Why Elephants Have Big Ears: And Other Riddles from the Natural World

by Chris Lavers

Book Overview

Why Elephants Have Big Ears is the result of one man's lifelong quest to understand why the creatures of the earth appear and act as they do. In a wry manner and personal tone, Chris Lavers explores... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312303335
• ISBN13: 9780312303334
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 269 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

very informative read if you goofed offg in biology class

Elephants can weigh up to 8 tons; their front teeth can be up to 3 meters in length and can weigh over 200 kg. And the African elephant has the largest earflaps of any animal in history. Lavers explains not only why their huge ears are the key to their curious shape but also to why rats are furry and why King Kong could never have climbed the Empire State Building. The elephant's ears, in case you are wondering, act as radiators, an important consideration if you are a lumbering giant baking under the tropical sun. There is, Lavers's excellent book explains, method to every apparent anomaly in nature. Gazelles, for example, must be built not only to sprint but to dodge and weave as well. This is because cheetahs, which are renowned sprinters themselves, regard them as little more than mobile larders. Dogs and wolves, on the other hand, are not great sprinters. Instead, they have great stamina and will wear down their prey by sheer perseversence and, well, doggedness. Lavers also explains such interesting things as why swans glide across the water, whereas vultures hop and ostriches cannot fly at all. He also shows how all of these different attributes go to give us the diversity of life on which we all ultimately depend. This well written book book also explains why the furs of baby harp seals, mink, lynx, snowshoe hares and Arctic foxes are so much in demand but the pelt of a polar bear is not. Lavers also explains how the cubs of polar bears survive the harsh Arctic winter. Although polar cubs are tiny, blind and wet creatures, lacking in fur, fat and the ability to shiver, yet nature has provided the means for them to survive and become the world's biggest bear in some of the world's most inhospitable terrain. That is but one of Mother Nature's daily miracles that Lavers' book unlocks. The Arizona based spadefoot toad provides another. It spends most of its life encased in cooling mud, emerging only when it rains to have unbridled sexual orgies, massive food binges, and to lay hosts of eggs. Once satiated and once it has ensured the regeneration of its species, it resubmerges itself in the desert's cooling mud. The Saharan scimitar-horned oryx is a large antelope around two meters in length, which lives beneath the blazing Sahara sun. It never seeks shelter, it drinks very little water and yet it thrives by the judicious use of deep night time breathing, which generates sufficient moisture for it to live on. When the Indonesian based komodo dragon slashes its prey, its filthy fangs cause all kinds of infections, which eventually wear down the unfortunate deer or human it has ambushed. The dragon then saunters after its weakened prey and dines at its leisure. Although hippos occasionally decapitate them by rolling them around in their mouths, crocodiles have been the undisputed king of the tropical world's freshwater systems for the last 65 million years. Because they are so perfectly adapted to their environment, the only enemy they m

Never thought paleontology could be this interesting

This book is an extended essay on the continuity of evolutionary trends. In it, Lavers examines the extremes of the animal world, the very large, the very small, animals that can withstand very hot climes or very cold ones, mammals that fly and birds that run. For each of these beasts, Lavers argues that their shape and special characteristics must have been the result of adaptation to their environment or ecological niche. He investigates not only why elephants have big ears (to cool down their enormous rotund bodies in hot climates), but also why we don't have elephant-sized lizards or birds (at least these days). Throughout the book, Lavers draws on results of research in paleontology. For example, he explains the two sides of the debate about whether dinosaurs were warm blooded, and what the implications would be for giant cold-blooded lizards. I, for one, never really cultivated an interest in dinosaurs before. But after reading this book, it's much more clear to me that the animals we see around us today are just one chapter in the overall life of the planet. The book is written in an informal style, without footnotes, but key sources are identified in endnotes at the back of the book, along with a bibliography containing hundreds of references.

Covers the basics of understanding life on earth

Why Elephants Have Big Ears covers the basics of understanding life on earth, tackling the more obvious questions such as why elephants have evolved big ears and why there are so many birds. The answers to these and other questions take the form of explaining broad patterns of evolution in the animal world.

Fascinating. A future classic.

Before reading this fabulous book I had no idea that scientists had missed so many important ideas in the field of natural history. Why Elephants Have Big Ears offers a whole new view of life on earth. Endlessly fascinating and beautifully written, this work is destined to become a classic.

From the author

Dear all. Greetings from England. Here are a few reviews of my book. If you buy a copy, I hope you enjoy it."If you want to understand evolution, read this. A pachyderm of a book!" David Bellamy"A book which evokes a deeper fascination for nature's marvels" Richard Leakey"Perhaps no other book available explains evolution, natural selection, and the riddles of natural history as well as Chris Lavers's Why Elephants Have Big Ears" Steve Brusatte"Fascinating and illuminating" New Scientist"The title of this charming books says it all. Why Elephants have Big Ears expresses a wonderfully quirky curiosity about biology. Chris Lavers skillfully melds physiology, evolution, biomechanics, and ecology to answer questions almost too big to be asked" Pat Shipman, Rhone-Poulenc Prize-winning author of The Wisdom of Bones"Reading through this book, I was constantly marvelling at the discoveries I made...Some of the natural processes outlined are fairly complex, but Lavers writes in such an accessible way that a non-scientist like me grasped them" Paula Francis"A fine read" Colin Tudge