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    Exploding Ants: Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt
    Exploding Ants: Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt
    Exploding Ants: Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt
    Ebook77 pages35 minutes

    Exploding Ants: Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt

    By Joanne Settel

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    About this ebook

    A wasp lays its eggs under a caterpillar's skin so that its young can eat the caterpillar's guts as they grow. A young head louse makes its home on a human hair and feasts on human blood. Frogs use their eyeballs to help swallow their food.

    From small worms that live in a dog's nose mucus to exploding ants to regurgitating mother gulls, this book tells of the unusual ways animals find food, shelter, and safety in the natural world.

    If animals all ate the same things and lived in the same places, it would be impossible for all of them to survive. So they specialize. Some animals eat the bits that others leave behind, such as skin and mucus. They find all kinds of unusual places to shelter, including the cracks and holes in another creature's skin or its internal organs. They use their own bodies to protect themselves from predators by imitating unsavory items such as bird droppings and even by blowing up.

    These habits that may seem disgusting to us are wonderful adaptations that make it possible for a great variety of creatures to live and thrive on Earth. Read about them and marvel at the amazing ways animals adapt to the natural world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtheneum Books for Young Readers
    Release dateApr 8, 2014
    ISBN9781481417976
    Exploding Ants: Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt
    Author

    Joanne Settel

    Dr. Joanne Settel is an award-winning writer of science books for children, including Your Amazing Skin from Outside In and Your Amazing Digestion from Mouth Through Intestine. Dr. Settel’s book Exploding Ants: Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt was listed as one of the Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12 by the Children’s Book Council. Dr. Settel has a PhD in biology. She is a professor emeritus at Baltimore City Community College, where she taught courses in biology, anatomy, and physiology. She lives with her husband in Maryland, where she enjoys hiking, playing bridge, and gardening. Visit her online at JoanneSettel.com.

    Read more from Joanne Settel

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    Reviews for Exploding Ants

    4/5

    11 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      It's been a great and gross book,
      it's very funny!
    • 3/5
      From deep sea angel fish to a worm that lives in the nostrils of dogs, this book covers a lot. My stomach churned at a couple of the photos, but it was hard to take my eyes off of them. Interesting book.

    Book preview

    Exploding Ants - Joanne Settel

    contents

    Introduction:

    Why Animals Do Gross Things

    fooled ya

    A Disgusting Disguise

    Fatal Flashes

    Murderous Nest Mates

    invasion of the body snatchers

    The Brainwashers

    Caterpillar Guts for Breakfast

    swelling, expanding, and exploding bodies

    Living Honey Jars

    Exploding Ants

    Ballooning Birds

    dog mucus and other tasty treats

    A Very Slimy Supper

    Parasite Pickers

    A Mouthful from Mom

    sucking blood

    Bursting with Blood

    Sticking Around

    A Little Blood Between Neighbors

    An Underwater Bloodsucker

    getting it down

    A Ball of Bones

    Big, Big Gulps

    Gulping Eyeballs

    the mating game

    A Smelly Proposal

    A Permanent Connection

    selected readings

    About Joanne Settel

    glossary

    index

    To Katherine, Daniel, Ethan, Willie, and Chris, lovers of nature and future writers.—J. S.

    introduction

    why animals do gross things

    Animals often do things that seem gross to us. They eat foods that people would find nauseating. They make their homes in disgusting places and feed on mucus and blood. They swell or blow up their body parts.

    But while these behaviors are nasty to us, they are critical to life on earth. They make it possible for many kinds of living things to find food, shelter, and safety. Different species make use of every possible space and gobble down every nutritious crumb of food in the natural world. If every species of animal ate the same kind of food, or lived in the same place, there simply wouldn’t be enough to go around. It would become impossible for all of the species to survive. So instead, animals specialize. One predator eats flesh, while another feeds on blood.

    As a result, when it comes to eating, nothing is wasted. Almost every part of every living animal, from skin to dung to mucus, can provide food for some other species. All of these things contain good nutrients. An animal that has the right digestive organs and chemicals can easily break them down.

    Similarly, when it comes to finding shelter, animals make use of any hole or space or building material that they can find. For example, the smelly, slimy holes and organs inside the body of a bigger animal can often provide a warm, protective home for small animals like insects.

    Finally, animals often put their body parts to good use. Animals don’t

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