How Not to Be Eaten
The Insects Fight Back
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
All animals must eat. But who eats who, and why, or why not? Because insects outnumber and collectively outweigh all other animals combined, they comprise the largest amount of animal food available for potential consumption. How do they avoid being eaten? From masterful disguises to physical and chemical lures and traps, predatory insects have devised ingenious and bizarre methods of finding food. Equally ingenious are the means of hiding, mimicry, escape, and defense waged by prospective prey in order to stay alive. This absorbing book demonstrates that the relationship between the eaten and the eater is a central—perhaps the central—aspect of what goes on in the community of organisms. By explaining the many ways in which insects avoid becoming a meal for a predator, and the ways in which predators evade their defensive strategies, Gilbert Waldbauer conveys an essential understanding of the unrelenting coevolutionary forces at work in the world around us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his newest (after Fireflies, Honey, and Silk), Waldbauer delves into the nitty-gritty survival techniques of Nature's less-cuddly creatures. He introduces readers to the basics of insect life in language for the layman, describing the myriad ways in which insects have evolved to evade predators, whether by way of disguises, mimicry, or "Hiding in Plain Sight." Waldbauer presents other intriguing bug survival tactics that seem almost unbelievable: a "species of bombardier beetle a noxious spray at the temperature of boiling water from the tip of its abdomen directly in the toad's mouth." Interesting and occasionally disturbing information is given about what are all-too-often household pests: the familiar "American cockroach...can tell light from dark even if the eyes on their heads have been covered with black paint." Though Waldbauer writes about critters many readers would rather ignore, he deftly crafts a pleasurable and fascinating page-turner. But despite the fact that the collective weight of Earth's insects is greater than that of "all the other animals combined," Waldbauer assures us that the earth will not be overrun by the crafty bugs of this book, for the predators have evolved too, and those that can read know that to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Illus.
