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The cockroach could not have scuttled along, almost unchanged, for two hundred and fifty million years – some two hundred and forty-nine before man evolved – unless it was doing something right. It would be fascinating as well as instructive to have access to the cockroach’s own record of its life on earth, to know its point of view on evolution and species domination(...)
Cockroach
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The cockroach could not have scuttled along, almost unchanged, for two hundred and fifty million years – some two hundred and forty-nine before man evolved – unless it was doing something right. It would be fascinating as well as instructive to have access to the cockroach’s own record of its life on earth, to know its point of view on evolution and species domination over the millennia. Such chronicles would perhaps radically alter our perceptions of the dinosaur’s span and importance – and that of our own development and significance. We might learn that throughout all these aeons, the dominant life form has been, if not the cockroach itself, then certainly the insect. Attempts to chronicle the cockroach’s intellectual and emotional life have been made only within the last century when a scientist titled his essay on the cockroach ‘The Intellectual and Emotional World of the Cockroach’, and artists as radically different as Franz Kafka and Don Marquis created equally memorable cockroach protagonists. At least since Classical Greece, authors have brought cockroach characters into the foreground to speak for the weak and downtrodden, the outsiders, those forced to survive on the underside of dominant human cultures. Cockroaches have become the subjects of songs (La Cucaracha), have competed in ‘roachraces’ and have even ended up in recipes. In this accessible, sympathetic and often humorous book, Marion Copeland examines the natural history, symbolism and cultural significance of this poorly understood and much-maligned insect.
Nature
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Voyageuse passionnée par le monde végétal, Katia Astafieff nous raconte onze incroyables aventures de plantes venues d'ailleurs, comme le tabac, le kiwi, la rhubarbe ou encore l'étrange rafflésie. Onze plantes, mais aussi onze explorateurs partis en expédition au bout du monde au péril de leur vie, des chercheurs d'or vert, des Indiana Jones de la botanique. Laissez-vous(...)
L'Aventure extraordinaire des plantes voyageuses
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Voyageuse passionnée par le monde végétal, Katia Astafieff nous raconte onze incroyables aventures de plantes venues d'ailleurs, comme le tabac, le kiwi, la rhubarbe ou encore l'étrange rafflésie. Onze plantes, mais aussi onze explorateurs partis en expédition au bout du monde au péril de leur vie, des chercheurs d'or vert, des Indiana Jones de la botanique. Laissez-vous guider sur les traces de l'espion britannique Robert Fortune, déguisé en mandarin pour voler le secret du thé aux Chinois, ou de l'excentrique Joseph Rock qui a fait parvenir en Occident quelques graines d'une délicate pivoine inconnue jusqu'alors.
Nature
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Autour de nous, des objets en bois. Futiles. Précieux. De quels arbres ont-ils la fibre, de quelles forêts sont-ils l'essence ? Forêts jardinées ou plantations monospécifiques ? Des cagettes en peuplier, des palettes en pin maritime, des traverses en chêne, du lamellé-collé en hêtre. Des bouchons en liège, des contrebasses, des barriques, du bois-énergie et du carton(...)
Bouts de bois: des objets aux forêts
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Autour de nous, des objets en bois. Futiles. Précieux. De quels arbres ont-ils la fibre, de quelles forêts sont-ils l'essence ? Forêts jardinées ou plantations monospécifiques ? Des cagettes en peuplier, des palettes en pin maritime, des traverses en chêne, du lamellé-collé en hêtre. Des bouchons en liège, des contrebasses, des barriques, du bois-énergie et du carton ondulé. Ce récit sensible trace son chemin par-delà les procédés industriels et les pratiques de la sylviculture en interrogeant notre rapport intime à l'arbre et à nos espaces forestiers. De la région du Grand-Est aux Landes de Gascogne en passant par la forêt de Bercé, le Morvan et la Sologne, nous parcourons des massifs dont les essences, arrivées là nullement par hasard, servent à l'industrie du bois. Ici, des savoir-faire vertueux s'opposent à des logiques du tout-jetable. Cet essai libre et multiforme, à la fois érudit, poétique et illustré - agrémenté de cartes géographiques réelles ou imaginaires, de croquis aquarellés et de photographies de compositions végétales -, nous invite à nous saisir d'un matériau modeste et populaire, à voir en lui l'arbre qu'il a été, et puis à faire un peu de science, un peu d'histoire, pas mal d'écologie et quelques pas de côté.
