Reviews of the book why the panda stands on its head and other amazing stories about animals. Augustus brown why the panda stands on its head and other amazing stories about animals Why the panda stands on its head and other amazing stories about animals
As a child, I had a notebook in which I pasted various clippings from magazines and newspapers. What was pasted had to meet two conditions: A - I liked it, B - my parents looked to see if they needed this magazine/newspaper safe and sound. No more rules. Anecdotes, song lyrics, recipes, pictures, beautiful women, funny poems coexisted peacefully in this vinaigrette.
This book reminded me of that notebook with a huge number of random facts, very conventionally combined into several sections. No offense to the author, but I saw him sitting for days in front of the TV and taking notes on programs about wildlife. Moreover, he only managed to record catchy, bright, scandalous or shocking moments, and decided to omit the logical connection between them. The author, of course, tries to prove the seriousness of his intentions by providing, as is customary in science, a list of references at the end of the book. I looked it up, it's in English. NG channel and www.science.discovery.com immediately caught my eye, and the rest, even if it was at least five times scientific and serious, no longer mattered.
We must pay tribute, the book is very informative. But among several thousand facts, the lion's share is disgusting and unpleasant. For example, monkeys make up for the lack of fat in their diet by hunting monkeys from other tribes, and first of all, eating the brains of the prey. When a vulture is attacked by a predator, the vulture spews vomit towards the enemy. 90% of the total amount of methane is produced by herds of sheep and cows, another 4% by termites. Well, everything in the same spirit. The language of the book is simple, and many of the facts are interesting and unusual (do you know that there are 40,000 muscles in an elephant’s trunk, and 650 in the entire human body?). This makes me think of recommending the book to a junior schoolchild, but at the same time, information about cannibalism, a huge number of facts about mating (in search of synonyms, the author often touchingly calls it making love) would force an ordinary parent to put the book on the farthest shelf.
In general, the question of the target audience of this book is also open. An adult will miss the scientific explanation of many points, and a primary school student will not be interested in reading this: “Crocodiles are able to hold their breath under water for more than an hour. The resulting carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide) is converted into bicarbonate ions in the blood of reptiles, which causes the hemoglobin contained in red blood cells to release new portions of oxygen into the blood.”
In short, the book is entertaining, but useless. I still prefer it when they talk, even if only about one animal, but in detail and completely about all spheres of its life.
Augustus Brown
Why the panda stands on its head and other amazing stories about animals
Dedicated to Gabriella, Thomas and Silena
Preface
Just a few generations ago, even the most eminent thinkers regarded animals as boring and uninteresting creatures - especially compared to humans. Mark Twain, for example, considered man “the only animal that can blush or has the need to do so.”
D.H. Lawrence called humans “the only living creatures to be feared,” and G.K. Chesterton wrote that “no animal ever invented such an evil as drunkenness, or such a good as drinking.”
But Chesterton would probably need a good sip of whiskey if he learned how wrong he and his other two famous contemporaries were. The creator of Father Brown clearly never had the opportunity to encounter drunken Scandinavian moose who had eaten overripe apples, or to contemplate dozens of bird corpses lying on the ground, pecking at hallucinogenic berries and the whole flock crashing into a glass skyscraper. And Mr. Twain, of course, never had the opportunity to see the scarlet color of the long neck of a male ostrich flashing while courting a female.
The author of the scandalous Lady Chatterley, Sir Lawrence, apparently was never stung by the poisonous Australian jellyfish, colloquially called the “sea wasp.” If this happened, the writer would have to suffer for a week with a terrible headache, vomiting and deep depression that could turn any person into... let's say, a trembling mass of jelly. After such an ordeal, Lawrence would likely have retained his fear of wild animals for the rest of his life.
The zoological ignorance of all three writers is justified by one circumstance: they lived in an era when there were no electron microscopes, films about wildlife, television channels like National Geographic, or computers capable of deciphering the DNA of cats and dogs.
Nowadays, it is impossible to look at the animal world without experiencing delight and amazement.
