an encyclopedia of curious and unusual animals

Extraordinary Animals: An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals Ross Piper Greenwood Press EXTRAORDINARY ANIMALS EXTRAORDINARY ANIMALS An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals Ross Piper Illustrations by Mike Shanahan GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Piper, Ross. Extraordinary animals : an encyclopedia of curious and unusual animals / by Ross Piper ; Illustrations by Mike Shanahan. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978–0–313–33922–6 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–313–33922–8 (alk. paper) 1. Animals—Encyclopedias. I. Title. QL7.P57 2007 590—dc22 2007018270 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2007 by Ross Piper All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007018270 ISBN-13: 978–0–313–33922–6 ISBN-10: 0–313–33922–8 First published in 2007 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America  e paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memory of my Dad CONTENTS Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction xv 1 Strength in Numbers: Animal Collectives 1 Acacia Ant 1 Antarctic Krill 4 Aphids 6 Giant Japanese Hornet 9 Leaf-Cutter Ants 11 Naked Mole Rat 13 New Zealand Bat-Fly 16 Portuguese Man-of-War 18 Sponges 20 Stony Corals 23 Tar-Baby Termite 25 Trap Ant 27 2  e World Is a Dangerous Place: Defensive Tactics 31 Armored Shrew 31 Balloon Fish 33 Bombardier Beetles 35 Bushy-Tailed Wood Rat 38 Electric Eel 40 Glaucus 42 Goliath Tarantula 44 Honey Badger 47 Hooded Pitohui 49 Mimic Octopus 51 Sea Cucumbers 53 Slow Loris 55 Springtails 58 3  e Quest for Food 61 Ant Lions 61 Aye-Aye 63 Bolas Spiders 66 Bulldog Bat 68 Candirú 70 Common Chameleon 72 Cone Shells 74 Cookie-Cutter Shark 76 Egg-Eating Snake 78 Fat Innkeeper 80 Gharial 83 Giant Anteater 85 Harpy Eagle 87 Kiwis 89 Luminous Gnat 92 Mantis Shrimps 94 Megamouth Shark 96 Portia Spider 98 Purse-Web Spider 100 Shrews 103 Spitting Spider 105 Triclads 107 Velvet Worms 109 4 Getting from A to B: Solutions to the Problem of Movement 113 Bee Hummingbird 113 Common Swift 115 Emperor Penguin 117 European Eel 119 Flying Dragons 122 Four-Wing Flying Fish 124 Grant’s Golden Mole 126 Leatherback Turtle 128 Northern Bluefi n Tuna 130 Sea Lamprey 132 Sloths 135 Stenus Rove Beetles 137 Stowaway False Scorpion 139 Tokay Gecko 141 White Worm Lizard 144 5 Looking Out for the Next Generation 147 Bee Wolf 147 Blue Whale 149 Burying Beetles 152 Fig Wasps 154 King Cobra 156 viii CONTENTS Malleefowl 158 Marble Gall Wasp 161 Platypus 163 Red-and-Blue Poison-Arrow Frog 165 Sand Tiger Shark 168 Ship Timber Beetle 170 6 Living at the Expense of Others: Parasitism 173 Alcon Blue Butterfl y 173 Ant-Decapitating Flies 175 Bird Fluke 178 Cod Worm 180 Cricket Fly 182 Giant Roundworm 184 Gordian Worms 187 Guinea Worm 189 Human Botfl y 192 Leaf Wasps 194 Rabbit Flea 196 Red-Tailed Wasp 199 Sabre Wasp 201 Sacculina 204 Strepsipterans 206 Warble Flies 208 7  e Continuation of the Species: Sex and Reproduction 211 Blue-Headed Wrasse 211 Cockroach Wasp 213 Deep-Sea Angler Fish 215 Green Spoon Worm 218 Narwhal 220 Palolo Worms 222 Pocketbook Mussels 224 Spotted Hyena 226 Surinam Toad 228 Taita Hills Caecilian 231 Tarantula Hawks 233 Transvestite Rove Beetle 235 8 Pushing the Boundaries: Surviving Extremes 239 Antarctic Toothfi sh 239 Beard Worms 241 Coconut Crab 244 Coelacanth 247 Giant Mudskipper 249 Giant Squid 252 Hagfi sh 254 Human 256 Lake Titicaca Frog 259 Lungfi sh 261 Marine Iguana 263 Olm 266 CONTENTS ix [...]