BiblioVault - Books about Zoology

Zebra Stripes

Tim Caro

University of Chicago Press, 2016

From eminent biologists like Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin to famous authors such as Rudyard Kipling in his Just So Stories, many people have asked, “Why do zebras have stripes?” There are many explanations, but until now hardly any have been seriously addressed or even tested. In Zebra Stripes, Tim Caro takes readers through a decade of painstaking fieldwork examining the significance of black-and-white striping and, after systematically dismissing every hypothesis for these markings with new data, he arrives at a surprising conclusion: zebra markings are nature’s defense against biting fly annoyance.

Popular explanations for stripes range from camouflage to confusion of predators, social facilitation, and even temperature regulation. It is a serious challenge to test these proposals on large animals living in the wild, but using a combination of careful observations, simple field experiments, comparative information, and logic, Caro is able to weigh up the pros and cons of each idea. Eventually—driven by experiments showing that biting flies avoid landing on striped surfaces, observations that striping is most intense where biting flies are abundant, and knowledge of zebras’ susceptibility to biting flies and vulnerability to the diseases that flies carry—Caro concludes that black-and-white stripes are an adaptation to thwart biting fly attack. Not just a tale of one scientist’s quest to solve a classic mystery of biology, Zebra Stripes is also a testament to the tremendous value of longitudinal research in behavioral ecology, demonstrating how observation, experiment, and comparative research can together reshape our understanding of the natural world.

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Zookeeping

An Introduction to the Science and Technology

Edited by Mark D. Irwin, John B. Stoner, and Aaron M. Cobaugh

University of Chicago Press, 2013

As species extinction, environmental protection, animal rights, and workplace safety issues come to the fore, zoos and aquariums need keepers who have the technical expertise and scientific knowledge to keep animals healthy, educate the public, and create regional, national, and global conservation and management communities. This textbook offers a comprehensive and practical overview of the profession geared toward new animal keepers and anyone who needs a foundational account of the topics most important to the day-to-day care of zoo and aquarium animals. The three editors, all experienced in zoo animal care and management, have put together a cohesive and broad-ranging book that tackles each of its subjects carefully and thoroughly. The contributions cover professional zookeeping, evolution of zoos, workplace safety, animal management, taxon-specific animal husbandry, animal behavior, veterinary care, public education and outreach, and conservation science. Using the newest techniques and research gathered from around the world, Zookeeping is a progressive textbook that seeks to promote consistency and the highest standards within global zoo and aquarium operations.

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The Zoology of Tapeworms

Robert A. Wardle and James A. McLeod

University of Minnesota Press, 1952

The Zoology of Tapeworms was first published in 1952. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

Leaders in helminthology have long recognized the need for such a work as this—a comprehensive study of tapeworms. This definitive treatise describes the tapeworms of the world—their gross and microscopic anatomy, their physiology, life cycles, and relationships to hosts, the theories of origin and evolution, and the various systems of classification that have been applied to tapeworms.

Detailed, systematic descriptions and keys for the identification of all known genera of the world and species of North America are provided. Emphasis on the theoretical significance of various aspects of tapeworm zoology is balanced by a wealth of detailed description. A bibliography up to 1950 is appended.

A review of the literature on each topic is incorporated in the discussions. Starting with a few fragments of information a century or more ago, the literature on the subject of tapeworms has appeared in a wide range of journals and books published in at least five languages. Many of the older publications are, for practical purposes, unavailable, and a number of the more recent journals are difficult to obtain. Therefore, the consolidation of this large body of scattered literature in a single volume will be of value to scientists in many fields.

In addition to filling a basic need for helminthologists, this book should serve as a reference work for parasitologists, zoologists, ecologists, clinicians, medical research workers, and students and workers in various fields of biology.

There are 419 text illustrations from drawings of species by the authors.

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