Product Description

The companion book to the six-part Discovery Channel series, Weird Nature is an astonishing exploration of nature's strangest behavior. The ingenuity of all kinds of animals is celebrated including the flying dragon or draco whose membrane wings resemble early designs for aircraft wings, spiny lobsters in Florida who form a "mass conga line" when moving to deeper waters and the Wallace tree frog whose large webbed hands and feet allow it to glide as far forward as it drops vertically. These animals and many more are featured in this revealing and often amusing look at nature.

Chapters include:

• Fantastic feeding -- the many different ways nature finds food for fuel including worms that eat themselves.
• Devious defenses -- to avoid being eaten, animals have developed an array of defenses including porcupine fish that inflate into spiny balls and mantis shrimps with a punch that can knock a hole in glass.
• Marvelous motion -- ingenious ways of moving around including flattened snakes and flying fish.
• Extraordinary equipment -- tools for enhancing animal lives like the Mallee fowl that has a thermometer in its bill.
• Strange structures -- the bizarre assortment of animal created buildings like the palm leaf tents made by fruit bats and the Namib spider that builds a Stonehenge circle around its burrow.
• Weird and weirder -- social interactions including courtship and mating.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1420730 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

From Booklist
Some of the most fantastic behaviors of real animals are explored in this beautifully illustrated companion volume to a BBC/Discovery Channel series. Downer, producer-director of the series, provides a scientific and up-to-date look at some of the odder ways that animals accomplish basic tasks. The book's six chapters mirror the series' six episodes. How animals move from one place to another is examined. And producing and caring for the next generation is achieved in a myriad of ways. Finding food can be as simple as an eagle dropping a tortoise on rocks to break the shell or as complex as an archerfish knocking down insects with a spat stream of water. Animals can defend themselves with spines, camouflage, claws, armor, or venom. Finally, animals are shown using various plants for their medicinal purposes, such as elephants inducing labor by eating tree leaves and black lemurs crushing millipedes for their natural insecticide. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Globe and Mail, May 25, 2002
A wonderful pairing of spectacular, and often entertaining, photos combined with a readable historical examination of this so-called weird behavior.

Review
Lively, entertaining text is richly illustrated with over 150 color shots ... A fun and interesting book. (Dan R. Kunkle Wildlife Activist 200208)

An excellent book for a variety of readers ... I strongly recommend this book for any library. (Stephen Burton Science Books and Films 20030415)

The excellent photographs and concise text provide a lively introduction to major biological adaptations for the general reader. (David Bardack American Reference Book Annual 2003)

An amazing array of fascinating animal behaviors ... Perhaps this book's greatest attribute is the more than 150 photographs. (Science News 20020525)

A wonderful pairing of spectacular, and often entertaining, photos combined with a readable historical examination of this so-called weird behavior. (Globe and Mail 20020525)

In this remarkable book, Downer gathers a fascinating set of facts ... delightful examples of unusual behaviors. (Christopher Finer VOYA [Voice of Youth Advocates] 20020801)

The most fantastic behaviors of real animals are explored in this beautifully illustrated companion volume to a BBC/Discovery Channel series. (Nancy Bent Booklist 2003)

What I really appreciate about this book is its efforts to put this fascinating information into a human context. (R. Sander-Regier Canadian Field-Naturalist )

A beautifully illustrated and composed book... I was thrilled to read of strange things animals do. (C. Riley Nelson Western North American Naturalist )

Customer Reviews

BUYER BEWARE
This book was bought after reading reviews. It was bought for a younger 'reading' child (who personally chose this book based on his love of animals). My children know the facts of life but after previewing the book and reading the section on "Breeding" I would NOT recommend this book for anyone other than adults. The choice of words used makes it TOTALLY unsuitable for children. PARENTS MAKE SURE YOU READ THROUGH THIS BOOK BEFORE BUYING!!

Weird, Wild, Wonderful
A companion book to the BBC television series of the same name, Weird Nature is a fascinating treat for anyone, of any age, interested in the extreme variety of animal life that co-exists with us on this planet. This book is illustrated throughout with stills from the series, and it showcases animals, their locomotion and their behavior, demonstrating both the differences that set them apart and the similarities they share with us.
The wonders described here are myriad; the Pokémon-like flying gecko, the Surinam toads that hatch out of their mother's back, case-bearing clothes moth caterpillars that disguise themselves as the garments they eat, and the astounding mimic octopus are just a few of the bizarre creatures you'll meet between the covers of this book.
This is a book for children to grow into. Just like the narration to any number of nature programs, the text alternates between pop-science humorous and rather technical. But the illustrations are plentiful, and their captions are generally easy for even young children to understand. I can imagine very young children enjoying it for the pictures and their captions, then reading the primary text as they grow older, as I did with a number of natural science books I owned in my youth. What sets Weird Nature apart from the rest of the herd (if you'll pardon my pun) is its focus on the strange, unexpected and truly amazing aspects of animals, both common and exotic. I would recommend this book to any curious child over the age of six.

Examines the animal kingdom's devious defense patterns
John Downer's Weird Nature examines the animal kingdom's devious defense patterns, bizarre breeding habits, and other oddities. From unusual mimics to shrimps which stun prey with noise, this outlines some real oddities and includes fine close-up color photos throughout.