... explosion in the variety of flowering plants, and the aphids diversified to exploit this new abundance of plant 7 8 EXTRAORDINARY ANIMALS species Over the eons, the aphids, as with many of the insects, have evolved Go Look! hand in hand with the flowering plants, Aphids can be found on all types of plants, including resulting in some amazingly complex houseplants, garden plants, trees, and crops You will see... continue growing, and it can take between two and three years from the time they hatch for them to reach maturity The swarms are composed of adults and young adults and can be huge They can stretch over an area of ocean equivalent to several city blocks and can be as much as 5 m thick, with as many as 60,000 krill in 1 cu m of water From the air, one of these swarms has been likened to a gigantic amoeba... naked eye, and some are massive, thousands of times larger than a fully grown human Many of them are rarely seen, and there is still a great deal to learn about their lives The scientists who study animals are known as zoologists, and it is these people who unravel the mysteries of the animal kingdom Scientists, by their very nature, have an urge to categorize and order the things they study, and zoologists... 291 PREFACE Extraordinary Animals is an exploration of the animal kingdom, a cherry-picking of these fantastically diverse organisms whose ways and characteristics are astounding and often stranger than fiction The book covers a wide variety of animal life, including many obscure but exceptionally interesting creatures, the likes of which can only be discovered in the confines of specialized, very inaccessible... of 80 m A single nest can take up 30–600 sq m and contain 8 million individuals at any one time One of these huge colonies operates like a superorganism, affecting the surrounding environment in profound ways The ants can completely defoliate whole areas of forest, breaking the forest up into small glades that are important to many plants and animals In the lifetime of one nest, 40 tonnes of soil can... insects and their relatives These animals are easy to find and easy to keep in glass jars or old margarine tubs This fascination with bugs grows, and before long, you find yourself reading about other animals, some of which you will probably never see but whose origins, diversity, and astonishing lives amaze you This book is an encapsulation of this path of curiosity, and it draws on things I have read and. .. difficult business, and only 2.5 percent of potential queens will be successful Many will be eaten during the nuptial flight or when they land, and many may successfully start a colony only to lose it to disease in the first three months • In some parts of their range, leaf-cutter ants can be quite a nuisance to humans, defoliating crops and damaging roads and crops with their nest-making antics Further Reading:... are several types of workers, which vary in appearance Generally, a leaf-cutter ant is brown, and its body supported on long, thin legs The mandibles are well developed, and the eyes are small 11 12 EXTRAORDINARY ANIMALS Where do they live? The leaf-cutter ants are found in Central and South America and in the southern United States They like a warm, humid climate and throughout their range are found... greedy ants When the tree is ready to produce flowers, the ant abodes on certain branches begin to wither and shrink, forcing the occupants to flee and leaving the tree’s flowers to develop free from attack by the ants • In the mangrove forests of Southeast Asia and New Guinea there lives an odd plant called Myrmecodia This green, spiky, small football-sized plant clings to the branch or trunk of a mangrove... parts of the plant • Aphids are not strong fliers, but they utilize lofty air currents to travel many kilometers, often flying up to reach these currents in the calm conditions of a summer evening GIANT JAPANESE HORNET Giant Japanese Hornet—Japanese honeybee workers forming a defensive ball around a giant Japanese hornet (Mike Shanahan) Giant Japanese Hornet—A worker perched on an index finger to give an . Extraordinary Animals: An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals Ross Piper Greenwood Press EXTRAORDINARY ANIMALS EXTRAORDINARY ANIMALS An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals Ross. CONTENTS PREFACE Extraordinary Animals is an exploration of the animal kingdom, a cherry-picking of these fantas- tically diverse organisms whose ways and characteristics are astounding and often stranger than fi ction Shanahan GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Piper, Ross. Extraordinary animals : an encyclopedia of curious and unusual animals