Escaping The Predators

Bringing together theory and reality of prey escape from predators, this book benchmarks new and current thinking in escape ecology.

The forces of natural selection have been a primary driver in the evolution of adaptive animal behaviours. On the one hand animals must evade predation in order to survive and pass on their genes; on other hand, and for the same underlying reasons, animals must also be capable of successfully capturing prey. This situation has led to an evolutionary arms race in which predator and prey are locked in the battle to survive. A common strategy in each situation is to enhance the speed of response, resulting in the evolution of neural, muscular and biomechanical designs that produce supremely fast and eye-catching behavioral responses. The aim of this book is to illuminate the design principles of escape and predatory behaviours using a series of case histories from different animal groups and to emphasize the convergent evolution of neural circuitry that optimizes the chances of survival. Using these case histories the authors describe sensory mechanisms that aid prey and predator detection, central neural circuit designs that increase speed of response and neuromuscular and biomechanical properties that aid the performance of escape and predatory movements.

Animals sure are smart because they know how to blend in to protect themselves! Scientifically, that’s called camouflage. You will be learning more about camouflage, as well as the animals that use such defenses mechanism, by going over the pages of this picture book for 8-year-olds. Have a fantastic time reading!

The classic literature on predation dealt almost exclusively with solitary predators and their prey. Going back to Lotka-Volterra and optimal foraging theory, the theory about predation, including predator-prey population dynamics, was developed for solitary species. Various consequences of sociality for predators have been considered only recently. Similarly, while it was long recognized that prey species can benefit from living in groups, research on the adaptive value of sociality for prey species mostly emerged in the 1970s. The main theme of this book is the various ways that predators and prey may benefit from living in groups. The first part focusses on predators and explores how group membership influences predation success rate, from searching to subduing prey. The second part focusses on how prey in groups can detect and escape predators. The final section explores group size and composition and how individuals respond over evolutionary times to the challenges posed by chasing or being chased by animals in groups. This book will help the reader understand current issues in social predation theory and provide a synthesis of the literature across a broad range of animal taxa. Includes the whole taxonomical range rather than limiting it to a select few Features in-depth analysis that allows a better understanding of many subtleties surrounding the issues related to social predation Presents both models and empirical results while covering the extensive predator and prey literature Contains extensive illustrations and separate boxes that cover more technical features, i.e., to present models and review results

Animals sure are smart because they know how to blend in to protect themselves! Scientifically, that's called camouflage. You will be learning more about camouflage, as well as the animals that use such defenses mechanism, by going over the pages of this picture book for 8-year-olds. Have a fantastic time reading!

Spousal abuse is all too common, and there are many—too many—families that are irreparably damaged. This book is a first-person account of what it takes to survive sexual assault, emotional abuse, and long-term harassment by an intimate partner. It takes the reader through the fear and anguish, the hiding and moving, and the journey through the court system to finally achieve justice and safety for the author and her children. Few of us can imagine that we could allow ourselves to fall victim to this kind of abuse, and this book is a perfect illustration of how a strong and confident woman can go from being on the verge of meeting her career goals to being under the control of a man who is not what he seemed, and who ultimately damaged her physical and mental health, her ability to support herself, and her sense of trust and safety in the world. But this is also a story of hope: you CAN escape an abusive relationship; you CAN ask for help and be believed; you CAN keep your children safe; you CAN bring your abuser to justice through the courts; and you CAN come out the other side to happiness and safety.

This book presents a unique fusion of two different research topics. One is related to the traditional mathematical problem of chases and escapes. The problem mainly deals with a situation where a chaser pursues an evader to analyze their trajectories and capture time. It dates back more than 300 years and has developed in various directions such as differential games. The other topic is the recently developing field of collective behavior, which investigates origins and properties of emergent behavior in groups of self-driving units. Applications include schools of fish, flocks of birds, and traffic jams. This book first reviews representative topics, both old and new, from these two areas. Then it presents the combined research topic of "group chase and escape", recently proposed by the authors. Although the combination is simple and straightforward, the book describes the emergence of rather intricate behavior, provoking the interest of readers for further developments and applications of related topics.