By Richard L. Thompson
What's so exact approximately grass? Why do cows have 4 stomachs? whilst will lions supply their final roar? How do animals plan menus - and co-ordinate hunts? Why do bees dance? what percentage elephants are too many?
This compelling ebook explores and reveals solutions to a few of Nature's such a lot fascinating mysteries. Drawing at the African panorama, the writer appears on the biology and body structure of animals and vegetation, and their diversifications in a global of unpredictable switch. Wide-ranging chapters hide, between different themes, mass extinctions, the world's grasslands, predators and prey, FIV in lions, chemical communique and that almost all contentious of concerns - animal attention. Playful line drawings illustrate the textual content, to make a bumper learn for an individual with an curiosity within the workings of the flora and fauna.
Read or Download Nature's Design: Exploring the Mysteries of the Natural World PDF
Similar nature books
A number one determine within the rising box of extinction experiences, Thom van Dooren places philosophy into dialog with the ordinary sciences and his personal ethnographic encounters to vivify the cultural and moral importance of modern day extinctions. not like different meditations at the topic, Flight methods accommodates the particularities of genuine animals and their worlds, drawing philosophers, traditional scientists, and common readers into the adventure of residing between and wasting biodiversity.
Even though the time period "poaching" has now come to consult hunters and anglers who intentionally flout video game rules, famed outdoorsman John Watson makes use of those words in a broader, much less pejorative feel during this assortment, which brings jointly a chain of looking articles he released in numerous periodicals in the course of the process his profession.
The Big Marsh: The Story of a Lost Landscape
A rural neighborhood is modified perpetually whilst moneyed pursuits conspire to rework a precious wetland.
Information and the Nature of Reality
Many scientists regard mass and effort because the fundamental forex of nature. lately, although, the concept that of knowledge has received value. Why? during this ebook, eminent scientists, philosophers and theologians chart a variety of features of knowledge, from quantum info to organic and electronic details, which will know the way nature works.
- Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery
- RSPB Spotlight: Otters
- The Nature of Mathematics: A Critical Survey
- Ecological Intelligence: Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature (EasyRead Large Edition)
- Backpacking Washington
- Snakes in Question: The Smithsonian Answer Book (2nd Edition)
Additional resources for Nature's Design: Exploring the Mysteries of the Natural World
Example text
On weaning, the young calf is required to prime its gut with the bacteria necessary for a vegetable diet – which it does, quite simply, by eating the faeces of an adult animal. When fermentation in the adult beast has, after several hours, been completed, contraction of smooth muscle in the rumen and reticulum forces the partially digested food into the fourth chamber, the abomasum, which is the true stomach. The third chamber, the omasum, functions as a valve which strictly regulates the flow of material into this true stomach.
Nature has determined that many types 54 T he pair roll the ball away, always using the back legs for propulsion, though the female may ride on top of the ball. of seed will germinate better if passed through the digestive tract of an animal. The elephant is not unique in this regard, and the help of other herbivores such as giraffe, buffalo, eland, impala and water-buck may also be enlisted. Some seeds with a tough external coat will only germinate after traversing an animal’s gut, and yet others are so specialised that they will only germinate after passing through a specific animal.
The ‘smash and grab’ attitude to food undoubtedly reflects this inconsistency in food supply but this behaviour also demands the provision of a highly elastic stomach which can expand to accommodate large volumes of meat. In this regard the stomach functions partially as a storage organ. But a stomach bulging with large chunks of raw meat unfortunately creates problems. Digestive enzymes cannot hope to penetrate and breakdown this massive meat before putrefaction sets in – a process producing highly toxic and sometimes lethal chemical compounds.