San Antonio College Library

Presents the major groups of invertebrate animals in simple, nontechnical language.

"Rogers and Kaplan take us on a journey through communication in the animal world, offering insights on how animals communicate by sight, sound, smell, touch, and even electrical signaling. They explore a wide variety of communication patterns in many species of mammals and birds and discuss in detail how communication signals evolved, how they are learned, and what song and mimicry may mean." "An up-to-date account of the science of animal communication,...

Those nonhuman beings called animals pose philosophical and ethical questions that go to the root not just of what we think but of who we are. Their presence asks: what happens when the Other can no longer safely be assumed to be human? This collection offers a set of incitements and coordinates for exploring how these issues have been represented in contemporary culture and theory, from Jurassic Park and the "horse whisperer" Monty Roberts, to the...

"Perhaps nudged over the evolutionary cliff by a giant boloid striking the Earth, the incredible and fascinating group of animals called dinosaurs (except for their feathered descendants) became extinct some 65 million years ago. In their place evolved an enormous variety of land creatures, especially the mammals, which in their way were every bit as remarkable as their Mesozoic cousins." "The Age of Mammals, the Cenozoic Era, has never had its Jurassic...

"This book describes how the various alien reptiles and amphibians living in the wild throughout the world were first introduced, and subsequently became naturalized. In its coverage of 185 species of reptile and 83 species of amphibian, the book provides details of their present distribution and status in those countries to which they were introduced, and discusses their ecological and socio-economic impact on the native biota and local economies....

Aimed at upper-level undergraduate and first year graduate students, this book covers all aspects of the subject from neurobiology and evolution to physics and economics. Starting with the physics and physiology of signal production, propagation and reception, the book proceeds to the economics of cooperating communicators and ends with a discussion of the complications arising when the interests of sender and receiver do not coincide. A variety of...

"Although other books have chronicled the career and the life of Edward Hicks (1780-1849), America's most beloved folk artist, this is the first book to thoughtfully integrate and discuss his secular and religious concerns as they affected his artistic production, particularly the creation of his "Peaceable Kingdom" paintings. A Quaker, Hicks expressed his religious beliefs in his work, depicting an idealized view of the world as he believed it should...

Using simple principles of justice, Mark Rowlands argues that animals have moral rights, and examines the consequences of this claim in the contexts of vegetarianism, animal experimentation, zoos and hunting.

"Biology - perhaps the most exciting science of the last half-century - is reaching into scholarly disciplines throughout academia, yet sociology has barely entertained it. The reasons for hesitation are clear enough. Sociobiology and ethology have been unappealing to sociologists because they explain human behavior the same way they explain the behavior of social insects, fish, and birds, often evoking images of sexism and Social Darwinism, both...