Written with insight and humor, and packed with facts about biology and behavior, Edward Kanze's profiles of North American wildlife explore the intrinsic fascination of a wide variety of individual species as well as the role they play in the wider ecosystem and their relationship to human society. The book is divided into four sections. The first, American Birds, introduces peculiar creatures such as the black skimmer (aka the sea dog), a shorebird with a terrible case of underbite, and the hummingbird, perhaps the most disagreeably tempered animal in all of birddom. The second section, Fur and Wide, considers some of our continent's most distinctive mammals. Included are the admirable porcupine, a beast with many strong points, and the masked shrew, which despite its kinship to the blue whale is a tad bigger than a bumblebee. The book's third division, In Cold Blood, examines an array of intriguing reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates. Here the reader will find Charles Darwin crawling through his garden studying earthworms, read about the author's near miss with a very large rattlesnake, and learn how snakes evolved from lizardlike ancestors ("The Evolution of Snakes, or, A Farewell to Arms").
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