1 2 3 Predators Bite

Hungry predators count up to ten and take bites out of each page.

The book offers a comparative look at the social strategies of five carnivorous social predators (four terrestrial and one marine) that make them successful hunting units. The focus is on mammalian predators hunting (largely) mammalian prey. Each chapter (with separate authors) devoted to a particular species, explores the versatile hunting techniques and social dynamics of these top predators as they attempt to survive, defend, and reproduce in challenging habitats. Each chapter also delves into how the social fabric and ecology of each species influence their ability to deal with natural and man-made threats and shifting baselines.

Learn to identify threatening species through tracks, scat, and the damage they leave behind. Fascinating profiles of more than 50 predatory mammals, birds, and reptiles teach farmers, ranchers, homesteaders, and backyard-animal raisers how to prevent their livestock, poultry, and pets from becoming prey. By understanding how predators think and behave, where and how they live, and how they attack and kill prey, you’ll be able to interpret the potential threats surrounding your home. Whether you have a vested interest in protecting your pets and livestock or are simply spellbound by wild predators, this is the book for you!

Predators with Pouches provides a unique synthesis of current knowledge of the world’s carnivorous marsupials—from Patagonia to New Guinea and North America to Tasmania. Written by 63 experts in each field, the book covers a comprehensive range of disciplines including evolution and systematics, reproductive biology, physiology, ecology, behaviour and conservation. Predators with Pouches reveals the relationships between the American didelphids and the Australian dasyurids, and explores the role of the marsupial fauna in the mammal community. It introduces the geologically oldest marsupials, from the Americas, and examines the fall from former diversity of the larger marsupial carnivores and their convergent evolution with placental forms. The book covers all aspects of carnivorous marsupials, including interesting features of life history, their unique reproduction, the physiological basis for early senescence in semelparous dasyurids, sex ratio variation and juvenile dispersal. It looks at gradients in nutrition—from omnivory to insectivory to carnivory—as well as distributional ecology, social structure and conservation dilemmas.

This volume explores three major areas of research on predatory mammals: physiological adaptations, predatory tactics, and management dilemmas resulting from predation that upsets ecological balance or human activities. Contributors discuss the cases of many different types of animals, from otters and badgers to lions and leopards. The big cats, for example, are included in the context of studies of cattle mortality in Kenya and Venezuela and other countries. Other chapters discuss problems caused by fish-eating mammals near coastal Scotland, disease carrying birds, urban foxes, and many equally insightful cases. The book will interest all ecologists, zoologists, and conservationists concerned with issues relating to the predatory habits of wildlife around the world.

Highlighting the growing importance of the sticklebacks as a model species in emerging fields such as molecular genetics, genomics, and environmental toxicology, Biology of the Three-Spined Stickleback examines data from researchers who use studies of the stickleback to address a wide range of biological issues. This state-of-the-art volume