Fish That Fake Orgasms: And Other Zoological Curiosities

Front Cover
Macmillan, Dec 10, 2007 - Nature - 216 pages

“If you are interested in transvestite garter snakes, the speed-eating habits of the star-nosed mole, or how geckos behave in zero gravity, you will enjoy Fish That Fake Orgasms.” ---The Times (UK)

Packed with fascinating, bizarre, amazing, and hilarious entries, Fish That Fake Orgasms takes you on a guided tour of the diverse natural life that surrounds us. It covers eating and drinking, playing and preying, carousing and canoodling---and much more:

• Why do some Japanese quail prefer to mate with weaker males of the species?

• What animal has a heart that glows green when it beats?

• Of all the carnivores, which has the strongest bite?

• What creature performs better sexually when there’s another male nearby?

• What type of bird has a divorce rate of only 8 percent?

• Which has a bigger brain: a lion in the wild or a lion in captivity?

• What animal pretends it has food in order to lure females into its abode?

Fish That Fake Orgasms is the first professionally researched miscellany of the animal kingdom. An entertaining and addictive collection, it will satisfy anyone entranced by the wondrous world of animals.

And speaking of satisfaction, the female brown trout does, in fact, fake it. It’s a trick it uses to find the most potent mate!

 

Contents

The mating game
11
Unhealthy living
18
Drink and drugs
23
Talented creatures
27
Talking
32
and listening
37
Eating
39
and excreting
48
In the blood
136
Smelly world
139
Zoological definitions
142
The power of the goat
144
Ripe for mummification
145
Laugh and play
146
Amazing fakes
148
Mistaken identity
151

Species that regularly eat their own faeces
50
Breathe easy
51
Under pressure
52
Good vibrations
56
Questions questions questions
58
Enduring enigmas
66
Mysterious giants
69
Man and beast dont get along
74
Differences
81
When animals attack
82
Nature red in tooth and claw
88
Biomechanical wonders
101
Super organs
113
Energy efficient
118
Do the locomotion
125
Left or right
134
Telling lookalikes apart
157
Alliterative collective nouns
159
Whats in a name?
160
More than one name to call a cat
161
That time of life
162
Origin of the species
174
Colours of the rainbow
178
Home is where the heart is
181
Weird identity
185
The rarest of the rare
189
Death becomes them
192
or not
195
Resurrection
197
References
201
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Matt Walker is one of the world's leading science journalists. He is an editor at the BBC, shaping its natural history coverage online. He was previously a senior editor at "New Scientist, " a magazine with a global readership of over 750,000. He has lectured at "New Scientist" conferences, as well as at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

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