I read a book called The Odyssey of KP2 by Dr. Terrie Williams, an eminent wildlife biologist. This book is the story of a biologist, two trainers and Kp2’s (an abandoned seal pup) friendship. This book was written to tell us this amazing story. In this book we learn about the Hawai’ian Monk Seal an endangered species. We learn about how Kp2 and his trainers, Traci and Beau’s amazing. You will learn about how an animal from a usually solitaire species is as friendly as puppy. You will also learn how he changes America and americans all over the country for good. How a seal helps clean the beaches. How he inspires children from Texas to Hawai’i help clean our streets and oceans. How one animal can have Hawai’ian’s protesting to bring their Hoaloha (friend) home. I really loved this book because though the beginning is sad the rest of the book is comical, amusing and cheery. If you like cute animal’s and inspirational tales, than you will love this book.
Here Kp2 tries to salute but his flippers are to short so the only reach his noes.
Here is a cute video about Kp2 ft. Kp2 -->
Here is an interview with the author Dr. Terrie Williams-->
In this video Kp2 plays with mac the dog-->
Here Kp2 picks up his toys dispite the the fact that he can't see-->
The book that I read is called The Book About Blood By HP Newquist. It is a book that explores some fascinating ancient tales and history about blood. Scientists began to understand this fluid only one hundred years ago: how it's microscopic components flourish our whole body. Blood is spread so much all throughout your body, that if you poke a needle through your skin, you are drawing blood. This is because blood travels through a network made up of 100,000 miles of veins, arteries and capillaries.While it is in your body, blood is always red. It is never blue but some people think it is. This is because some veins look blue under skin. Oxygen that is rich with blood is red, and when blood cells give up oxygen, they lose their brightness. Blood turns dark red as it travels through you, before lightening again when it absorbs air. Your veins aren’t blue either. They appear that way because of the way light interacts with the layers of your skin, letting the area around your veins take on a different color.
During the 1300’s, Europe had little to no education so they believed many superstitions such as the plagues. This period condoned ideas about witches and warlocks, werewolves and vampires. People would believe almost anyone who had a “good” explanation for what was going on around them. Into this confusion came the strangest doctors to ever practice medicine: barbers. During the Dark Ages, many barbers learned how to become surgeons. This was because of two things. The first was that many real surgeons died during plagues because they had been infected by the people they were treating. The second was because barbers knew how to use razors, and this was an important skill when you needed to cut someone or something open. The easiest medical procedure for barbers was bloodletting. Around this time, it was called phlebotomy. It became one of the most common ways to treating various illnesses all over Europe. Bloodletting did continue. These barbers, and the doctors after, had to be very careful when performing phlebotomy because they could easily cut open a vein and let a person bleed to death. Blood is created in the spongy marrow. Blood flows from your heart to your lungs and back to the heart to bring oxygen inside your body. Blood pressure is a measure of how hard your blood is pressing against your blood vessels. This is very important because it tells doctors if your heart is beating at an appropriate strength and if there are any problems with your arteries. The circulatory system is the highway in which your blood reaches every part of your body. More blood goes to your brain, than to any part of your body. The Circle of Willis ensures that blood gets to the brain by a number of different ways. Everything that you put into your mouth ends up in your blood and these are the organs that play a very important role in helping blood do its job. The liver is your blood system's biggest filter. Your spleen is small, but it acts as a blood reservoir in times of emergency. All in all, blood is very important, so try to keep it in your body!
For a very long time, Animals were thought to be boring, senseless creatures with no intelligence. This book is all about proving the people who thought that wrong. The book Why do Pandas do Handstands by Augustus Brown,is written kind of strangely in my opinion. It is split into sections, with a brief summary of each section, and then lists off peculiar facts, such as mice sing to their partners, or that caterpillars can roar, or that parrots understand the concept of zero. While the general idea of the book is good, I thought that this might have been better if the author had wrote one book on each section, and then expanded on each animal listed. All in all, I would give this book a two out of five stars, because it wasn't as satisfying of a read as it could have been with all the information in the book. But if you're looking for a quick read or to just learn some interesting facts about animals, this book might be for you.
