Stayin' Alive! Trickiest! 19 Sneaky Animals by Steve Jenkins

Survival can be tricky.

For most animals, finding food and avoiding danger is a full-time job. A few of them survive by being bigger, stronger, faster, or fiercer than other creatures.

But many animals use tricks to catch their prey or outsmart a predator.

For many animals, trick or treat is the story of their lives. If they're lucky, they trick hungry predators. If they fail, they will be some critter's treat!

Being big and strong and bold has its good points. But maintaining those impressive physiques and power takes a lot of work, and some animals have evolved less taxing ways to avoid danger and perhaps get a square meal at the same time.

That's where being tricky comes in handy.

What if you are a tiny little tree lizard--easy pickings for a big snake or a bird? But if your tail looks looks like a ragged brown leaf, you can hunker down on a tree and blend right in. That's how the diminutive satanic leaf-tailed gecko of Madagascar gets by without getting eaten. The leafy sea dragon, a species of sea horse, uses a similar trick: his shaggy green shape looks just like a piece of floating seaweed. And the western hognose snake takes the trickery even further. He rolls over to play a disgustingly stiff dead snake, even adding a convincing little trickle of blood from his open mouth to gross out a predator.

Looking non-edible works for those guys, but other creatures disguise themselves as something no sensible predator would dare to eat, like the harmless wasp beetle who looks much like a real wasp. Other sneaky animals disguise themselves, not to avoid being a meal, but to get one. The green vine snake twists around a branch like, well, a vine, to fool birds who need a break into becoming a tasty dinner.

And some crafty critters are getaway artists. The squid and octopus disappear in a cloud of black ink. The blue-tailed skink drops part of his bright-colored tail, leaving it wiggling persuasively just long enough to keep a hungry predator busy while the business end of the skink escapes. And some animals find ways to prey on other critters while keeping themselves well out of the way of danger: the archerfish shoots a mouthful of water to bring down a insect on the wing, and the bolas spider, no doubt an inspiration to Spider Man, downs a bug with a sticky strand of web he shoots out to reel his prey right in.

Artist Steve Jenkins gives nineteen sly and sneaky creatures their due in the latest in series, Trickiest!: 19 Sneaky Animals (Extreme Animals) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Done up in his eye-catching trademark paper collage illustrations, Jenkins' slyly humorous text offers diagrams comparing each animal with human size and a world map showing its habitat, and he also appends a glossary, a web of his subjects arranged by shared traits, and a bibliography of additional readings for nature science research.

For animals more deadly than devious, read this one with its companion book, Deadliest!: 20 Dangerous Animals (Extreme Animals) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.)