Kenneth Catania

What a fantastic book this was. The author starts with his own experiments into things like, “ what function does the Star nose of the star nosed mole provide? “ from there he looks at other research and adaptations in various species that can be compared and contrasted.
It is not only the text that is full of amazing animal behavior though, you can also scan codes throughout the book to watch the animals themselves in action.
The Halloweeen movie of a parasitic wasp pulling an “ amontillado” move on a hapless cockroach is unforgettable
Do yourself a favor and read this book… (mehr)

A nice collection of stories, digging into the foundations of animal behavior and biology, intermixed with an autobiographical thread. The book is well edited, too, though I wouldn't mind much more of this.

> The special relationship between mouse whiskers and the mouse brain. Each of the whiskers is visible in the mouse neocortex as an oval, clearly showing how the mouse face is “mapped” into the brain. This relationship has made mice a “model system” for neuroscientists investigating the sense of touch.

> the tip of each [star-nose mole nose] appendage is made from tissue farther back on the face than the base of each appendage. It is a backward developmental sequence, unlike the development of any other known appendage in the entire animal Kingdom

> the moles paused their underwater movements to explore objects, and at the same time, air bubbles emerged from their nostrils, flowed over whatever they were investigating, without detaching from the nose, and then got sucked back into the nostrils.

> The snake’s J-shaped hunting posture is a set-up. It creates a concave space between the snake’s head and neck. The snake stays rigidly still and camouflaged until a fish wanders into the center of the concave space, at which point one fish ear is facing the snake’s neck and the other ear is facing the snake’s head (and jaws). Then, instead of simply striking at the fish, the snake’s first move is a feint—it twitches its neck. The feint occurs a millisecond or two before the real attack begins, and generates a sound in the water that reaches the fish almost immediately, giving the wrong commanding Mauthner cell a head start in the critical decision of which way to turn. A fraction of a second later, the real attack is launched as the snake strikes out toward the fish with jaws containing needle-sharp teeth. The snake’s strike, the real threat, generates a massive shock wave, but it’s too late. The opposing Mauthner cell—now wielding ultimate authority—was activated first. Subsequently, the wrong inhibitory neurons were activated, ensuring that the muscles for the proper escape direction were shut down. Worse yet, as the snake’s strikes closes in, the C-bend propels the fish into the oncoming jaws.

> vision is comparatively slow, and therefore the retina cannot deal with a rapidly moving visual scene. We have the same problem when we move our eyes—you can demonstrate this by going to a mirror and looking back and forth at either eye; you will never see a movement. Your nervous system suppresses visual signals when your eyes move so you don’t see the world streak by in a disorienting blur. (Try this again looking at the self-view on your phone camera. A slight delay in the system will usually allow you to see the missing movements.) Tentacled snakes take this suppression a step further—they retract their eyes to protect them during the strike

> In 1951, seventy years after Darwin published his book on worms, Niko Tinbergen published a similarly focused work on seagulls titled “The Herring Gull’s World.” In it he described a strange foot paddling behavior the gulls do on soil: “What I have seen in other gulls has, however, convinced me that paddling has two different functions. One is the bringing up of earthworms, which seem to have an innate reaction to the quivering of the soil which is of value, enabling them to escape their arch-enemy, the mole” (the other function is apparently to flush aquatic prey when standing in shallow water). Much later, in 1986, John Kaufmann of the University of Florida reported that wood turtles stomp their feet on the ground to bring up worms for an easy meal. He even suggested the turtles were “grunting” for worms

> Unlike crayfish, a water shrew’s nerve fibers are wrapped in a fatty substance called myelin that provides electrical insulation. This helps to speed signals along neural pathways (myelin is found in all mammal brains, giving the brain’s “white matter” its pale coloration). Because conduction of nerve impulses is faster at higher temperatures, these two specializations compound the shrew’s speed advantage.

> Eventually they found a group with a creative, if barbaric, plan—they would “fish with horses.” Humboldt had no idea what lay in store as the fishermen rode off to the savannah. They returned driving a herd of thirty reluctant horses, and with much commotion the horses were forced into a nearby pool of muddy water full of eels. The result was spectacular, though predictably unfortunate for the horses. The eels emerged from the mud and attacked from all sides, shocking the stamping and screaming animals repeatedly. Within five minutes, two horses sank below the surface. Humboldt was sure the rest would be killed, but soon the eels were exhausted, which was apparently the plan. Then the eels were safely collected, and Humboldt was finally able to conduct his experiments… (mehr)