Most diseases or sicknesses you would get could be cured by sleeping it off or by medicine. But imagine if you had a 95% chance of dying, and in an extremely painful way. What if that disease was suddenly found in the city you lived in?
The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, is a book about Ebola and its sister disease Marburg, two very deadly diseases , have been found in the suburbs of Washington DC, when they're usually found buried deep in the forests of Africa. Teams of elite scientists and the US army must find a way to stop these dangerous diseases from spreading, and wiping out thousands of people.
A micrograph of an Ebola cell Picture from Wikipedia
One man, Monet, begins the spread of the disease Marburg from a deep forest in Africa to a major city. Doctors do not know what the disease is, and do not think very much of it. Marburg is extremely contagious, and a doctor operating on Monet catches it. Fast forward and a shipment of monkeys is delivered to a monkey house in the suburbs of Washington DC. It starts with a few monkeys dead, and then escalates. Test are done on them., and scientists see that the monkeys have blood in the intestines, and ruptured linings. Many blood and cell test are done, and they discover a horrible thing. It's Ebola Zaire. A level four hot agent, no vaccine, lethal, and there is no cure. It kill 95% of its victims, and can be transferred through blood and the air. If you get as much as one cell in your body, you're a goner, since it multiplies extremely fast. If it isn't obliterated fast, it will kill many people, and spread fast around the country, and possibly the whole world.
This is a picture depicting the case of Ebola in Africa from 1979 to 2008
Picture from Wikipedia
I thought that this book had a good story, and that it was really interesting. However, some parts of it were confusing and I had to skip over them. This book was very informative, and had a lot of information. I also liked how there was a story throughout the book, which made it more interesting to read seeing as I could follow the characters telling the story, rather than just having all the information thrown at me. While this book is interesting, it is definitely not a light read, since there is a lot of death and disgusting descriptions, and lots of more confusing information. This, however, does not mean that this isn't a good book, it just means that it is a more mature book.
In all, I learned a lot from this book, and thought it was really informative. The writing style was good, and it was very suspenseful. And the best thing of all is that it's a true story.
Have you ever seen "Pirates of the Caribbean" and wondered, "what is that giant squid that ate Jack Sparrow?" Well you will learn what it is here. I picked this book,Here There Be Monsters by Hp Newquist, because the kraken seemed like a myth to me and I wanted to see if it was a real monster. This book is about the events over time involving the legendary kraken. This book starts with an amazing, suspenseful story told by a sailor the first time he saw the kraken. The book also shows how different discoveries about the giant squid evolved over time. When the first signs of a giant squid were told by sailors, map makers were the first to pick it up. When mapmakers made maps they put monsters on the spots where the sailors thought they saw monsters.
A Danish man named Steenstrup thought the kraken was just a giant squid. More scientists started noticing the appearance of a squid when parts of long tentacles started floating to shore from 1870 to 1880 in Canada. As more and more squids were floating to shore, scientists became fascinated by this sudden activity. As it turns out, the reason the squids were showing themselves were because deep underwater currents were sweeping them up to the surface. Meanwhile, on a beach in New Zealand, the first squid to be discovered whole was found. The carcass was first studied by scientists and toured around the world. In fact, just recently, the first video of a giant squid was filmed.
I think this is a VERY informative book about the squid and I learned that the giant squid is more than just a creature from a monster movie. This book shows you the history of the legendary kraken and the science behind tracking the giant squid today.
You may think of blood as just some gruesome red liquid under your skin but it's vital for all life. If you stretched out all your blood vessels it would be over 100,000 miles. To give you some perspective, that could circle around the Earth four times.
