Weird Nature

Weird Nature

Author: John Downer

Publisher: Willowdale, Ont. : Firefly Books

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9781552975862

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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.


Book Synopsis Weird Nature by : John Downer

Download or read book Weird Nature written by John Downer and published by Willowdale, Ont. : Firefly Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.


Weird Nature

Weird Nature

Author: Virginia Loh-Hagan

Publisher: Cherry Lake

Published: 2017-08-01

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 1634729838

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Take a look at the world's weirdest nature stories--from fire rainbows to ghost trees. These stories are too strange to be made up! Written with a high interest level to appeal to a more mature audience and a lower level of complexity with clear visuals to help struggling readers along. Considerate text includes tons of fascinating information and wild facts that will hold the readers' interest, allowing for successful mastery and comprehension. A table of contents, glossary with simplified pronunciations, and index all enhance comprehension.


Book Synopsis Weird Nature by : Virginia Loh-Hagan

Download or read book Weird Nature written by Virginia Loh-Hagan and published by Cherry Lake. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take a look at the world's weirdest nature stories--from fire rainbows to ghost trees. These stories are too strange to be made up! Written with a high interest level to appeal to a more mature audience and a lower level of complexity with clear visuals to help struggling readers along. Considerate text includes tons of fascinating information and wild facts that will hold the readers' interest, allowing for successful mastery and comprehension. A table of contents, glossary with simplified pronunciations, and index all enhance comprehension.


The WEIRDest People in the World

The WEIRDest People in the World

Author: Joseph Henrich

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2020-09-08

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0374710457

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A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.


Book Synopsis The WEIRDest People in the World by : Joseph Henrich

Download or read book The WEIRDest People in the World written by Joseph Henrich and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A Bloomberg Best Non-Fiction Book of 2020 A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2020 A Human Behavior & Evolution Society Must-Read Popular Evolution Book of 2020 A bold, epic account of how the co-evolution of psychology and culture created the peculiar Western mind that has profoundly shaped the modern world. Perhaps you are WEIRD: raised in a society that is Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. If so, you’re rather psychologically peculiar. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves—their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations—over their relationships and social roles. How did WEIRD populations become so psychologically distinct? What role did these psychological differences play in the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe during the last few centuries? In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church. It was these changes that gave rise to the WEIRD psychology that would coevolve with impersonal markets, occupational specialization, and free competition—laying the foundation for the modern world. Provocative and engaging in both its broad scope and its surprising details, The WEIRDest People in the World explores how culture, institutions, and psychology shape one another, and explains what this means for both our most personal sense of who we are as individuals and also the large-scale social, political, and economic forces that drive human history. Includes black-and-white illustrations.


Beyond Weird

Beyond Weird

Author: Philip Ball

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-10-14

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 022675510X

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“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.


Book Synopsis Beyond Weird by : Philip Ball

Download or read book Beyond Weird written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-10-14 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.


Strange Natures

Strange Natures

Author: Nicole Seymour

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2013-05-15

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0252094875

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In Strange Natures, Nicole Seymour investigates the ways in which contemporary queer fictions offer insight on environmental issues through their performance of a specifically queer understanding of nature, the nonhuman, and environmental degradation. By drawing upon queer theory and ecocriticism, Seymour examines how contemporary queer fictions extend their critique of "natural" categories of gender and sexuality to the nonhuman natural world, thus constructing a queer environmentalism. Seymour's thoughtful analyses of works such as Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues, Todd Haynes's Safe, and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain illustrate how homophobia, classism, racism, sexism, and xenophobia inform dominant views of the environment and help to justify its exploitation. Calling for a queer environmental ethics, she delineates the discourses that have worked to prevent such an ethics and argues for a concept of queerness that is attuned to environmentalism's urgent futurity, and an environmentalism that is attuned to queer sensibilities.


Book Synopsis Strange Natures by : Nicole Seymour

Download or read book Strange Natures written by Nicole Seymour and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Strange Natures, Nicole Seymour investigates the ways in which contemporary queer fictions offer insight on environmental issues through their performance of a specifically queer understanding of nature, the nonhuman, and environmental degradation. By drawing upon queer theory and ecocriticism, Seymour examines how contemporary queer fictions extend their critique of "natural" categories of gender and sexuality to the nonhuman natural world, thus constructing a queer environmentalism. Seymour's thoughtful analyses of works such as Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues, Todd Haynes's Safe, and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain illustrate how homophobia, classism, racism, sexism, and xenophobia inform dominant views of the environment and help to justify its exploitation. Calling for a queer environmental ethics, she delineates the discourses that have worked to prevent such an ethics and argues for a concept of queerness that is attuned to environmentalism's urgent futurity, and an environmentalism that is attuned to queer sensibilities.


DuneCraft Weird and Wacky Plantlife

DuneCraft Weird and Wacky Plantlife

Author: DuneCraft

Publisher: Courier Dover Publications

Published: 2015-09-16

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 0486793869

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Explore the exotic plant life featured in the grow-it-yourself kits manufactured by DuneCraft. Full-page images to color and fascinating captions profile the moonflower, fly trap, money plant, and many others.


