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Eight-Legged Wonders

The Surprising Lives of Spiders

ebook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks

An encounter with a spider will never be the same again ...
This warm-hearted book offers fascinating science and captivating storytelling to persuade readers to fall in love with—or at least tolerate—these eight-legged wonders.
Eight-Legged Wonders unveils the remarkable lives of one of the most misunderstood and maligned creatures on the planet: the spider. With over 50,000 species, spiders play vital roles in our ecosystems and the vast majority are harmless to humans. With this in mind, shouldn't we at least try to set aside our creepy-crawly associations, and cultivate a deeper appreciation for these truly wonderful beings?
Eight-Legged Wonders helps us do just that. In this affectionate and surprisingly giddy ode to spiders, James O'Hanlon, a scientist and spider expert, introduces spiders that we may never have noticed before, including spiders that cosplay as ants, balloon through the air, and scuba-dive. He describes the peacock spider's colorful dances and the Portia jumping spider's cunning hunting techniques. He dispels bite concerns, highlights groundbreaking research using spiders for human benefit, and aims to shift perceptions, ultimately revealing spiders as truly remarkable beings worthy of our admiration.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 15, 2024
      This lighthearted debut from zoologist O’Hanlon surveys the remarkable behavior and abilities of arachnids. Examining spiders’ hunting strategies, O’Hanlon notes that Portia jumping spiders will wait for wind to blow before moving in on prey so the sound muffles their footsteps, and that European purse-web spiders construct camouflaged silk tubes where they wait for prey to approach, at which point they puncture the silk with their fangs to deliver venom and then pull the prey inside. O’Hanlon offers a sometimes nauseating account of spider mating rituals, explaining how a male Australian red-back will transfer sperm using small appendages under his head even as the female he’s mating with begins to eat his rear end. Spiders have developed clever ways to get around quickly, O’Hanlon writes, describing how some species produce electrostatically charged silk that, when released near naturally occurring electromagnetic fields, can propel the arachnids miles into the air. O’Hanlon punctuates the proceedings with humor (“Sadly, no matter how clumsy a lab assistant I was, I wasn’t bitten by a single radioactive spider,” he recalls about working in a lab next to a cobalt radiation storage facility), and even arachnophobes will marvel at the strange world O’Hanlon reveals. Erudite yet conversational, this entrances.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

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