Ten Million Aliens
eBook - ePub

Ten Million Aliens

A Journey Through the Entire Animal Kingdom

  1. 480 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Ten Million Aliens

A Journey Through the Entire Animal Kingdom

About this book

For Discovery Channel enthusiasts, this scientific foray into life on planet earth examines how the world's creatures--both weird and wonderful--are inextricably linked. Life on planet earth is not weirder than we imagine. It's weirder than we are capable of imagining. And we're all in it together: humans, blue whales, rats, birds of paradise, ridiculous numbers of beetles, molluscs the size of a bus, the sexual gladiators of slugs, bdelloid rotifers who haven't had sex for millions of years and creatures called water bears: you can boil them, freeze them and fire them off into space without killing them.We're all part of the animal kingdom, appearing in what Darwin called "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful." In this breathtakingly audacious book, Simon Barnes has brought us all together, seeking not what separates us but what unites us. He takes us white-water rafting through the entire animal kingdom in a book that brings in deep layers of arcane knowledge, the works of Darwin and James Joyce, Barnes's own don't-try-this-at-home adventures in the wild, David Attenborough and Sherlock Holmes. Ten Million Aliens opens your eyes to the real marvels of the planet we live on.

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Yes, you can access Ten Million Aliens by Simon Barnes in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Historical Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Endlessness: Demodex mites, humans
  5. Sex and the single slug: Slugs
  6. 2, 8, 10, 12, 13, 18: Mammals and mammaries
  7. Champagne Lifestyle: New species
  8. Allspice, ant-killer: Taxonomy and systematics
  9. Orang orang: Orang-utan and other primates
  10. My family and other family: Classification
  11. Below the drop-off: Coral
  12. Lemurs and archbishops: Primates
  13. Spineless: Introduction to invertebrates
  14. Long-jump gold medal: Bushbaby
  15. Architects of human culture: Wasps
  16. The lion, the glitch and the glove compartment: Lion
  17. Brother sponge: Sponges
  18. The profile of Winnie-the-Pooh: Bears
  19. Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish: Glass sponge
  20. Il buono, il brutto e il cattivo: Hyena
  21. Sod the rainforest: More coral
  22. The half-and-halfers: Seals
  23. Walking plants: Sea anemones
  24. Wimbledon champion: Bovids
  25. Infernal agony of gelatinous zooplankton: Jellyfish
  26. Walking with lechwe: Lechwe and genenuk
  27. Life in the round: Starfish
  28. Do I know you?: Naked mole rat
  29. Flatworm, flatworm, burning bright: Flatworm
  30. The elephant in the corridor: Elephant
  31. The holiness of tapeworms: Tapeworm
  32. Plan A for aardvark: Aardvark
  33. Unkillable bears: Tardigrades
  34. Flying flashers: Idiurus
  35. Cans and cans of worms: Nematodes
  36. Self-sharpening chisels: Rodents
  37. Tipping the velvet worm: Velvet worm
  38. Dirty rats: Rat
  39. Another can of worms: Annelid worms
  40. Good old Ratty: Water-vole and dormouse
  41. Trio for piano, bassoon and earthworm: Earthworm
  42. Night-leaper: Spring-hare
  43. The daughters of Doris: Ribbon worms
  44. Flashin’ sunshine children: Shrews
  45. Becaue I am many: Bryozoans
  46. That breathtaking breath: Whales
  47. Getting silly: Lampshells
  48. Song of the sea: Whalesong
  49. Dirty beasts: Penis worms
  50. Gnomes of the river: River dolphins
  51. Us alone: Placazoans
  52. Disgustingly upside down: Bats
  53. Lacing Venus’s girdle: Comb jellies
  54. The altruistic vampire: Vampire bats
  55. Here be mud dragons: Mud dragons
  56. Pocket dynamo: Marsupials
  57. The Hamlet worm: Nematomorphs
  58. Death comes for the Elephant’s Child: More elephants
  59. Who needs oxygen?: Loricifera
  60. Epiphany: Even more elephants
  61. A bit samey: Arrow worms
  62. Time for transition: Platypus
  63. The peanut trick: Peanut worms
  64. Feather: Kestrel
  65. No sex please, we’re bdelloids: Rotifers
  66. The nausea of Charles Darwin: Peacock
  67. Evolution in reverse?: Thorny-headed worms
  68. How many ways of catching a fish?: Toucan, river birds
  69. ****!: Hairy-backs
  70. Look, no stabilisers: Bateleur
  71. The crypto-bums: Goblet worms
  72. Same bat time, same bat hawk: Bat hawk
  73. Lobsterisimus bumakissimus: Symbions
  74. The dark side: Owls
  75. Is-ness: Jaw worms
  76. Crisis relocation: Terns
  77. The Quaker worm: Xenoturbellids
  78. Swift scramming frenzy: Swifts
  79. Gutless, brainless: Acoelomorphs
  80. Jewels that breathe: Hummingbirds
  81. Just one more thing: Phoronids
  82. The wardrobe bird: Flamingos
  83. James Bond and the kraken: Giant squid
  84. Instant birder: Lilac-breasted roller
  85. Superslug: Octopus
  86. The Clever Club: Crows
  87. Nautilus but nice: Nautilus
  88. Bell-beat of their wings: Swans
  89. She sells seashells: Shell-wearing molluscs
  90. 22:1: Albatross
  91. Fearful the death of the diver must be: Giant clam
  92. No flying, please, we’re birds: Flightless birds
  93. Valuing oysters: Oysters
  94. Do I contradict myself?: Penguins
  95. One more twist: Gastropods
  96. Hijoputido: Passerines
  97. Creeping like snail: Giant African land snail
  98. Wild thing: Marsh warbler
  99. On our last legs: Arthropods
  100. Blood-chilling: Crocodiles
  101. A suit of armour: Japanese spider crab
  102. Snakes, unclad humans and a garden: Snakes
  103. Beloved barnacles: Barnacles
  104. Secret snakes: Adder
  105. The silk route: Spiders
  106. Disgusting clumsy lizards: Lizards
  107. The Kalahari Ferrari: Solifugids
  108. Good luck, little metaphor: Turtles
  109. Twenty centimetres!: Centipedes
  110. Shape-shifters: Amphibians
  111. Second innings: Large blue butterfly
  112. When I was a rain god: Frogs
  113. Laser epiphany: Blue morpho
  114. Death by frog: Golden poison frog
  115. Les demoiselles du Waveney: Dragonflies
  116. A miraculous draught of newts: Newts
  117. Cannibal sex: Praying mantis
  118. Beautiful shirts: Caecilians
  119. Unreal city: Termites
  120. “Fish”: Fish
  121. True bugs suck: Bugs
  122. The stillness of salmon: Salmon
  123. Let copulation thrive: Flies
  124. The Eden fish: Cleaner fish
  125. Prostitutes and clients: Bees
  126. That’s no parasite: that’s my husband: Anglerfish
  127. The wasp and the devil’s chaplain: Wasps
  128. The sinking fish: Sharks
  129. The best butter: Butterflies and moths
  130. No bones about it: Cartilaginous fish
  131. Inordinate fondness and all that: Beetles
  132. Ray of Sunshine: Manta ray
  133. Axis of weevil: Weevils
  134. The beginning: Jawless fish, lobe-finned fish
  135. Acknowledgements
  136. About Simon Barnes
  137. Index
  138. Copyright