Detector Dogs, Dynamite Dolphins, and More Animals with Super Sensory Powers

by Cara Giaimo, Christina Couch, Daniel Duncan (Illustrator)

Overview

Meet incredible animals with all kinds of highly developed senses and learn about the jobs they do in this book full of amazing facts, cool science, and activities.

Fly alongside a photo-delivery pigeon, discover a honeybee’s electric secrets, and sail the high seas with a poop-sniffing dog detective on a mission to save endangered killer whales. All of these animals use their super senses, from echolocation to electroreception, to help human coworkers tackle real-world problems like pollution and global warming. Each chapter introduces a different animal, such as Cynthia, the pipe-fixing ferret, and Rosita, a goat who helps prevent wildfires. With bright and entertaining text alongside colorful photos and illustrations, this book examines how each animal’s behavior and biology makes it perfectly suited for the job it does. At the end of each chapter, curious young scientists are invited to explore their own human senses through fun guided experiments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536229530
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	09/13/2022
Series:	Extraordinary Animals
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	1,121,823
Product dimensions:	7.19(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.48(d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Christina Couch and Cara Giaimo are science journalists and alums of the MIT graduate program in science writing. Christina Couch writes about the wonderful weirdness of brains (organic and artificial), and Cara Giaimo writes about the amazing lives of animals. You can find their work in the New York Times, Wired, Atlas Obscura, NOVA, and other outlets. They live in the Boston area.

Daniel Duncan is the author-illustrator of South and the illustrator of Mr. Posey’s New Glasses by Ted Kooser, The Girl Who Could Fix Anything by Mara Rockliff, and The Purple Puffy Coat by Maribeth Boelts. Daniel Duncan creates most of his work in an old stable turned studio on the outskirts of London.

Table of Contents

Introduction vi

Chapter 1 Detector Dogs 1

Chapter 2 Fast Ferrets 16

Chapter 3 Special Delivery Pigeons 36

Chapter 4 Gobbling Goats 52

Chapter 5 First-Alert Fish 68

Chapter 6 Dynamite Dolphins 84

Chapter 7 Community-Building Bees 102

Chapter 8 Satellite Species 118

For Further Exploration 132

Source Notes 143

Bibliography 144

Acknowledgments 159

Image Credits 161

Index 162

Editorial Reviews

An engaging survey, thoroughly documented and as ethically nuanced as it is lively.
—Kirkus Reviews

A perfect book for animal lovers, this narrative nonfiction book is a fascinating read about animals with super senses and how they can use those senses to help people complete important and frequently unusual tasks. . . the upbeat and entertaining text combined with the high-interest subject matter makes this book a great choice.
—School Library Connection

From the Publisher

2022-05-11
Introductions to animals that have been selected for their special senses or abilities to perform tasks ranging from testing treated water to predicting earthquakes.

Focusing on eight main subjects but including briefer notes on many more, the roster includes homing pigeons and honeybees but otherwise goes well beyond the usual sorts of animal “helpers.” The book follows a herd of California brush abatement goats employed to reduce wildfire hazards in terrain that is hard for human firefighters to tackle; introduces Eba, a terrier who helps researchers track endangered orcas and is “possibly the only dog in the world trained to sniff killer whale poop”; and describes how the ICARUS program monitors the movements of tagged livestock from space as a way of predicting earthquakes. Along with explaining how dog noses (those “booger-resistant marvels of engineering”), goat stomachs, whiskers, and other specialized body parts function, the authors suggest simple experiments to test our own abilities to follow a scent trail, use echolocation, detect various (nonpoisonous) foreign substances in water, and other tasks that parallel what these animals can do. Musings on the ethical ins and outs of putting other species to sometimes-dangerous work provide food for thought, as do some of the photos (of, for instance, trained dolphins being airlifted in coffinlike stalls) interspersed with Duncan’s lighthearted cartoon illustrations. Both sorts of pictures portray a racially diverse assortment of human figures, and the source notes and bibliography offer unusually wide arrays of leads to information sources, technical or otherwise, for each chapter.

An engaging survey, thoroughly documented and as ethically nuanced as it is lively. (index) (Nonfiction. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews