Provides a resource for understanding animals who exhibit a unique and intriguing trait: living nocturnally.
We share the earth with a wide variety of animal species, each of which brings something special to the diversity of the planet. By knowing more about how animals behave and live, we gain a greater understanding of how life evolved and the importance of biodiversity. This book is about the animals that rise when the sun sets and are active throughout the night. Nocturnal Animals examines how such animals live and explains their highly developed senses that enable them to survive in the dark, as well as their behavior and adaptations to avoid sunlight and predators during the day. The book provides a thorough guide, perfect for research papers in biology classes, for understanding the behavior and biodiversity of a fascinating and unusual group of animals.
Features
Nocturnal Animals provides an in-depth discussion of the behaviors of this fascinating group of animals. For example:
• Snakes have special senses - their flicking tongues bring scent particles to an organ in the mouth, and rattlesnakes have special heat-sensing pits that locate a small rodent by its body warmth.
• The highly developed sight of tree-living frogs allow them to jump from branch to branch in the dark
• Owls can locate a mouse in complete darkness because of their accute hearing
• Bats send out high frequency signals - some species actually through their noses - and hear the returning echoes in time to fly through a forest at full speed
Beautifully illustrated, with numerous color images, Nocturnal Animals provides copious material for understanding these unusual animals.
Reviews
"This title has been reviewed jointly with Nocturnal Animals and Hibernation, both by Clive Roots.....These three titles fill a niche. Most available books on flightless birds, nocturnal animals, and hibernation are for a juvenile audience, or they focus narrowly on particular animals (e.g., penguins) rather than giving a broad overview. Undergraduates in zoology will find these books useful. Recommended. Lower-/upper-level undergraduates, two-year technical program students, and general readers."—Choice
"They include Hog Badgers, whose snouts do most of the hunting for them, Philippine Tarsiers, for whom a single eyeball is larger than its brain, and of course bat after bat after bat. Zoo director and consultant Roots provides a wealth of photographs of the critters that go bump in the night along with a very accessible text, describing how moderate as well as extreme environments create the nocturnal urge in everything from salamanders to the big cats. He covers sensory oddities, night birds, the first nocturnal mammals, the sound navigators, eaters of night-time insects, dark hunters and their game, and primates who just cannot get to bed early. There are many starling facts here: those of us perpetually low on our kangaroo supply will find they are nocturnal, as are porcupines and a number of wild cats, and warthogs have gone nocturnal due to excessive persecution, much to their further decimation."—SciTech Book News
