Downer, John. creator John Downer text Willowdale, Ont : Firefly Books , 2002 monographic eng

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156 pages : color illustrations ; 29 cm. 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. Introduction Marvelous motion Bizarre breeding Fantastic feeding Devious defenses Puzzling partners Peculiar potions Index Acknowledgments Picture credits / John Downer. Animal behavior Animals Habits and behavior Juvenile works Trivia and miscellanea 591.5 DOW 9781552975862 : Zafaa Books & Distributors : 313/56F, 49A, Anand Nagar, Inderlok, Delhi. 230406 20230406143835.0