes the sea slug in literature, English or Japanese, and in folklore -- and scientific facts to read haiku in their light or, conversely, bringor wring out science from haiku. Unlike most nature writers, Gill admits to doing no fieldwork, but sluggishly staying put and relying upon reportsfrom more mobile souls. Eighth, it is a book about food symbolism. The sea cucumber is noticed by Japanese because they eat it; the eating itselfinvolves physical difficulties (slipperiness and hardness) and pleasures from overcoming them. It is also identified with a state of mind, where you are what you eat takes on psychological dimensions not found in the food literature of the West. Ninth, it is a book about Japanese culture. Gill does not set out to explain Japan, and the sea slug itself is silent;but the collection of poems and their explanations, which include analysis by poets who responded to the author's questions as well has historical sources, take us all around the culture, from ancient myths to contemporary dreams. Tenth, it is a book about sea cucumbers. While most species of sea cucumbers are not mentioned and the coverage of the Japanese sea cucumber is sketchy from the scientific point of view, Gill does introduce this animal graced to live with no brain thanks to the smart materials comprising it and blessed for sucking in dirty sediment and pooping it out clean. Eleventh, it is a book about ambiguity. Gill admits there is much that cannot be translated, much he cannot know and much to be improved in future editions, for which purpose he advises readers to see the on-line Glosses and Errata in English and Japanese. His policy is to confide in, rather than slip by the reader unnoticed, in the manner of the invisible modern translator and allow the reader to makechoices or choose to allow multiple possibilities to exist by not chosing.Twelfth, the book is the first of dozens of spin-offs from a twenty-book haiku saijiki (poetic almanac) called In Praise of Olde Haiku (IPOOH, for short) Gill hopes to finish within the decade. Thirteenth. The book is a novelty item. It has a different (often witty) header (caption) on top of each page and copious notes that are rarely academic and oftehumorous.
From flying pterodactyls to walking primates, the story of life as told through the evolution of locomotion. Most of us never think about how we get from one place to another. For most people, putting one foot in front of the other requires no thought at all. Yet the fact that we and other species are able to do so is one of the great triumphs of evolution. To truly understand how life evolved on Earth, it is crucial to understand movement. Restless Creatures makes the bold new argument that the true story of evolution is the story of locomotion, from the first stirrings of bacteria to the amazing feats of Olympic athletes. By retracing the four-billion-year history of locomotion, evolutionary biologist Matt Wilkinson shows how the physical challenges of moving from place to place-when coupled with the implacable logic of natural selection-offer a uniquely powerful means of illuminating the living world. Whales and dolphins look like fish because they have been molded by the constraints of underwater locomotion. The unbending physical needs of flight have brought bats, birds, and pterodactyls to strikingly similar anatomies. Movement explains why we have opposable thumbs, why moving can make us feel good, how fish fins became limbs, and even why-classic fiction notwithstanding-there are no flying monkeys nor animals with wheels. Even plants aren't immune from locomotion's long reach: their seeds, pollen, and very form are all determined by their aptitude to disperse. From sprinting cheetah to spinning maple fruit, soaring albatross to burrowing worm, crawling amoeba to running human-all are the way they are because of how they move. There is a famous saying: "nothing in biology makes sense unless in the light of evolution." As Wilkinson makes clear: little makes sense unless in the light of locomotion. A powerful yet accessible work of evolutionary biology, Restless Creatures is the essential guide for understanding how life on Earth was shaped by the simple need to move from point A to point B.
