Bionic Beasts: Saving Animal Lives with Artificial Flippers, Legs, and Beaks

by Jolene Gutiérrez

Overview

What happens when a young elephant steps on a buried land mine? What happens when a sea turtle’s flipper is injured by a predator? Thanks to recent advances in technology, we have new ways to design and build prosthetic body parts that can help these animals thrive.



Meet an Asian elephant named Mosha, a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle named Lola, a German Shepherd named Cassidy, a greylag goose named Vitória, and Pirate, a Berkshire-Tamworth pig. Each of these animals was struggling, but through a variety of techniques and technologies, humans created devices that enabled the animals to live and move more comfortably. Discover the stories of how veterinarians, doctors, and even students from around the world used 3D printing and other techniques to build bionic body parts for these amazing animals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541589407
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	48
Sales rank:	973,552
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	10 - 11 Years

About the Author

Jolene Gutiérrez has always loved animals. She grew up on a farm where she rode horses, bottle-fed calves, chased kittens, and raised tadpoles that grew into toads. She's been a school librarian for 25 years and lives in Colorado with her husband, 2 teenage kids, 3 preteen dogs, and 1 prickly hedgehog. Learn more at www.jolenegutierrez.com.

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2020

Gr 4–8—This title discusses animals that have been injured and given prostheses to improve their lives. Gutiérrez highlights five different animals, educates readers on each particular species, and explains how they became injured. The narratives also detail how the prostheses were made for each animal, as making a flipper for an injured turtle is a different process than constructing a foreleg for an elephant. Readers interested in biomedical technology will appreciate the instructions for building small-scale prosthetic models using household items. VERDICT Examining environmentalism, animal rescue, and technological possibility, this science-filled book for upper-elementary to middle school readers entertains in many forms.—Sara Jurek, Children's English Lib., Stuttgart, Germany

School Library Journal

2020-07-14
Gutiérrez profiles five “bionic beasts,” animals whose prosthetic body parts help them to function.

Matter-of-factly, she introduces three animals that each have only three legs: Lola, a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle from Texas; Mosha, an Asian elephant from Myanmar; and Cassidy, a German shepherd from New York. Pirate, a Berkshire-Tamworth pig from Vancouver Island, has a deformed leg; Vitória, a greylag goose from Brazil, lacks a beak. The animals struggled to move or eat until veterinarians, designers, and doctors teamed up to create innovative prostheses and orthoses. The prostheses’ complex design processes are clearly described. Sidebars provide animal facts and highlight various rescue organizations; the book’s bright yellow and green color scheme complements the accompanying color photos. Though technology is the primary focus, the author acknowledges political and environmental issues in the animals’ habitats, such as ongoing civil wars in Myanmar and oceans cluttered with plastic waste. Activities follow each profile. Some attempt to mimic the teams’ challenges by constructing mock prostheses from household items and exploring strengths and weaknesses of various designs. Others edge problematically into disability simulation, such as imitating Pirate’s walk “to understand how Pirate feels” without his orthosis; though well-meaning, the exercise risks encouraging pity for similarly disabled humans and feels incongruous with other, inclusive instructions: “if you are able”; “or observe a friend.” (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-16-inch double-page spreads viewed at 69.1% of actual size.)

Scientifically inclined readers will enjoy this in-depth application of STEM to disabled animals. (glossary, notes, bibliography, resources, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)

Kirkus Reviews

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