Headless Males Make Great Lovers
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€18.99
A01=Marty Crump
A12=Alan Crump
amphibians
animal behavior
aphrodisiac
Author_Alan Crump
Author_Marty Crump
bats
beetle
biology
birds
Category=PSVP
Category=WN
classification
communication
defense
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
escape
excrement
feeding
food chain
frog
gifts
homeschool
horned lizards
insects
mating
nature
non monogamous animals
nonfiction
parenting
praying mantis
predator avoidance
pregnancy
reference
reproduction
reptiles
school library
science
sea slugs
sex change
spiders
starfish
tapeworms
ticks
wildlife
zoology
Product details
- ISBN 9780226122021
- Weight: 312g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 May 2007
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The natural world is filled with diverse - not to mention quirky and odd - animal behaviors. Consider the male praying mantis that continues to mate after being beheaded; the spiders, insects, and birds that offer gifts of food in return for sex; the male hip-pocket frog that carries his own tadpoles; the baby spiders that dine on their mother; the beetle that craves excrement; or the starfish that sheds an arm or two to escape a predator's graps. "Headless Males Make Great Lovers and Other Unusual Natural Histories" celebrates this extraordinary world of animals with essays on curious creatures and their amazing behaviors. Marty Crump - a tropical field biologist well known for her work with the reproductive behavior of amphibians - examines here the bizarre conduct of animals as they mate, parent, feed, defend themselves, and communicate. Crump's enthusiasm for the unusual behaviors she describes - from sex change and free love in sponges to aphrodisiac concoction in bats - is visible on every page, thanks to her skilled storytelling.
Steeped in biology, "Headless Males Make Great Lovers" points out that diverse and unrelated animals often share seemingly bizarre behaviors - evidence, Crump argues, that these natural histories, though outwardly weird, are successful ways of living. Illustrated throughout, "Headless Males Make Great Lovers" will enchant the general reader with its tales of blood-squirting horned lizards and intestine-ejecting sea cucumbers - all in the service of a greater appreciation of the diversity of the natural histories of animals.
Marty Crump is adjunct professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University and the author of In Search of the Golden Frog, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