This couple had a little business going
I read "The Book of Blood" by HP Newquist. It
was fascinating and well written. It basically gives you a summary about the entire history of blood. From what blood consists of – plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, hemoglobin, water, and platelets – to the people that discovered the importance of blood. Ibn al Nafis, an Egyptian scientist, discovered that the heart was a pump that kept blood flowing throughout your body. It took the Europeans another 300 years to make the same discovery. A lot of people used to think bloodletting was a way to balance out the biles in your blood. They used to cut your arteries and and take pints of blood at a time. Sometimes if they thought the area was to delicate to cut, like your face or temples, they'd use leeches that would detach from your skin when filled with blood, about five times as big as they started. The only reason that this would ever work to cure anything was the loss of blood woud make you weak, making you sleep which is the best cure for sickness, making the success rate of bloodletting a little higher than nothing. People started to doubt bloodletting when it killed our first president, George Washington. He was soaked when coming back from a horse ride and neglected to take off his wet clothing and got sick. He could've just slept it off but he insisted on bloodletting. His doctor drained five pints which is more than half the blood in your body. Of course it killed him.
Most animals including humans have a circulatory system but some animal's blood just kind of sloshes around under their skin. A cockroach can survive weeks with its head cut off because its blood just sloshes around in its body. If its head comes off, a scab immediately forms to keep the blood in and for the most part it can go about its life again.
Do not mess with the horn lizard. When it's threatened it shoots blood from its eyeballs into the face of its attacker. Apparently the blood tastes horrible because it sends the attacker running and the lizard is left unharmed.
Hematophagous animals feed on blood to survive. One hematophagous is the female mosquito who can actually be deadly because they're disease carriers. Mosquito saliva has both a numbing agent that keeps you from feeling your skin being pierced and an anticoagulant that keeps your blood from clotting. Mosquitos carry blood-borne diseases. They kill more than a million people each year yet they aren't affected by the diseases they carry. But one of the most sneaky hematophagous is the vampire bat.
Overall, I learned a TON from "The Book of Blood" and recommend it for people who like non-fiction and people that always read fiction and want to read a non-fiction book that's about as close as you can get to fiction. Enjoy It!
Did you ever wonder about Charles Dariwn's family is like? Did you ever wonder about Charles Darwins wife? The book that I read will tell you all you need to know about his family. The book that I read, Charles And Emma: The Darwin's leap of faith by Deborah Heilgman, was a very good book, but not very scientific, but I will tell you what I did learn. Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809. In 1831 his voyage on the HMS Beagle began. He went around the world and observed many plants and animals, which later he used to come up with the idea of evolution, and he even saw a battle at Bahiá Blanca, in Argentina. When he got back, in 1836, he lived in London. In the time he spent in London, he would go to the zoo and observe an orangutan. He came up with the idea of evolution by observing the orangutan. He stated that if there is a limited food supply the
weaker animals of a species die, and the strongest ones adapt He also concluded and said that small changes through each generation will eventually create a new species. In 1839 Charles Darwin, asked his cousin, Emma Wegewood to marry him. She said yes. He was married on January 29th, 1839. They lived in London for the first year or so of their marrige. On December 27th, Charles had his first son, William Erasmus Darwin. In the summer of 1839 he published his first book, The Voyage of The Beagle. In 1841 he had his second child, Annie. Right before he had his third child, Charles and Emma, moved to the town of Down, England. His third child was born there on September 23 1842, and her name was Mary Darwin, but sadly she died on October 16th of the same year. Charles and Emma had many kids, having 10 kids in total. 3 out of the ten died, they were Anne, Mary, and Charles Warwing Darwin. On November 24th, 1859, Charles Darwin, published his book on evoulution, called The Origin of Species, and in 1871, he published his book about the evoulution of humans, called The Decent of Man. Charles and Emma kept living in Down, until they both died, Charles on April 19th 1882, at 3:30 pm, and Emma Darwin, on October 2nd 1896.
The author, Deborah Heilgman, wrote this book because her husband believes in evolution and natural selection, while she believes in God, much like Charles and Emma Darwin's relationship, Charles believed in natural selection while Emma, believed in God. She wanted to explore the idea of even the man who discovered evolution itself, could still love a religous women.