The little book of beetles
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A charming, richly illustrated, pocket-size exploration of the world’s beetles.
The little book of beetles
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A charming, richly illustrated, pocket-size exploration of the world’s beetles.
Nature
The little book of spiders
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A charming, richly illustrated, pocket-size exploration of the world’s spiders.
The little book of spiders
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A charming, richly illustrated, pocket-size exploration of the world’s spiders.
Nature
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Describing how birds design, engineer, and build their nests, Avian Architecture deconstructs all types of nests found around the world using architectural blueprints and detailed descriptions of the construction processes and engineering techniques birds use.
Avian architecture: How birds design, engineer and build. Revised and expanded
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Describing how birds design, engineer, and build their nests, Avian Architecture deconstructs all types of nests found around the world using architectural blueprints and detailed descriptions of the construction processes and engineering techniques birds use.
Nature
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Ants are legion: at present there are 11,006 species of ant known; they live everywhere in the world except the polar icecaps; and the combined weight of the ant population has been estimated to make up half the mass of all insects alive today. When we encounter them outdoors, ants fascinate us; discovered in our kitchen cupboards, they elicit horror and disgust.(...)
Ant
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Ants are legion: at present there are 11,006 species of ant known; they live everywhere in the world except the polar icecaps; and the combined weight of the ant population has been estimated to make up half the mass of all insects alive today. When we encounter them outdoors, ants fascinate us; discovered in our kitchen cupboards, they elicit horror and disgust. Charlotte Sleigh’s 'Ant' elucidates the cultural reasons behind our varied reactions to these extraordinary insects, and considers the variety of responses that humans have expressed at different times and in different places to their intricate, miniature societies. Ants have figured as fantasy miniature armies, as models of good behaviour, as infiltrating communists and as creatures on the borderline between the realms of the organic and the machine: in 1977 British Telecom hired ant experts to help solve problems with their massive information network. This is the first book to examine ants in these and many other such guises, and in so doing opens up broader issues about the history of science and humans’ relations with the natural world. It will be of interest to anyone who likes natural history or cultural studies, or who has ever rushed out and bought a can of Raid™.
Nature
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The bee is not a domestic animal, yet our relationship with this creature is one of the longest-standing between humanity and any other species. Since the earliest times the unique manufacturing and architectural abilities of the bee and its remarkable social organization have been regarded as miraculous. Because of this ancient relationship, bees always carry profound(...)
Bee
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The bee is not a domestic animal, yet our relationship with this creature is one of the longest-standing between humanity and any other species. Since the earliest times the unique manufacturing and architectural abilities of the bee and its remarkable social organization have been regarded as miraculous. Because of this ancient relationship, bees always carry profound cultural meanings which can tell us much about who we are. Bees are also the subject of an enormous body of legend throughout the temperate world; no less extraordinary is the natural history of the bee, and the ways in which its biological and social organization have been adapted and encouraged by mankind in search of honey. Claire Preston’s Bee follows the natural and cultural history of our relationship with the bee and the development of these legends, from ancient political descriptions of the bee to Renaissance debates about monarchy, and the accompanying scientific discoveries about insects, to the modern conversion of the virtuous, civil bee into the dangerous swarm of the Hollywood horror flick, and finally to the melancholy recognition that the scientific study of bee behavior gives us a warning to beware our own awful technologies of destruction.
Nature
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l'ouvrage aborde les apects biologiques, scientifiques et culturels. Photographies de Nicolas Lenartowski.
On growth and form
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Why do living things and physical phenomena take the form they do? D'Arcy Thompson's classic "On Growth and Form" looks at the way things grow and the shapes they take. Analysing biological processes in their mathematical and physical aspects, this historic work, first published in 1917, has also become renowned for the sheer poetry of its descriptions. A great scientist(...)
On growth and form
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Why do living things and physical phenomena take the form they do? D'Arcy Thompson's classic "On Growth and Form" looks at the way things grow and the shapes they take. Analysing biological processes in their mathematical and physical aspects, this historic work, first published in 1917, has also become renowned for the sheer poetry of its descriptions. A great scientist sensitive to the fascinations and beauty of the natural world tells of jumping fleas and slipper limpets; of buds and seeds; of bees' cells and rain drops; of the potter's thumb and the spider's web; of a film of soap and a bubble of oil; of a splash of a pebble in a pond.