Exploding Ants: Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt

by Joanne Settel

Overview

A wasp lays its eggs under a
caterpillar's skin so that its young can
eat the caterpillar's guts as they grow.
A young head louse makes its home
on a human hair and feasts on
human blood.
Frogs use their eyeballs to help
swallow their food.
From small worms that live in a dog's nose mucus to exploding ants to regurgitating mother gulls, this book tells of the unusual ways animals find food, shelter, and safety in the natural world.
If animals all ate the same things and lived in the same places, it would be impossible for all of them to survive. So they specialize. Some animals eat the bits that others leave behind, such as skin and mucus. They find all kinds of unusual places to shelter, including the cracks and holes in another creature's skin or its internal organs. They use their own bodies to protect themselves from predators by imitating unsavory items such as bird droppings and even by blowing up.
These habits that may seem disgusting to us are wonderful adaptations that make it possible for a great variety of creatures to live and thrive on Earth. Read about them and marvel at the amazing ways animals adapt to the natural world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780689817397
Publisher:	Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	04/01/1999
Edition description:	1 ED
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	1020L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Dr. Joanne Settel is an award-winning writer of science books for children, including Your Amazing Skin from Outside In and Your Amazing Digestion from Mouth Through Intestine. Dr. Settel’s book Exploding Ants: Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt was listed as one of the Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12 by the Children’s Book Council. Dr. Settel has a PhD in biology. She is a professor emeritus at Baltimore City Community College, where she taught courses in biology, anatomy, and physiology. She lives with her husband in Maryland, where she enjoys hiking, playing bridge, and gardening. Visit her online at JoanneSettel.com.

Editorial Reviews

Yikes! is the best way to describe this interesting book by Joanne Settel, who does a commendable job of explaining some of the not-so-pleasant ways animals use to exist in their world. While a number of the examples are probably familiar to many kids, several passages, such as that describing worms altering ants' brains or owls upchucking a ball of body parts, should amaze the young reader. After reading the story about the worms that live inside dogs' noses, kids may look at their family pet a little differently. Not all of the stories are of parasitism; some discuss how animals live in a symbiotic relationship with each other. Each article succinctly explains the activity presented and is accompanied by color photographs. For those readers fascinated by such stuff, a list of additional readings provides more in-depth information on the activities. Nature, like life, is often a struggle for survival, and this little book aptly illustrates how some species respond to that struggle. On second thought, nature is life! Highly Recommended, Grades 3-6. REVIEWER: Dr. Michael V. Mellinger

Fans of all things gross, revolting, and disgusting will find plenty to applaud in this round-up of animal behaviors and habits for survival in the natural world. Eating, egg-laying, sheltering, tricking, and defending are all common comportment in the wide universe of animals, birds, insects, and parasites. A swallowtail butterfly larva mimics the shape of a bird dropping, a braconid wasp feasts on caterpillar guts, a honey ant regurgitates nectar for its colony, a tongue worm sets up house in the mucus of a dog's nose. Exploding soldier ants, ticks bursting with blood, vomiting vampire bats—the characters described here are not for the faint of heart or feeble of stomach. If there's a misstep, it's that the plain presentation—predominant text against a stark white background, interspersed with a few full-color photographs—undersells the high-interest subject matter suggested by such jazzy chapter headings as "Ballooning Birds," "Gulping Eyeballs," and "Underwater Bloodsucker." To aid readers, scientific terms are accentuated in italic typeface, defined in a glossary, and located with use of an index. (Nonfiction. 7-12)

Kirkus Reviews