Animal Athletes: An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach
Duncan J. Irschick and Timothy E. Higham
Abstract
This work examines the wonders of animal athletics, both from an ecological perspective and from an evolutionary perspective. Animals are remarkable for their amazing abilities to perform tasks such as running, jumping, feeding, vocalization, and others. Many of these abilities far exceed what humans can accomplish, such as the ability of a rattlesnake to shake its tail at 90 Hz, or the ability of a mako shark to swim 50 km/h! These remarkable abilities have evolved to enable these animals to survive, often within very harsh conditions. This book examines how such abilities have evolved, how t ... More
This work examines the wonders of animal athletics, both from an ecological perspective and from an evolutionary perspective. Animals are remarkable for their amazing abilities to perform tasks such as running, jumping, feeding, vocalization, and others. Many of these abilities far exceed what humans can accomplish, such as the ability of a rattlesnake to shake its tail at 90 Hz, or the ability of a mako shark to swim 50 km/h! These remarkable abilities have evolved to enable these animals to survive, often within very harsh conditions. This book examines how such abilities have evolved, how they are used in nature, and how they relate to many other features, such as sexual traits, reproduction, and the need to perform other tasks well. Further, this book examines how modern portable technology is enabling scientists to unlock many of the mysteries of how and why animals perform such tasks. By examining a wide range of animal species, including lizards, sharks, insects, spiders, mammals, and birds, among others, this book is a broad survey of the diversity of animal form and function.
Keywords:
athletics,
evolution,
ecology,
diversity,
animal,
function,
form,
morphology
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199296545 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296545.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Duncan J. Irschick, author
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA
Timothy E. Higham, author
Associate Professor of Biology, University of California Riverside, USA
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