Overview

The animal kingdom relies on staggering evolutionary innovations to survive winter. Unlike their human counterparts, who alter the environment to accommodate physical limitations, most animals are adapted to an amazing range of conditions. In Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, biologist, illustrator, and award-winning author Bernd Heinrich explores his local woods, where he delights in the seemingly infinite feats of animal inventiveness he discovers there. Because winter drastically affects the most elemental component of all life-water-radical changes in a creature's physiology and behavior must take place to match the demands of the environment. Some creatures survive by developing antifreeze; others must remain in constant motion to maintain their high body temperatures. Even if animals can avoid freezing to death, they must still manage to find food in a time of scarcity or store if from a time of plenty. Infused by the author's inexhaustible enchantment with nature, Winter World awakens the wonders and mysteries by which nature sustains herself through winter's harsh, cruel exigencies.

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9781400161768

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The stories are plain engrossing---in their elucidation, their breadth of examples, and their barely contained sense of awe and admiration. ---Kirkus

The stories are plain engrossing---in their elucidation, their breadth of examples, and their barely contained sense of awe and admiration. ---Kirkus

Author Information

Bernd Heinrich is the bestselling and award-winning author of numerous books, including The Homing Instinct, Why We Run, Summer World, and his memoir, The Snoring Bird. He is a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Vermont, and he divides his time between Vermont and the forests of western Maine. Mel Foster, an audiobook narrator since 2002, won an Audie Award for Finding God in Unexpected Places by Philip Yancey. He has also won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. Best known for mysteries, Mel has also narrated classic authors such as Thoreau, Nabokov, and Whitman.

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