Experimental Hydrodynamics of Fast-Floating Aquatic Animals presents the latest research on the physiological, morphological and evolutionary factors in aquatic animal locomotion. Beginning with an overview on how to conduct experiments on swimming aquatic animals, assessing hydrodynamic forces, resistance and geometric parameters of animal bodies, the book then details how aquatic animals, such as fast-moving dolphins, can achieve high speeds without over-expelling their energy resources. It provides insights into investigations on how animals, including dolphins, sharks and swordfish can maneuver through water at high speeds, offering a natural model for improving human and technological underwater locomotion. This book is essential for researchers and practicing biologists interested in the study of aquatic animal locomotive physiology and its application to human technology. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students will also find this a helpful academic resource for further understanding animal hydrodynamics.

How did rodent outbreaks in Germany help to end World War I? What caused the destructive outbreak of rodents in Oregon and California in the late 1950s, the large population outbreak of lemmings in Scandinavia in 2010, and the great abundance of field mice in Scotland in the spring of 2011? Population fluctuations, or outbreaks, of rodents constitute one of the classic problems of animal ecology, and in "Population Fluctuations in Rodents", Charles J. Krebs sifts through the last eighty years of research to draw out exactly what we know about rodent outbreaks and what should be the agenda for future research. Krebs has synthesized the research in this area, focusing mainly on the voles and lemmings of the Northern Hemisphere - his primary area of expertise - but also referring to the literature on rats and mice. He covers the patterns of changes in reproduction and mortality and the mechanisms that cause these changes - including predation, disease, food shortage, and social behavior - and discusses how landscapes can affect population changes, methodically presenting the hypotheses related to each topic before determining whether or not the data supports them. He ends on an expansive note, by turning his gaze outward and discussing how the research on rodent populations can apply to other terrestrial mammals. Geared toward advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and practicing ecologists interested in rodent population studies, this book will also appeal to researchers seeking to manage rodent populations and to understand outbreaks in both natural and urban settings - or, conversely, to protect endangered species.

Although scholars have long recognized the mythic status of bears in Indigenous North American societies of the past, this is the first volume to synthesize the vast amount of archaeological and historical research on the topic. Bears charts the special relationship between the American black bear and humans in eastern Native American cultures across thousands of years. These essays draw on zooarchaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic evidence from nearly 300 archaeological sites from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico. Contributors explore the ways bears have been treated as something akin to another kind of human-in the words of anthropologist Irving Hallowell, "other than human persons"-in Algonquian, Cherokee, Iroquois, Meskwaki, Creek, and many other Native cultures. Case studies focus on bear imagery in Native art and artifacts; the religious and economic significance of bears and bear products such as meat, fat, oil, and pelts; bears in Native worldviews, kinship systems, and cosmologies; and the use of bears as commodities in transatlantic trade. The case studies in Bears demonstrate that bears were not only a source of food, but were also religious, economic, and political icons within Indigenous cultures. This volume convincingly portrays the black bear as one of the most socially significant species in Native eastern North America. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

From "one of the world's greatest experts on primate behavior" (Desmond Morris) comes a look at the most provocative aspects of human nature-power, sex, violence, kindness, and morality-through our closest cousins. For nearly twenty years, Frans De Waal has studied both the famously aggressive chimpanzee and the egalitarian, matriarchal bonobo, two species whose DNA is nearly identical to ours. The result is an engrossing narrative that reveals what their behavior can teach us about ourselves.