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Bloodthirsty birds, bats, insects, and fish…some animals need to suck blood to survive. Colorful photos and descriptive text help explain the body parts, characteristics, and behaviors that make these kinds of animals special--and creepy. Amazing photos and simple text make this book a great high-interest read.

"We all go through awkward phases-even animals! Award-winning author and photographer April Pulley Sayre shines a light on nature's relatable in-between moments. No longer underwater but not ready to fly, no longer a tadpole but not yet leaping to land. Animals, just like people, can find themselves stuck in some awkward in-between stages. How do we get out of the in-betweens? We just have to push on through! Come get a glimpse behind-the-scenes into...

"Learn about the wild, wacky and downright disgusting ways some animals react out of fear. Are you afraid of the dark? Of getting lost? Or of something you saw in a movie? Maybe someone laughed at you for being scared or called you a chicken. That's okay! In fact, it's how humans stay safe in scary situations. While people might run or scream, animals have amazing ways of protecting themselves when they're afraid. Fulmar birds vomit, Texas horned...

Frozen mammals of the Ice Age, preserved for millennia in the tundra, have been a source of fascination and mystery since their first discovery over two centuries ago. These mummies, their ecology, and their preservation are the subject of this compelling book by paleontologist Dale Guthrie. The 1979 find of a frozen, extinct steppe bison in an Alaskan gold mine allowed him to undertake the first scientific excavation of an Ice Age mummy in North...

The landscapes of Madagascar have long delighted zoologists, who have discovered, in and among the island's baobab trees and thickets, a dizzying array of animals, including something approaching one hundred species of lemur. Madagascar's mammal fauna, for example, is far more diverse, and more endemic, than early explorers and naturalists ever dreamed of. But in the past 2,500 or so years-a period associated with natural climatic shifts and ecological...

How did rodent outbreaks in Germany help to end World War I? What caused the destructive outbreak of rodents in Oregon and California in the late 1950s, the large population outbreak of lemmings in Scandinavia in 2010, and the great abundance of field mice in Scotland in the spring of 2011? Population fluctuations, or outbreaks, of rodents constitute one of the classic problems of animal ecology, and in Population Fluctuations in Rodents, Charles...

Craig Packer takes us into Africa for a journey of fifty-two days in the fall of 1991. But this is more than a tour of magnificent animals in an exotic, faraway place. A field biologist since 1972, Packer began his work studying primates at Gombe and then the lions of the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater with his wife and colleague Anne Pusey. Here, he introduces us to the real world of fieldwork-initiating assistants to lion research in the Serengeti,...

As explorers and scientists have known for decades, the Neotropics harbor a fantastic array of our planet's mammalian diversity, from capybaras and capuchins to maned wolves and mouse opossums to sloths and sakis. This biological bounty can be attributed partly to the striking diversity of Neotropical landscapes and climates and partly to a series of continental connections that permitted intermittent faunal exchanges with Africa, Antarctica, Australia,...

"The story of the impactful partnership between humans and mockingbirds--a case study in courage, resiliency, and the power of a song--written by nonfiction powerhouse Phil Hoose"--

"When zookeeper Theodora 'Teddy' Bentley fishes the body of Koala Kate out of Gunn Landing Harbor, she discovers that her fellow zookeeper didn't drown; she was strangled. The clues to Koala Kate's killer implicate other animal keepers at Gunn Zoo, including Outback Bill, marsupial keeper and Kate's Aussie ex-boyfriend; and Robin Chase, the big cat keeper who's got it in for Teddy. Also displaying suspicious behavior are several 'liveaboarders' at...