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Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

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Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper



Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

Best PDF Ebook Online Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

“With vivid, prismatic photos, zoologist Piper offers encounters with dozens of improbable-looking but beautiful organisms you’ve never heard of.” ―Entertainment Weekly

What most think of as the animal kingdom―from elephants to amphibians―in fact accounts for only a tiny portion of the tens of millions of species that scientists speculate inhabit planet Earth. Animal Earth is an unbiased tour of this still largely undiscovered world, illuminating the bizarre appearances and hidden lives of the creatures that share our planet, but which we’ve rarely, if ever, seen. What is perhaps more surprising is that this bewildering range of animal species can be traced to a small number of lineages, sharing a common body plan and evolutionary history. Animal Earth not only provides an evenhanded summary of each but also reflects the latest research on the evolutionary relationships between species. How they all fit in the tree of life is a topic that has been debated for decades, not least because new species are being discovered all the time; some lesser-known lineages, such as the Chaetognatha (arrow worms) and Xenoturbellida (strange worms) continue to defy classification. Given our technological achievements, humans are in a uniquely privileged position to protect animal diversity. As Ross Piper makes clear, each species is an integral component of the ecosystem we live in, and we protect animal diversity not only for its own sake but to maintain the natural systems that keep us alive. 540 color illustrations

Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #616745 in Books
  • Brand: Piper, Ross
  • Published on: 2015-03-20
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Dimensions: 11.10" h x 1.30" w x 9.50" l, .0 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 320 pages
Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

From Publishers Weekly Readers expecting an elegant study of the animal kingdom are in for a shock as zoologist Piper showcases legions of oft-overlooked species. Noting that familiar animals such mammals, birds, reptiles, and their relatives account for only 4 per cent of the roughly 1.5 million known animal species, Piper makes good on his titular promise in this impressive study, buoyed by page after page of breathtaking images. Most of Piper's subjects are of the marine or microscopic varieties: parasitic nematodes, micro-colonies of barnacles and feather stars, water bears, and spindly sea spiders are just some of the creepy-crawlies awaiting readers. Piper's prose, while informative, veers toward the academic more often than not, vacillating between scholarly lecture and enthusiastic guide. But the book's main draw is its striking images, capturing the iridescent eyes of mantis shrimps (which allow them to see 10 times more color than humans), elegant fireworms, a brilliantly multicolored Persian carpet flatworm, sea slugs (nudibranchs) that look more like sculptures than living organisms, and sinister wasp close-ups that will both haunt readers and draw them back for more. The tome's only real flaw is burying the photo credits among the acknowledgments in miniscule print; a petty offense, but one that is a noteworthy in a book with such excellent images. Color photos. (Nov.)

Review “Dr. Piper sets out the astounding panoply of the world’s fauna.” (The Wall Street Journal)“The book’s main draw is its striking images, capturing the iridescent eyes of mantis shrimps . . . a brilliantly multicolored Persian carpet flatworm, sea slugs . . . that look more like sculptures than living organisms, and sinister wasp close-ups that will both haunt readers and draw them back for more.” (Publishers Weekly)“With vivid, prismatic photos, zoologist Piper offers encounters with dozens of improbable-looking but beautiful organisms you’ve never heard of―many of them microscopic or marine.” (Entertainment Weekly)“Even among the species known to science, there are many that remain undiscovered by the public. Some of these species are very strange, some are truly incredible and lots of them are very small. . . . Animal Earth brings a few of these hidden lives to life.” (Wired.com)“Can we all agree to show the ribbon worm some more love? It’s just one of the hundreds of amazing, bizarre, and often-overlooked animals in Ross Piper’s new book.” (Slate)“We get a glimpse of those most hidden [species].” (Woman Around Town)“Colorful, frilly, or grotesque forms abound.” (Natural History)“Nothing short of fabulous.” (Rangefinder)“The photographs here provide a fount of inspiration for both the creatively and scientifically inclined.” (Fast Co. Design)“Of the 540 color illustrations in this biospecific tome, most could be confused for selections of modern art photography or graphic design, so visually arresting are the creatures here.” (Art Desk)“An ode to those critters without backbones that make up the bulk of animal life on our planet. . . . Animal Earth should be in every school and public library.” (Portland Book Review)“Stunning photos of the animals who are the building blocks of our world.” (Flavorwire)

About the Author Ross Piper, PhD, is a zoologist and writer based in the United Kingdom.


Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

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Most helpful customer reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. This should be an international bestseller, and a classic By Anna Tambour This should be an international best-seller. The problem is that the pictures are so spectacular, they overwhelm the deep thoughtfulness of the book, Piper's commentary and the purpose of the book itself: to show how interconnected we all are: the rotifer to the human with the giant brain. I especially love how the human is so closely related to the sea squirt. My sole criticism of this book is that "amazing" in the subtitle--it's been so overdone by boring presenters that I wouldn't have picked up this book if I hadn't seen it. But if "amazing" helps the book to gather notice, I'm all for it being in the subtitle.Open the book, and it's hard to breathe, it's often so beautiful and surprising. The water bear on page 142 is, well, amazing enough, till one looks to the facing page, and sees the otherworldly, "thick-shelled, dormant water bear egg" (all common names are accompanied by their scientific ones, which help to differentiate while never getting in the way). And although the information is exhaustive, it is always conveyed with elegant simplicity, such as in "sea cucumbers use their tube feet to collect edible particles from the seabed."I rate this as highly as I do, that classic, W. J. Dakin's _Australian Seashores_; and, in its passion and precision, Rachel Carson's monumentally beautiful and important but almost ignored, The Sea Around Us.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. So many more animals than I knew, so much more to discover By The Planetary Society Ross Piper's Animal Earth has been a wonderful, eye-opening book to read, and not just because of its glorious color photos. It explores the full breadth of animal life on Earth, devoting chapters to each of 35 "lineages" on the family tree of kingdom Animalia. Only one of those lineaegs contains vertebrates. Yes, this enormous, beautiful, 320-page book devotes only 14 pages to Craniata. Most of the rest are varieties of life forms I’ve hardly heard of, from Acoelomorpha to Xenoturbidella, astonishing in the diverse ways that they approach the problems that face all living things: eating, excreting, and reproducing. Reading this book has made me appreciate how important it is that scientists recognize the diversity of expressions of life on Earth before we can begin to look for it elsewhere in the universe. This book can be appreciated for its pictures alone, but it's a good read, too. The text starts out a bit on the dry side, even a bit stuffy. But as I’ve continued reading the book it seems that the author’s enthusiasm for his subject has become unbound, until, by the chapter on that largest of animal groups, the arthropods, he can hardly contain his amazement and wonder at the creativity and variety of creeping, crawling, squirming, flapping, soaring, burrowing, floating, parasitizing life on Earth.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. An Excellent Overview of the Animal Kingdom By Manuel Sanchez 1) The pictures are stunning.2) Many of the pictures are of animals that are rarely seen in photographs.3) The book splits the entire animal kingdom into 35 groups of equal importance—the phyla. This approach provides a manageable account of animal diversity, with at least one good look at each "province" of the kingdom. The resulting sense of completeness is well worth the price of a few oversimplifications (which are acknowledged in the text).4) Although the text deserved better copyediting, it is accessible and full of interesting details.

See all 18 customer reviews... Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper


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Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper
Animal Earth: The Amazing Diversity of Living Creatures, by Ross Piper

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