Almost every day, information about new amazing discoveries by zoologists appears in scientific journals, popular newspapers or television reporters. The variety, unpredictability and unusualness of these facts are truly fantastic. Cows increasing their milk yield to the music of Beethoven; male mice serenading their lovers; dolphins uniting into gangster gangs; elephants imitating the sounds of trucks rumbling along the roads... Yes, you won’t get bored with animals!
The book you are holding in your hands is a selection of some curious, unusual, and sometimes incredible facts from the life of animals. Its purpose is not so much to inform you, dear reader, about the latest zoological discoveries, but to entertain and help brighten up your leisure time. That is why, having provided the book with a detailed list of references to primary sources and trying to present the facts gleaned there as accurately as possible, without sinning against scientific truth, I at the same time tried to present them in a more amusing and entertaining way. Whether I coped with this task is for you to judge.
To pedantically and scrupulously convey scientific information about animals means to completely discourage interest in them among the younger generation of people. And I really didn’t want to do this.
Augustus Brown,
London, Easter Sunday 2006
Communication in animals
About the fantastic ways animals can exchange information
The main advantage of animals is their taciturnity.
Thornton Wilder
play "On the brink of death"
If you think about it, the ability of people to convey information to each other using words is a real miracle. But conversations also play a huge role in the lives of animals. They chat about food, sex and cubs, share hunting secrets or gossip about strangers crawling or flying past. To communicate, animals choose a wide variety of - often extremely bizarre - methods. Some living beings communicate news to each other by humming, drumming, singing and dancing. Others use color codes, smells and touch to do this. To exchange information, animals do not neglect any means - even intestinal gases.
In body language
About what bizarre forms of communication exist in the world of living beings
Representatives of the fauna sometimes find amazing ways to communicate with their own kind. Here are some amazing examples.
Herrings talk to each other using... intestinal "exhausts": they produce a series of high-frequency sounds, forcefully expelling streams of gas from the anus, while forming chains of tiny bubbles that can be seen by other members of the school. Herring resort to this method of communication mainly in the dark, when, in a dense group, they swim close to each other. Under these conditions, fish are able to perceive the sounds made by their relatives and, with their help, communicate to each other about their location. Scientists even gave the herring tongue a special name - “rapidly repeating ticking.”
To scare away the enemy, snakes make completely indecent sounds. Zoologists who studied two species of snakes living in the southwestern United States - the Arizona adder and the hog-nosed snake - heard with their own ears a roar flying out of their anus. Further research showed that these popping sounds are caused by the release of intestinal gases.
Crayfish warn each other about danger in a very simple and effective way: upon noticing a predator, they simply empty their bladder.
Lobsters have slightly improved this “liquid” language: they emit urine in thin streams through tiny holes near the eyes and communicate with their relatives by spraying their heads with urine. Urine contains chemicals that lobsters use to convey information to each other about their intentions (for example, to have an affair or start a fight).
Chipmunks communicate important information to each other using urine. These animals mark with urine places abundant in food and corners of the forest where food supplies have already been exhausted. Such scent marks make it easier for other chipmunks to find food.
Scent marks also play an important role in the lives of other rodents - voles. Unfortunately, this method of communication often costs voles their lives. The fact is that their urine emits ultraviolet radiation, and this radiation is clearly visible to the main enemies of voles - the kestrel and other birds of prey. Flying from one ultraviolet mark to another, the feathered predator eventually discovers the animal that left them.
According to many scientists, soil vibrations help elephants communicate with each other. By marking time and shaking the ground with powerful legs, the six-ton giant is able to send a message through the soil at a distance of 32 km - much further than the distance a sound signal travels in the air. Recipient elephants perceive these messages with their feet. One day, scientists observed how a herd of elephants suddenly changed the route of their journey and rushed in the opposite direction. Zoologists suggested that the animals were warned of danger by the stomping feet of their dying relatives - the fact is that at the same time, at a distance of several kilometers, poachers attacked another herd of elephants.
African elephants are also excellent at copying sounds. Scientists, for example, have filmed themselves masterfully imitating the rumble of trucks speeding down a nearby freeway. One thing is unclear: why do animals do this?