In my opinion this was a good book,if you were reading it on your own. For science it barley scartches Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution, mainly focusing on his family, and relationship with his wife. I would have much rather read his autobiography, or The Origin of Species. My rating for this book is 2 out of 5 because it was not very good for this project.
The book Moonbird by Philip Hoose is about a rufa red knot bird called B95, who is the longest living wild shorebird and has migrated the distance of the Moon and back, earning the nickname "Moonbird". This book lists many scientific facts about the rufa red knot species, their long migratory routes from the top of the world to the bottom and things you can do to help endangered species like the red knot. The book also had an entire chapter dedicated to the horseshoe crab, a species that is dying out from humans, and causing the red knots, who eat the crab eggs, to be in danger. The book also had conservationist and scientist's profiles, so you could learn a bit about the people that are trying to help protect endangered shorebirds.
This is a picture of B95, from nature.org
I thought this book was fine. Usually I enjoy scientific books, but this one after only ten pages I was incredibly bored. It felt like a chore, and books should not feel like a chore. I did think the scientific facts about how the shorebirds find food and gather tons of fuel for their incredibly long journey from the arctic to the very southern tip of South America was interesting and all. I think that if the author sort of made a story out of this book, it would've been a lot better. I think it would've been easy to make a story out of the migration of the red knots, but the book instead seemed sort of jumbled up with random facts about B95 and his species appearing randomly in the middle of the book where that didn't seem to be related with what the author was currently talking about. Also, the facts about how far the birds travel or how they eat horseshoe crab eggs came up too much. The book was way to repetitive.
Out of a possible 10, I gave Moonbird a 7.
In general, if you want to learn about incredible birds and their long journeys, read Moonbird.
A large flock of Rufa Red Knots feeding, from abcbirds.org.
Elephants and sheep, husky dogs and polar bears, tigers and black bears. Not really found together in nature, right . In the book Unlikely Friendships, we learn 47 different stories about animals that are usually found unsocial together in public that are now happy and lovey-dovey together. Jennifer Holland wrote the book to show the world that it doesn’t matter where you are from and who you are. You can become friends with anyone. Also that when two people( animals)are in a slump, they will bond together no matter what. I felt this book was amazing because even though it is a long book it feels short. This book has 47 remarkably heart-warming stories that are so funny and cute. Did I mention cute? While I was reading this book, I couldn’t wait for the next page because I wanted to learn more. ALERT! There are some sad parts in this book too. Overall this book is for those who enjoy fuzzy and emotional stories but who can also handle some sadness.
Manatees
Have you ever had a favorite animal and think you know all about them? Did you ever think how much more information there is to learn about an animal besides knowing they're your favorite? Well I read a whole book about Manatees and there was so much information. Now I have no questions about them at all.
These are two manatees swimming in clear water in Florida.
In the book The Manatee Scientists by Peter Lourie you learn all about the different manatees and how scientists take care of them and track them down to make sure they're okay. You hear from different scientists and their ways of taking care of the manatees.
This book was very interesting to me because ever since I was a little kid I have loved manatees but I never really knew anything about them. The first time I saw this book was when we had to look up books we wanted to blog and when I saw the picture on the cover this book became my first choice. Now everyone says don't judge a book by its cover but I loved the cover as much as the book! After reading this book I can tell you that I might just want to be a manatee scientist like the scientists in the book. I would give this book 4 1/2 stars. Peter Lourie wrote another book about polar bears so he probably writes books so that students like me can learn all about different animals. I heard that Peter Lourie wrote some other books I can't wait to read those too!
I have heard the name Dian Fossey a lot over the years, but I have never known who she actually was. After reading Dian Fossey Among The Gorillas by Will Mara, I have learned that she was an amazingZoologist who went to Africa to study gorillas, but ended up doing much more than that. Dian gained all of the gorilla's trust, and became a permanent part of all their families. This book was about Dian's life, her relationship with the mountain gorillas she studied, and her difficult relationship with
poachers. Will Mara made this book because he admired Dian and her work. I personally really loved the book, and I have a much better understanding on mountain gorillas, and what they put up with in the wild. I would defiantly say that mountain gorillas are one of my favorite animals now that I read this book. This book was a pretty easy read, and not very long. I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to learn more about gorillas, or people who are not very fast readers. If you are a person who loves really long books full of facts, this probably is not the book for you.
