How Animals Survive: The Extraordinary Adaptations That Keep Creatures Alive

How can a tiny frog warn away a predator? Why does a bat send sounds into the darkness? How can a camel endure intense heat, a penguin survive Antarctic cold or a fish remain alive beneath the crushing pressure of the deep ocean?

How Animals Survive explores the extraordinary features and behaviours that help creatures remain alive in nearly every environment on Earth. From camouflage, mimicry, armour and venom to echolocation, hibernation, migration and cooperation, this vivid journey reveals how animals find food, escape danger, endure extreme conditions and raise new generations.

Readers will discover why adaptations do not appear because animals simply need them, how natural selection shapes populations over many generations and why even the most remarkable survival strategy has costs and limitations. They will meet poison frogs that advertise their defences, moths that hear hunting bats, desert animals that conserve every possible drop of water, Arctic creatures protected by fur and blubber, and social animals that depend on families, colonies and partnerships.

Written in clear, engaging language for readers aged 9 to 13, this serious and accessible introduction to zoology combines dramatic real-world examples with accurate explanations of evolution, behaviour, senses and ecology. It corrects familiar myths-including the ideas that bats are blind, camels store water in their humps and porcupines shoot their quills-while showing that scientific truth is often more astonishing than legend.

Part of the five-book series The Living Planet, this book is an invitation to see every fang, feather, shell, signal and journey as part of the remarkable story of how animals survive.