Augustus Brown
Why the panda stands on its head and other amazing stories about animals
Dedicated to Gabriella, Thomas and Silena
Preface
Just a few generations ago, even the most eminent thinkers regarded animals as boring and uninteresting creatures - especially compared to humans. Mark Twain, for example, considered man “the only animal that can blush or has the need to do so.”
D.H. Lawrence called humans “the only living creatures to be feared,” and G.K. Chesterton wrote that “no animal ever invented such an evil as drunkenness, or such a good as drinking.”
But Chesterton would probably need a good sip of whiskey if he learned how wrong he and his other two famous contemporaries were. The creator of Father Brown clearly never had the opportunity to encounter drunken Scandinavian moose who had eaten overripe apples, or to contemplate dozens of bird corpses lying on the ground, pecking at hallucinogenic berries and the whole flock crashing into a glass skyscraper. And Mr. Twain, of course, never had the opportunity to see the scarlet color of the long neck of a male ostrich flashing while courting a female.
The author of the scandalous Lady Chatterley, Sir Lawrence, apparently was never stung by the poisonous Australian jellyfish, colloquially called the “sea wasp.” If this happened, the writer would have to suffer for a week with a terrible headache, vomiting and deep depression that could turn any person into... let's say, a trembling mass of jelly. After such an ordeal, Lawrence would likely have retained his fear of wild animals for the rest of his life.
The zoological ignorance of all three writers is justified by one circumstance: they lived in an era when there were no electron microscopes, films about wildlife, television channels like National Geographic, or computers capable of deciphering the DNA of cats and dogs.
Nowadays, it is impossible to look at the animal world without experiencing delight and amazement.
Almost every day, information about new amazing discoveries by zoologists appears in scientific journals, popular newspapers or television reporters. The variety, unpredictability and unusualness of these facts are truly fantastic. Cows increasing their milk yield to the music of Beethoven; male mice serenading their lovers; dolphins uniting into gangster gangs; elephants imitating the sounds of trucks rumbling along the roads... Yes, you won’t get bored with animals!
The book you are holding in your hands is a selection of some curious, unusual, and sometimes incredible facts from the life of animals. Its purpose is not so much to inform you, dear reader, about the latest zoological discoveries, but to entertain and help brighten up your leisure time. That is why, having provided the book with a detailed list of references to primary sources and trying to present the facts gleaned there as accurately as possible, without sinning against scientific truth, I at the same time tried to present them in a more amusing and entertaining way. Whether I coped with this task is for you to judge.
To pedantically and scrupulously convey scientific information about animals means to completely discourage interest in them among the younger generation of people. And I really didn’t want to do this.
Augustus Brown,
London, Easter Sunday 2006
Part I
Communication in animals
About the fantastic ways animals can exchange information
The main advantage of animals is their taciturnity.
Thornton Wilder, play "Breath of Death"
If you think about it, the ability of people to convey information to each other using words is a real miracle. But conversations also play a huge role in the lives of animals. They chat about food, sex and cubs, share hunting secrets or gossip about strangers crawling or flying past. To communicate, animals choose a wide variety of - often extremely bizarre - methods. Some living beings communicate news to each other by humming, drumming, singing and dancing. Others use color codes, smells and touch to do this. To exchange information, animals do not neglect any means - even intestinal gases.
In body language
About what bizarre forms of communication exist in the world of living beings
Representatives of the fauna sometimes find amazing ways to communicate with their own kind. Here are some amazing examples.
Herrings talk to each other using... intestinal "exhausts": they produce a series of high-frequency sounds, forcefully expelling streams of gas from the anus, while forming chains of tiny bubbles that can be seen by other members of the school. Herring resort to this method of communication mainly in the dark, when, in a dense group, they swim close to each other. Under these conditions, fish are able to perceive the sounds made by their relatives and, with their help, communicate to each other about their location. Scientists even gave the herring tongue a special name - “rapidly repeating ticking.”
To scare away the enemy, snakes make completely indecent sounds. Zoologists who studied two species of snakes living in the southwestern United States - the Arizona adder and the hog-nosed snake - heard with their own ears a roar flying out of their anus. Further research showed that these popping sounds are caused by the release of intestinal gases.
Crayfish warn each other about danger in a very simple and effective way: upon noticing a predator, they simply empty their bladder.
Lobsters have slightly improved this “liquid” language: they emit urine in thin streams through tiny holes near the eyes and communicate with their relatives by spraying their heads with urine. Urine contains chemicals that lobsters use to convey information to each other about their intentions (for example, to have an affair or start a fight).
Chipmunks communicate important information to each other using urine. These animals mark with urine places abundant in food and corners of the forest where food supplies have already been exhausted. Such scent marks make it easier for other chipmunks to find food.
Scent marks also play an important role in the lives of other rodents - voles. Unfortunately, this method of communication often costs voles their lives. The fact is that their urine emits ultraviolet radiation, and this radiation is clearly visible to the main enemies of voles - the kestrel and other birds of prey. Flying from one ultraviolet mark to another, the feathered predator eventually discovers the animal that left them.
According to many scientists, soil vibrations help elephants communicate with each other. By marking time and shaking the ground with powerful legs, the six-ton giant is able to send a message through the soil at a distance of 32 km - much further than the distance a sound signal travels in the air. Recipient elephants perceive these messages with their feet. One day, scientists observed how a herd of elephants suddenly changed the route of their journey and rushed in the opposite direction. Zoologists suggested that the animals were warned of danger by the stomping feet of their dying relatives - the fact is that at the same time, at a distance of several kilometers, poachers attacked another herd of elephants.
African elephants are also excellent at copying sounds. Scientists, for example, have filmed themselves masterfully imitating the rumble of trucks speeding down a nearby freeway. One thing is unclear: why do animals do this?
But kangaroos communicate using their tail.
As soon as one of the members of a herd of red kangaroos notices a predator, he immediately begins to drum on the ground with his heavy tail or hind legs. Hearing this signal, the animals scatter headlong in different directions, leaving the leader of the herd to deal with the enemy.
But kangaroos are also capable of making sounds. Thus, red kangaroos can click, and the females of their gray relatives call their cubs with a special clucking sound. During a fight, the male, realizing that the enemy has the upper hand, begins to cough - in this way he tells his opponent that he admits defeat.
Golden harlequin toad (Atelopus zeteki)- a rare amphibian that lives in Costa Rica and Panama - communicates with its relatives using special gestures. To notify them of where its path lies, the harlequin makes circular movements with its front and hind limbs. According to scientists, these movements allow harlequins to send each other even such complex messages as “Now I’ll crawl to you!” or “I want to help you with something!”
There is no plot, no main character, the title has virtually nothing to do with the content, and yet, this is a very interesting book “based on true events.”
“Why does a panda stand on its head and other amazing stories about animals” is a set of interesting and sometimes even piquant facts from the life of animals that could make biology lessons a lot more fun.
Just go through the table of contents and you will understand what interesting things are waiting for you to read.
Part 1 - Communication in animals.
This part is devoted to how animals exchange information, report danger, share joy and hook up with friends. Body language, vocal masters, music, gossip and dress code in animal life - that's what we're talking about here. Here are a couple of interesting facts:
- "Female baboons often talk about sex. And the better it was, the more noise they make. After the “act of love,” the females emit a series of loud grunts, reminiscent of machine gun fire. Some biologists believe that the nature of these sounds is directly related to the social status of their partner sexual intercourse - the higher his hierarchical rank in the group, the louder the noise raised by the female."
- “The tiger’s roar spreads over a distance of up to 2 km. It causes insane fear in animals that hear it, which can lead to disruption of the functioning of some internal organs and even paralysis.”
Female baboon |
- “By the size of the ischial calluses - areas of bare, keratinized skin on the back of the body - you can judge whether a female baboon will be a good mother. Large, highly swollen and brightly colored calluses are characteristic of females who are in excellent physical shape and are able to cope perfectly with maternal responsibilities "- In short, baboons choose based on their butts!
Part 2 Food and Drink in the Animal Kingdom
The second part deals with food and drink in the animal kingdom. What are their preferences, in what volumes do they devour food, drunkards and teetotalers of the animal world, as well as what and whom they prefer to eat. Believe me, we have something to envy, learn and avoid. Here are a couple of examples:Insects |
- In Tanzania and Côte d'Ivoire, chimpanzees especially hunt colobus monkeys. Having caught a monkey, the hunter first eats the brain that is richest in fat, then sucks the bone marrow from the largest bones of the victim and only after that proceeds to the meat. As a rule, chimpanzees are happy to share their prey with their relatives, but sometimes not completely disinterestedly - females accompanying males on the hunt sometimes receive meat only in exchange for agreeing to have sex with them.
And so on
I think you already have an idea of what awaits you if you decide to pick up this book, so I won’t tell you more about the chapters (let it be a surprise), but I’ll give you a couple more interesting facts from the book.“The amount of blood a female flea drinks daily is 15 times her body weight.” It's like drinking more than a ton of blood for me!!!
“Female weaver birds, like women, are hostile to sloppy males. They will have to try to be neat and tidy in their home in order to attract the attention of the female.”
“To find out whether the female is capable of becoming pregnant, the male giraffe licks some urine and, like an experienced wine taster, carefully examines its taste and smell in his mouth.”
"Penguins do not shy away from prostitution. Female Adélie penguins willingly mate with males in exchange for material to build a nest."
"The males of a species of North American snake have developed a clever trick that allows them to single-handedly mate with all the surrounding females. They are able to secrete substances with a female odor on their skin, thereby inducing rivals to have sex with them; according to scientists, males resort to this trick to exhaust forces of rivals. Having achieved their goal, these bisexual transvestites can mate freely with all the females available to them." No comments...
Giant Japanese hornet |
"Dolphins practice kidnapping and form militant gangs". Sort of like naval mafiosi.
"Dogs diagnose cancer by smell. As shown in clinical trials conducted at the University of California at Berkeley (USA), dogs detected cancer of the lungs, mammary glands and other organs with an accuracy of 88-97%, simply by sniffing the air exhaled by people. Accuracy of cancer diagnosis using a special multi-million dollar scanner is 85-90%. - After reading this and a couple of other facts, I started thinking seriously about getting a pet...
"Sharks seem to be the only animals that don't know what disease is. They're not even afraid of cancer."- here's where to look for prescriptions
As the famous English geneticist J. W. S. Haldane wrote, “The Universe is not only more fantastic than we believe, but even more fantastic than we can imagine.”
Having made over a hundred excerpts from the book, I realized that these excerpts make no sense - after all, they are half the book! This is the first book without a plot, essentially a set of facts, which I read with enthusiasm and recommend to others. It helped me pass the time on my way to work and back, and it can also be an excellent bedtime book for a schoolchild, and you don’t have to worry about where to start and where to end.
Read this book!
Augustus Brown
Why the panda stands on its head and other amazing stories about animals
Dedicated to Gabriella, Thomas and Silena
Preface
Just a few generations ago, even the most eminent thinkers regarded animals as boring and uninteresting creatures - especially compared to humans. Mark Twain, for example, considered man “the only animal that can blush or has the need to do so.”
D.H. Lawrence called humans “the only living creatures to be feared,” and G.K. Chesterton wrote that “no animal ever invented such an evil as drunkenness, or such a good as drinking.”
But Chesterton would probably need a good sip of whiskey if he learned how wrong he and his other two famous contemporaries were. The creator of Father Brown clearly never had the opportunity to encounter drunken Scandinavian moose who had eaten overripe apples, or to contemplate dozens of bird corpses lying on the ground, pecking at hallucinogenic berries and the whole flock crashing into a glass skyscraper. And Mr. Twain, of course, never had the opportunity to see the scarlet color of the long neck of a male ostrich flashing while courting a female.