Book Synopsis DuneCraft Weird and Wacky Plantlife by : DuneCraft

Download or read book DuneCraft Weird and Wacky Plantlife written by DuneCraft and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the exotic plant life featured in the grow-it-yourself kits manufactured by DuneCraft. Full-page images to color and fascinating captions profile the moonflower, fly trap, money plant, and many others.


A Century of Weird Fiction, 1832-1937

A Century of Weird Fiction, 1832-1937

Author: Jonathan Newell

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2020-03-15

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1786835460

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Offers a new critical perspective on the weird that combines two ways of looking at weird and cosmic horror. Mingling of nausea and knowledge, this book connects pulp horror with metaphysical insight, offering an innovative approach aesthetics and metaphysics. Combines recent speculative philosophy and affect theory.


Book Synopsis A Century of Weird Fiction, 1832-1937 by : Jonathan Newell

Download or read book A Century of Weird Fiction, 1832-1937 written by Jonathan Newell and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2020-03-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a new critical perspective on the weird that combines two ways of looking at weird and cosmic horror. Mingling of nausea and knowledge, this book connects pulp horror with metaphysical insight, offering an innovative approach aesthetics and metaphysics. Combines recent speculative philosophy and affect theory.


The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature

The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature

Author: Sami Bayly

Publisher: Lothian Children's Books

Published: 2022-01-25

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780734420046

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SHORTLISTED CBCA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2022 - EVE POWNALL AWARD Come along for another fresh take on the animal kingdom from bestselling author and illustrator, Sami Bayly. Discover 60 of the most peculiar pairs in nature and learn how plant and animal species rely on each other for their survival. Whether it be a rare tick living in the fur of a pygmy possum, a stick insect feasting and hiding out amongst the Melaleuca or a handfish laying its eggs on a sea squirt, incredible natural relationships deserve to be explored and celebrated. Investigating all types of relationships, from symbiotic to parasitic, this is an eye-opening guide to the natural world. Many species steer clear of those who are different, but the animals and plants in this book have evolved to form relationships with some of the most unlikely partners, and they couldn't live without them. This gorgeous hardcover book is illustrated in exquisite detail by award-winning author and illustrator, Sami Bayly. The perfect companion to The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals and The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Dangerous Animals.


Book Synopsis The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature by : Sami Bayly

Download or read book The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature written by Sami Bayly and published by Lothian Children's Books. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED CBCA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2022 - EVE POWNALL AWARD Come along for another fresh take on the animal kingdom from bestselling author and illustrator, Sami Bayly. Discover 60 of the most peculiar pairs in nature and learn how plant and animal species rely on each other for their survival. Whether it be a rare tick living in the fur of a pygmy possum, a stick insect feasting and hiding out amongst the Melaleuca or a handfish laying its eggs on a sea squirt, incredible natural relationships deserve to be explored and celebrated. Investigating all types of relationships, from symbiotic to parasitic, this is an eye-opening guide to the natural world. Many species steer clear of those who are different, but the animals and plants in this book have evolved to form relationships with some of the most unlikely partners, and they couldn't live without them. This gorgeous hardcover book is illustrated in exquisite detail by award-winning author and illustrator, Sami Bayly. The perfect companion to The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals and The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Dangerous Animals.


Weird Animals in the Wild

Weird Animals in the Wild

Author: Alix Wood

Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc

Published: 2013-07-15

Total Pages: 34

ISBN-13: 1615338462

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Some animals have truly weird features and habits. A monkey with a giant nose and a slew of spitters are some of the creatures readers will learn about in this volume. Colorful, often funny, photographs accompany simple text.


Book Synopsis Weird Animals in the Wild by : Alix Wood

Download or read book Weird Animals in the Wild written by Alix Wood and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2013-07-15 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some animals have truly weird features and habits. A monkey with a giant nose and a slew of spitters are some of the creatures readers will learn about in this volume. Colorful, often funny, photographs accompany simple text.


Weird Animals

Weird Animals

Author: Steve Parker

Publisher: Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP

Published: 2016-07-15

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 1482449986

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What could a male Jackson’s chameleon need three horns for besides fighting? Actually, this odd-looking animal has horns to scare predators and attract females more than defense! Some animals’ bodies can lead readers to question the purpose of their weird features. This book has the answers they’re looking for! From how the echidna uses its spines to keep predators away to how the hornbill uses its large beak, the main content features some of nature’s most interesting bodies. Colorful, up-close photographs and concise fact boxes introduce readers to many kinds of animal habitats, behaviors, and life cycles.


Book Synopsis Weird Animals by : Steve Parker

Download or read book Weird Animals written by Steve Parker and published by Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What could a male Jackson’s chameleon need three horns for besides fighting? Actually, this odd-looking animal has horns to scare predators and attract females more than defense! Some animals’ bodies can lead readers to question the purpose of their weird features. This book has the answers they’re looking for! From how the echidna uses its spines to keep predators away to how the hornbill uses its large beak, the main content features some of nature’s most interesting bodies. Colorful, up-close photographs and concise fact boxes introduce readers to many kinds of animal habitats, behaviors, and life cycles.