Wings & Beaks: Technology Inspried by Animals

Wings & Beaks: Technology Inspried by Animals
Author: Tessa Miller
Publisher: Triangle Interactive, Inc.
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2020-12-23
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1684521246

Throughout time, people have looked to the skies and dreamt of flying. In 1903, the Wright brothers finally achieved flight, but only after years of studying birds. In Animal Tech: Wings & Beaks, readers will follow the stories of the scientists and engineers who have observed, studied, and mimicked the abilities of flying creatures, from bees and dragonflies to bats and birds. Students will be inspired to explore STEM fields after learning how the study of the skies has led to fascinating and life-changing technology that has shaped our world.

Wings & Beaks

Wings & Beaks
Author: Tessa Miller
Publisher: Animal Tech
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-08
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781629207360

Read about scientists and engineers who have observed, studied, and mimicked the abilities of flying creatures, from bees and dragonflies to bats and birds.

Invented by Animals

Invented by Animals
Author: Christiane Dorion
Publisher: Designed by Nature
Total Pages: 78
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0711260656

Humans think they invent everything, but the fact is, us animals have invented ways of solving problems, making unbelievable materials, ways of getting around and working out how to survive on our own for millions of years. In this book you will meet the animal inventors who have shared their super inventing powers to make amazing things for humans.

Machines through the Ages

Machines through the Ages
Author: Michael Woods
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books TM
Total Pages: 83
Release: 2024-01-01
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN:

Ancient civilizations accomplished great works of engineering without electricity. From the Great Wall of China to Machu Picchu, discover the machines ancient civilizations used to build and how they influenced modern machines.

Transportation through the Ages

Transportation through the Ages
Author: Michael Woods
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books TM
Total Pages: 83
Release: 2024-08-01
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN:

The ancient world saw many empires rise and fall. But how did massive empires such as Babylon or Rome move information and resources across continents? They relied on one of the oldest technologies in human history: transportation. Ever since humans first began migrating within and outside of Africa, they have needed transportation technology to help move themselves and their possessions. Beginning with shoes to support feet over rough ground and boats to traverse water, humans quickly created a wide range of inventions to help them move faster and carry more over long distances. From prehistoric hunting paths to the widespread highways of Rome, learn about the ancient transportation methods that shaped human history and paved the way for planes, trains, and superhighways.

Beauty and the Beak

Beauty and the Beak
Author: Deborah Lee Rose
Publisher:
Total Pages: 43
Release: 2017
Genre: JUVENILE NONFICTION
ISBN: 9781338584837

The true story of Beauty the eagle's rescue and rehabilitation. Beauty has been featured on Nat Geo WILD TV's Unlikely Animal Friends, in the National Wildlife Federation's Ranger Rick magazine, and on the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) EngineerGirl website.

Biomimicry

Biomimicry
Author: Janine M. Benyus
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2009-08-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0061958921

Repackaged with a new afterword, this "valuable and entertaining" (New York Times Book Review) book explores how scientists are adapting nature's best ideas to solve tough 21st century problems. Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples. Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is must reading for anyone interested in the shape of our future.

The Evolution of Beauty

The Evolution of Beauty
Author: Richard O. Prum
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2017-05-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0385537220

A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin's own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-Century Liberal Political Writing

Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-Century Liberal Political Writing
Author: Andrew Billing
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2023-12-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1003812481

Our tendency to read French Enlightenment political writing from a narrow disciplinary perspective has obscured the hybrid character of political philosophy, rhetoric, and natural science in the period. As Michèle Duchet and others have shown, French Enlightenment thinkers developed a philosophical anthropology to support new political norms and models. This book explores how five important eighteenth-century French political authors—Rousseau, Diderot, La Mettrie, Quesnay, and Rétif de La Bretonne—also constructed a "political zoology" in their philosophical and literary writings informed by animal references drawn from Enlightenment natural history, science, and physiology. Drawing on theoretical work by Derrida, Latour, de Fontenay, and others, it shows how these five authors signed on to the old rhetorical tradition of animal comparisons in political philosophy, which they renewed via the findings and speculations of contemporary science. Engaging with recent scholarship on Enlightenment political thought, it also explores the links between their political zoologies and their family resemblance as "liberal" political thinkers.

Handbook of Bird Biology

Handbook of Bird Biology
Author: Irby J. Lovette
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 733
Release: 2016-06-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1118291042

Selected by Forbes.com as one of the 12 best books about birds and birding in 2016 This much-anticipated third edition of the Handbook of Bird Biology is an essential and comprehensive resource for everyone interested in learning more about birds, from casual bird watchers to formal students of ornithology. Wherever you study birds your enjoyment will be enhanced by a better understanding of the incredible diversity of avian lifestyles. Arising from the renowned Cornell Lab of Ornithology and authored by a team of experts from around the world, the Handbook covers all aspects of avian diversity, behaviour, ecology, evolution, physiology, and conservation. Using examples drawn from birds found in every corner of the globe, it explores and distills the many scientific discoveries that have made birds one of our best known - and best loved - parts of the natural world. This edition has been completely revised and is presented with more than 800 full color images. It provides readers with a tool for life-long learning about birds and is suitable for bird watchers and ornithology students, as well as for ecologists, conservationists, and resource managers who work with birds. The Handbook of Bird Biology is the companion volume to the Cornell Lab's renowned distance learning course, www.birds.cornell.edu/courses/home/homestudy/.