The author of the scandalous Lady Chatterley, Sir Lawrence, apparently was never stung by the poisonous Australian jellyfish, colloquially called the “sea wasp.” If this happened, the writer would have to suffer for a week with a terrible headache, vomiting and deep depression that could turn any person into... let's say, a trembling mass of jelly. After such an ordeal, Lawrence would likely have retained his fear of wild animals for the rest of his life.
The zoological ignorance of all three writers is justified by one circumstance: they lived in an era when there were no electron microscopes, films about wildlife, television channels like National Geographic, or computers capable of deciphering the DNA of cats and dogs.
Nowadays, it is impossible to look at the animal world without experiencing delight and amazement.
Almost every day, information about new amazing discoveries by zoologists appears in scientific journals, popular newspapers or television reporters. The variety, unpredictability and unusualness of these facts are truly fantastic. Cows increasing their milk yield to the music of Beethoven; male mice serenading their lovers; dolphins uniting into gangster gangs; elephants imitating the sounds of trucks rumbling along the roads... Yes, you won’t get bored with animals!
The book you are holding in your hands is a selection of some curious, unusual, and sometimes incredible facts from the life of animals. Its purpose is not so much to inform you, dear reader, about the latest zoological discoveries, but to entertain and help brighten up your leisure time. That is why, having provided the book with a detailed list of references to primary sources and trying to present the facts gleaned there as accurately as possible, without sinning against scientific truth, I at the same time tried to present them in a more amusing and entertaining way. Whether I coped with this task is for you to judge.
To pedantically and scrupulously convey scientific information about animals means to completely discourage interest in them among the younger generation of people. And I really didn’t want to do this.
Augustus Brown,
London, Easter Sunday 2006
Part I
Communication in animals
About the fantastic ways animals can exchange information
The main advantage of animals is their taciturnity.
Thornton Wilder, play "Breath of Death"
If you think about it, the ability of people to convey information to each other using words is a real miracle. But conversations also play a huge role in the lives of animals. They chat about food, sex and cubs, share hunting secrets or gossip about strangers crawling or flying past. To communicate, animals choose a wide variety of - often extremely bizarre - methods. Some living beings communicate news to each other by humming, drumming, singing and dancing. Others use color codes, smells and touch to do this. To exchange information, animals do not neglect any means - even intestinal gases.
In body language
About what bizarre forms of communication exist in the world of living beings
Representatives of the fauna sometimes find amazing ways to communicate with their own kind. Here are some amazing examples.
Herrings talk to each other using... intestinal "exhausts": they produce a series of high-frequency sounds, forcefully expelling streams of gas from the anus, while forming chains of tiny bubbles that can be seen by other members of the school. Herring resort to this method of communication mainly in the dark, when, in a dense group, they swim close to each other. Under these conditions, fish are able to perceive the sounds made by their relatives and, with their help, communicate to each other about their location. Scientists even gave the herring tongue a special name - “rapidly repeating ticking.”
To scare away the enemy, snakes make completely indecent sounds. Zoologists who studied two species of snakes living in the southwestern United States - the Arizona adder and the hog-nosed snake - heard with their own ears a roar flying out of their anus. Further research showed that these popping sounds are caused by the release of intestinal gases.
Crayfish warn each other about danger in a very simple and effective way: upon noticing a predator, they simply empty their bladder.
Lobsters have slightly improved this “liquid” language: they emit urine in thin streams through tiny holes near the eyes and communicate with their relatives by spraying their heads with urine. Urine contains chemicals that lobsters use to convey information to each other about their intentions (for example, to have an affair or start a fight).
Chipmunks communicate important information to each other using urine. These animals mark with urine places abundant in food and corners of the forest where food supplies have already been exhausted. Such scent marks make it easier for other chipmunks to find food.
Scent marks also play an important role in the lives of other rodents - voles. Unfortunately, this method of communication often costs voles their lives. The fact is that their urine emits ultraviolet radiation, and this radiation is clearly visible to the main enemies of voles - the kestrel and other birds of prey. Flying from one ultraviolet mark to another, the feathered predator eventually discovers the animal that left them.
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