Engineering Animals: How Life Works

The authors have targeted this nicely presented book very well, limiting the assumed knowledge of maths but not avoiding a degree of technical explanation. The coverage of engineering principles evident in zoology, classified into engaging topics from structure and movement to remote sensing, is excellent. Within these topics, for example animal navigation, explanations are as complete as can be expected from a single book - electricity reception in the platypus is treated clearly in one simple page with a good diagram - and the text is saved from being text-bookish by colourful examples and humour. A comprehensive Notes section supports the text well and is refenced to a useful Bibliography.This book works at several levels. Aspiring or practising engineers will learn much about their discipline from biological examples and, on the other hand, those with an interest in biology and nature will understand phenomena that they may have taken for granted or understood poorly. Most importantly, the fresh writing style enables the reader to plough through the disparate topics such as control theory, thermally efficient structures and wave theory with ease.

The book was little bit damaged during postage. Did not happen previously, so little bit unhappy.

I loved the book when I ch.ecked it out of our public library. So much so that I decided that I had to have my own copy

terrible & simplistic

*****"Yes, animals are engineered - by that designer of long experience, natural selection. Viewing them as products of an exquisitely sophisticated technology,..., cannot fail to enrich one's appreciation of the living reality of which we're parts. At the same time, the viewpoint provides a fine mirror in which to appreciate our own, widely divergent, human technology." --Steven Vogel"Engineering Animals," is rather a fine display of nature's intelligent design, and its imaginative invention. Employing a few equations does not hinder the novice reader or put him off! This wonderful book, with a hundred or so illustrations, conveys clearly, for engineering like minds as well as the mere curious, the physical principles underlying animal formation and amazing behavior. 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. Pigeons, considered by the pioneering authors, as engineering marvels, more sophisticated than drones, are flying remote live sensors, with wide band acoustical receivers, magnetic sensing, hi-resolution optics, and celestial navigation. Energy efficient Albatrosses expend little energy while traveling across vast southern oceans, by exploiting a glider pilots technique, as dynamic gliding while maintaining altitude, by using ascending currents of air. During the discussion, and as a conclusive epilogue, Evolution appreciative authors have convinced us to discover an important fact about the natural world, "that there is more to life than engineering, but no life at all without it."One of the facts that this book made clear is that many migrating animals are born with routes, put into effect by neurological mechanisms, or hardwired into their brains, as a sort of GPS direction instructions. In an experiment, a group of migrating European starlings was displaced several hundred kilometers south while en route to their usual wintering groups in northern France. The younger birds, on their first trip, just followed the hardwiring in their brains, without correcting for the displacement, and ended up in northern Spain. The older birds that had previously made the journey used repositioning cues such as the sun's location in the sky to sense their displacement, by an acquired intuitive perception, adjusted their course, making it to their intended destination. "Clearly, the novices were just reading the instructions that their genes handed out to them, whereas the more experienced birds were overriding these with learned cues, enabling a more flexible response to changed circumstances," comment Denny and McFadzean. Now, conditioned by this first voyage, the young starlings actually returned to northern Spain in subsequent years, not to the French mainland that their genetic enscripted 'Guidance Software'.Plenty of other mechanisms figure in animal navigation, including the use of Polarized light, the part of the bright glare cut out by polarized sunglasses. It has a direction, which shows the position of the sun; while we cannot identify this, some insects such as bees certainly can. Infra-sound which is too 'low' for us to hear, can be created by movements of air and water against the land. Probably birds can hear it, and use it to locate mountains or coastlines from far off. Odors, were always thought to play a marginal role in birds sense of smell. But some vultures and scavenging seabirds can locate their food by smell and scientists believe that other birds may possibly make use of familiar smells in finding their way home. and geomagnetism, is a real possibility in birds such as homing pigeons to have a magnetic sense. They do become disorientated in experiments if they are subjected to an artificial magnetic field, or have small magnets fixed to them. It has also been found recently that they have minute quantities of a magnetic substance, magnetite, in their heads.Applying their systems engineering tools into a fascinating study of how animals navigate their environment, authors aerospace engineer Mark Denny and independent consultant Alan McFadzean, draw deeply from their bioengineering experience, have written an engaging study, sure to delight experts and amateurs alike. Writing with an informed sense of wonder, they offer an expert look at animals as works of engineering, exquisitely adapted to a specific manner of survival. They apply their technical expertise to a range of problems selected from the animal kingdom: how animals target their prey, how bird migratory patterns depend upon sense perception and solar energy flows. Electronic buffs, and Hunters, alike will be fascinated by discussions of target acquisition and tracking. The authors present a wide overview supported by convincing experiments, while emphasizing the wide gap between our capacity to model the living beings behavior, and invent robotic devices that match the skill and precision of nature. After reading this book your walk through the woods will never be again the same.

I am recommended this book by Physorg.com. I tried hard to glen information of some value from this book, and I am disappointed. This book sometimes reads like a philosophy. I know a handful of science books accessible to middle school children that contain more data, more graphs, more mind-blowing feeling of discovery. Take for example the last chapter on communication. The author spends two pages describe (like a philosopher) how important it is. I don't need a Ph.D degree or even a first class in computer science to know that, of course that's why we can build the computer and networks. Personal disappointment put aside, the book can be enjoyed by people who don't read science.

Informative but also academic. I loved this book - it had the right level of detail for my interest and research into the topic of animal anatomy and adaptation.