Patricia Kramer 2008-09-18

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

This book was fascinating all the way through. The individual adaptions each species makes to survive are truly amazing. The students that Professor Heinrich teaches a The University of Vermont are truly lucky. After reading this book, I want to stop and intently watch every bird and bug and mammal, etc that I encounter on my walks.

Here is a sample of what can be learned in this book.

The adult goldenrod fly injects an egg into a goldenrod stem in the early summer. Chemicals injected with the egg or produced by the larva cause the plant to produce a tumor or gall which is soft on the inside and woody on the outside.

"From within it the larva taps the plant's resources and uses them for its own growth.".... "By late summer the goldenrod, the gall and the larva have stopped growing and the larva then chews an escape tunnel from the center of the gall all the way to, but not through, the outermost edge. Retreating back in to the center of the tough woody gall, it spends the winter there, in hibernation. That the larva makes the escape hatch when it does is essential, because the adult gall fly does not have chewing mouth-parts and it would otherwise remain entombed within the gall."

algo41 2008-05-12

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

While I was not that happy with the earliest chapters, "Winter World" turned out to be a marvelous book. There is lots of great science, used to address questions which I suspect most readers have had. The science is always nicely explained, and should be accessible to everyone. The general question is how do animals survive winters, when food may be scarce and temperatures extreme (actually the same techniques can also be used to deal with seasonal drought).

"Torpor" is one frequently employed technique, a lowering of body temperature which reduces energy requirements. At one extreme, torpor can be winter long hibernation, but it may be employed for just part of each day. Interestingly, even when bears and other mammals hibernate, they must wake up periodically, probably because even low level mammalian brain functioning requires oxygen which must be replenished. Heinrich says it is a complete mystery how bears survive hibernation without loss of any bone density and muscle mass (think of what happens to humans when confined to a hospital bed, although I might have thought the lowered metabolism might, by itself, explain this). Small mammals often make burrows in snow, a great insulator, while beavers survive under ice. Beavers periodically wake up to make icy dives to nearby food caches, while many of the burrowing animals wake up to eat stored food or in other species, to forage when conditions are right. "Huddling" permits many species to lower their energy requirements while at rest.

Some of the "lower" animals which survive being inanimate manufacture their own anti-freeze while others employ "controlled" icing: the intercellular spaces ice up, but while this is going on, the water leaves the cells through osmosis, so that ice never forms inside the cells, which would destroy them (Cells contains various organelles, or specialized compartments, which would be torn by the ice).

A common misconception is that invertebrates have no control over body temperature. Just like birds, insects can and do use muscular contraction to generate heat when needed. The chapter on honeybees was particularly good, and illustrates how much can be learned by careful observation. Now if only someone will explain how pigeons sustain themselves while constantly pecking at barren sidewalks in the middle of the city.

Linda Pagliuco 2008-02-03

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

Working at a historic house, I often comment to visitors that it's difficult to fathom how people survived the New England winter before the advent of central heating. As for animals..... how do they DO that, with no houses or heating at all?
Snapping turtles, the couch potatoes of the predator world. Snow fleas?? The food storage systems of squirrels. Jays gluing food to tree branches. Natural antifreeze? These and countless other wonders, taking place unnoticed right outside our own windows, are examined and explained in Winter World. This is a book that can be read as a whole, or, perhaps more practically, by delving into relevant chapters as curiosity dictates. It would make a great gift for science teachers or animal/nature enthusiasts. Definitely a book to be kept readily at hand, along with those bird and wildflower handbooks. Highly recommended.

J. Matzke 2008-01-29

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

I read this book a couple years ago while serving in Iraq. Reading about how the animals of the northwoods survive the frigid temperatures of winter helped keep me cool in the middle of the 140 degree weather. Overall this book is an interesting look at the adaptive strategies that have allowed animals to thrive in some of the most inhospitable conditions on Earth. Discussions about circadian rhythms, torpor and supercooling are well worth the price of this tome.

Kevin J. Dean 2007-01-27

2 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

Heinrich would better serve Nature and his spirit if he were a naturalist, rather than a scientist. His methods of collecting information are, at times, destructive.

Killing life as a means of obtaining knowledge about the individual shows impatience and proves laziness.

Also, I find that studying "wild" animals in a lab environment is, not only, unreliable, but also inhumane. Information gathered as such, should be disregarded, for animals removed from their natural environments, and subjected to captivity by their predators (i.e. humans) have noticeable changes in their behavior. Any and all conclusions cannot be relied upon.

Aside from those two notable nuisances, the book was a good read and very well authored.