Weird Nature: An Astonishing Exploration of Nature's Strangest Behavior

About the Book

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.

About the Author :

Producer-director John Downer started his professional life with the world-renowned BBC Natural History Unit, where he created many groundbreaking and award winning programs. As an independent producer, John Downer Productions' documentaries include Supernatural and Eagle which featured breathtaking in-flight shots from a camera carried by a golden eagle. John Downer also directs commercials and music videos including Peter Gabriel's Digging in the Dirt which won a Grammy. An accomplished wildlife photographer and author, John provides many of the stunning images used in his books.

Review :
A beautifully illustrated and composed book... I was thrilled to read of strange things animals do.-- (02/01/2004) A wonderful pairing of spectacular, and often entertaining, photos combined with a readable historical examination of this so-called weird behavior.--Globe and Mail (05/25/2002) An amazing array of fascinating animal behaviors ... Perhaps this book's greatest attribute is the more than 150 photographs.-- (05/25/2002) An excellent book for a variety of readers ... I strongly recommend this book for any library.-- (04/15/2003) In this remarkable book, Downer gathers a fascinating set of facts about some of the strange behaviors found in the animal kingdom. There are chapters on locomotion, reproduction, feeding, defense, symbiosis, and amazingly, chemical dependency. All offer delightful examples of unusual behaviors.-- (08/01/2002) Lively, entertaining text is richly illustrated with over 150 color shots ... A fun and interesting book.-- (08/01/2002) Some of the most fantastic behaviors of real animals are explored in this beautifully illustrated companion volume to a BBC/Discovery Channel series.--Nancy Bent"Booklist" (08/01/2002) The excellent photographs and concise text provide a lively introduction to major biological adaptations for the general reader.--David Bardack"American Reference Book Annual" (01/01/2003) What I really appreciate about this book is its efforts to put this fascinating information into a human context.--R. Sander-Regier"Canadian Field-Naturalist" (01/01/2003)