Jaguars and Electric Eels

Jaguars and Electric Eels PDF Author: Alexander von Humboldt
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141967145
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 80

Get Book Here

Book Description
A great, innovative and restless thinker, the young Humboldt (1769-1859) went on his epochal journey to the New World during a time of revolutionary ferment across Europe. This part of his matchless narrative of adventure and scientific research focuses on his time in Venezuela - in the Llanos and on the Orinoco River - riding and paddling, restlessly and happily noting the extraordinary things on every hand. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

Jaguars and Electric Eels

Jaguars and Electric Eels PDF Author: Alexander von Humboldt
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141967145
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 80

Get Book Here

Book Description
A great, innovative and restless thinker, the young Humboldt (1769-1859) went on his epochal journey to the New World during a time of revolutionary ferment across Europe. This part of his matchless narrative of adventure and scientific research focuses on his time in Venezuela - in the Llanos and on the Orinoco River - riding and paddling, restlessly and happily noting the extraordinary things on every hand. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

Electric Eels

Electric Eels PDF Author: Sara van Dyck
Publisher: Lerner Publications
ISBN: 0761339787
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this Early Bird title, readers learn about the physical characteristics, habitat, and behavior of the electric eel.

Electric Eel

Electric Eel PDF Author: Ellen Lawrence
Publisher: Apex Predators of the Amazon R
ISBN: 9781642807462
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 24

Get Book Here

Book Description
A long, snakelike creature moves slowly through the waters of a muddy river in the Amazon rain forest. It's an electric eel on the hunt. The hungry creature swims closer to a large piranha. As it nears its prey, the predatory eel releases a burst of electricity. Six hundred volts of power enter the fish's body, stunning the animal so the hungry eel can gobble up its electrifying meal! Filled with information perfectly suited to the abilities and interests of its primarygrade audience, this colorful, fact-filled book gives readers a chance to learn about the lives of apex predators that can produce electricity inside their bodies. The book will also help readers develop their powers of observation and challenge them with activities and critical-thinking questions about the electric eel's physical characteristics, its everyday life, and its hunting skills.

Electric Eels

Electric Eels PDF Author: Theresa Morlock
Publisher: Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP
ISBN: 1538202573
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 26

Get Book Here

Book Description
It’s electrifying! But it’s not lightning, it’s an electric eel! Filled with up-close and full-color photographs, readers of this book will get up close and personal with this freaky, long fish. Even readers who don’t love science class will find electric eels’ air-breathing and unusual breeding behavior (saliva is involved) fascinating! Learning about the electric eel is an engaging introduction to ecosystems, habitats, anatomy, biology, electricity, and so much more! Fact boxes throughout the text point out bizarre tidbits sure to make any reader think twice before swimming in the Amazon and Orinoco river basins of South America!

Great Adaptations

Great Adaptations PDF Author: Kenneth Catania
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691209553
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The irresistible enthusiasm of Great Adaptations couldn’t come at a better time."—David P. Barash, Wall Street Journal "Be very amazed."—Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words and Becoming Wild How one scientist unlocked the secrets behind some of nature’s most astounding animals From star-nosed moles that have super-sensing snouts to electric eels that paralyze their prey, animals possess unique and extraordinary abilities. In Great Adaptations, Kenneth Catania presents an entertaining and engaging look at some of nature’s most remarkable creatures. Telling the story of his biological detective work, Catania sheds light on the mysteries behind the behaviors of tentacled snakes, tiny shrews, zombie-making wasps, and more. He shows not only how studying these animals can provide deep insights into how life evolved, but also how scientific discovery can be filled with adventure and fun. Beginning with the star-nosed mole, Catania reveals what the creature’s nasal star is actually for, and what this tells us about how brains work. He explores how the deceptive hunting strategy of tentacled snakes leads prey straight to their mouths, how eels use electricity to control other animals, and why emerald jewel wasps make zombies out of cockroaches. He also solves the enigma of worm grunting—a traditional technique in which earthworms are enticed out of the ground—by teaming up with professional worm grunters. Catania demonstrates the merits of approaching science with an open mind, considers the role played by citizen scientists, and illustrates that most animals have incredible, hidden abilities that defy our imagination. Examining some strange and spectacular creatures, Great Adaptations offers a wondrous journey into nature’s grand designs.

The Shocking History of Electric Fishes

The Shocking History of Electric Fishes PDF Author: Stanley Finger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195366727
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 485

Get Book Here

Book Description
This beautifully illustrated and scholarly book examines the importance of electric fishes in science and medicine and how three species in particular shaped neurophysiology. Anchored in the philosophy and science of past epochs, it is the story of one of Nature's greatest puzzles. Over a long and tortuous path, it focuses on how some numbing fishes helped to make physiology modern.

The Book of Eels

The Book of Eels PDF Author: Patrik Svensson
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062968831
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize National Bestseller Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book One of TIME’s 100 Must Read Books of the Year One of The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Nonfiction Books of the Year One of Smithsonian Magazine’s 10 Best Science Books of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s Best Nonfiction Books of the Year A New York Times Editor’s Choice Part H Is for Hawk, part The Soul of an Octopus, The Book of Eels is both a meditation on the world’s most elusive fish—the eel—and a reflection on the human condition Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the “eel question”: Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether? Even today, in an age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don’t understand what drives them, after living for decades in freshwater, to swim great distances back to the ocean at the end of their lives. They remain a mystery. Drawing on a breadth of research about eels in literature, history, and modern marine biology, as well as his own experience fishing for eels with his father, Patrik Svensson crafts a mesmerizing portrait of an unusual, utterly misunderstood, and completely captivating animal. In The Book of Eels, we meet renowned historical thinkers, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud to Rachel Carson, for whom the eel was a singular obsession. And we meet the scientists who spearheaded the search for the eel’s point of origin, including Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who led research efforts in the early twentieth century, catching thousands upon thousands of eels, in the hopes of proving their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea. Blending memoir and nature writing at its best, Svensson’s journey to understand the eel becomes an exploration of the human condition that delves into overarching issues about our roots and destiny, both as humans and as animals, and, ultimately, how to handle the biggest question of all: death. The result is a gripping and slippery narrative that will surprise and enchant.

Jaguar Ride

Jaguar Ride PDF Author: Brian McMahon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780996331937
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Popular Science

Popular Science PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
Popular Science gives our readers the information and tools to improve their technology and their world. The core belief that Popular Science and our readers share: The future is going to be better, and science and technology are the driving forces that will help make it better.

Spark from the Deep

Spark from the Deep PDF Author: William J. Turkel
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142140981X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book Here

Book Description
How encounters with strongly electric fish informed our grasp of electricity. Spark from the Deep tells the story of how human beings came to understand and use electricity by studying the evolved mechanisms of strongly electric fish. These animals have the ability to shock potential prey or would-be predators with high-powered electrical discharges. William J. Turkel asks completely fresh questions about the evolutionary, environmental, and historical aspects of people’s interest in electric fish. Stimulated by painful encounters with electric catfish, torpedos, and electric eels, people learned to harness the power of electric shock for medical therapies and eventually developed technologies to store, transmit, and control electricity. Now we look to these fish as an inspiration for engineering new sensors, computer interfaces, autonomous undersea robots, and energy-efficient batteries.