The gorilla you see with the more lightly colored back is called a silver back. They are usually the leader of the gorilla family. Every gorilla's family has a leader to protect all of the members of the group.
Group of gorillas approach man! Amazing
This just shows how loving, gentile and caring gorillas can be if they don't feel threatened by humans. Dian Fossey worked with gorillas like these.
If you live in a large city, you're always near rats. No matter where you are or what time it is. I recently read a book about rats in New York city. It was called, Rats. The author, Robert Sullivan, lived and is continuing to live in New York. He wrote this book to inform us readers on rats, there habitat, life style, and history. During the writing process of this book, he would sit in an old alley called Edens alley almost every night. He would observe them, but never disturb them. The rats never even knew he was there.
Reading this book, I learned many interesting facts about rats. Rats always live where humans live, always. Also, they're under constant stress, 24/7. The rats that you see in most eastern cities, are Brown rats, also known as Norway rats (Rattus Norvegicus). The Black rat (Rattus Rattus) used to live in eastern cities, but got pushed out to the western cities when the Brown rats came from europe. The average rat is about 16 inches long, and weighs 1 pound. They're very skittish, neophobic creatures. Also, they tend to be good swimmers. Rats have yellow teeth that naturally grow into buck teeth, and when eating, they prefer to gnaw. Instead of running, they like to gallop. In New York city, there is one rat for every 36 people. Heres a cool fact I bet you will find interesting, a rat's favorite food is scrambled eggs, and its least favorite is raw beets.
So in conclusion, I really liked this book. I found it very informative and captivating. If you're interested in rats and live in the city, I think this book will be perfect for you.
Hello guys! This is a blog about my book called Never Cry Wolf by Farly Mowat. I learned about the lives of arctic wolfs which, at the time have not been studied. He talks about his experiences in the arctic tundra to meeting eskimos to chasing down wolves for miles. It would have you laughing up and down and keeping you in suspense. The eskimo tells him that wolves can talk and shockingly he deciphers stuff that the wolves say about the caribou. He even calls his wolves names like Sandy Lou or George. I really enjoyed this book because it gave me knowledge that I have never heard before. Like I never knew that the wolfs changed there diet with the seasons as the caribou came and went. In the summer they ate bugs and whatever they can find until the caribou can come back. The wolves often followed the caribou during the migrations. I would give this book three out of five stars. It had information but it was less drama and more facts and information .
The wolves are as I found out an extremely temperamental species eating virtually anything it can eat. The book was not very long so there was not as much information as I hoped but it was an enjoyable book and I feel others will like it as much as I do.
The Secrets to evolution
How did everything come to be? Who was Charles Darwin? These are just some of the questions answered in Daniel Loxton's book, Evolution. The main purpose of the book is to explain Darwin's life, and his discoveries in the field of evolution. It also answers commonly asked questions about evolution. The book starts off describing Charles Darwin's life, which leads up to his discovery of natural selection( read the book or use link to find out what it is!). Then the book dives deeper into evolution answering questions like what is a transitional fossil or if the term "survival of the fittest is entirely correct". I thought Evolution was a very good book because it explained evolution and Darwin, but the whole book was extremely clear, meaning I understood everything. I highly recommend this book for people that are interested in evolution, but don't read this if you are forced. Just so you know, the book is split into two sections, the question and answer part and strait on informative part. So, enjoy the book! Evolution Tree
Have you ever had a favorite animal and think you know all about them? Did you ever think how much more information there is to learn about an animal besides knowing they're your favorite? Well I read a whole book about Manatees and there was so much information. Now I have no questions about them at all.
