Engineering Animals : How Life Works

Mark Denny

ISBN 10: 0674048547 / ISBN 13: 9780674048546

Published by De Gruyter, 2011

About this Item

Neuware - From an engineer's perspective, how do specialized adaptations among living things really work Writing with wit and a richly informed sense of wonder, Denny and Alan offer an expert look at animals-including humans-as works of evolutionary engineering, each exquisitely adapted to a specific manner of survival.

Seller Inventory # 9780674048546

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Engineering Animals : How Life Works
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674048547
• ISBN 13: 9780674048546
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 241W x 164H x 34D millimeters 241 millimeters width by 164 millimeters height by 34 millimeters depth
• Weight: 785 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The alarm calls of birds make them difficult for predators to locate, while the howl of wolves and the croak of bullfrogs are designed to carry across long distances. From an engineer's perspective, how do such specialized adaptations among living things really work? And how does physics constrain evolution, channeling it in particular directions?

Writing with wit and a richly informed sense of wonder, Denny and McFadzean offer an expert look at animals as works of engineering, each exquisitely adapted to a specific manner of survival, whether that means spinning webs or flying across continents or hunting in the dark-or writing books. This particular book, containing more than a hundred illustrations, conveys clearly, for engineers and nonengineers alike, the physical principles underlying animal structure and behavior.

Pigeons, for instance-when understood as marvels of engineering-are flying remote sensors: they have wideband acoustical receivers, hi-res optics, magnetic sensing, and celestial navigation. Albatrosses expend little energy while traveling across vast southern oceans, by exploiting a technique known to glider pilots as dynamic soaring. Among insects, one species of fly can locate the source of a sound precisely, even though the fly itself is much smaller than the wavelength of the sound it hears. And that big-brained, upright Great Ape? Evolution has equipped us to figure out an important fact about the natural world: that there is more to life than engineering, but no life at all without it.

About the Authors

Mark Denny is a retired aerospace engineer and the author of Froth: The Science of Beer.

Alan McFadzean is an independent consultant.