Nature's Copycats! Shell Beak Tusk: Shared Traits and the Wonders of Adaptation by Bridget Heos.

Animals that are related often have similar traits which they inherited from a common ancestor. Rabbits and hares both have long ears.

However, some animals share traits but are not related. Why? Because they have adapted the same traits separately in order to survive in their environments.

This is called convergent evolution.

In the dry season on the African savanna, the grass grows coarse and parched and the best foods are the tender leaves on the trees. To survive over time, giraffes evolved an amazing adaptation--a very long neck to help reach all those juicy leaves, the longest among living mammals. On a much smaller scale, there is an insect called the giraffe weevil whose extended neck enables a long reach for a meal as well.

Mother Nature's toolkit of parts is filled with many parallel examples of convergent evolution--parallel adaptations for survival between different types of animals, found often in distant places. Porcupines, echidnas, and porcupine fish all share one defensive trait, protective spikes that that make would-be predators think twice. Turtles (reptiles) and snails (mollusks) both retreat from danger within sheltering shells. Birds and bats (mammals) share wings for flight, and the common firefly and the exotic anglerfish of the deeps both use their power to produce cool heat from body chemicals as a lure, sometimes for reproduction and sometimes for predation. Birds like the parrot have a specialized beak to crush shells of seeds and fruits, while octopuses (mollusks) have hard, sharp beaks to crush crabs.

Bridget Heos' intriguing new Shell, Beak, Tusk: Shared Traits and the Wonders of Adaptation (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) offers even more engaging examples of such parallel traits from nature's bag of tricks. Full- and double-page color photographs of such wildly different animal pairs as the mallard duck and the platypus or walrus and elephant illustrate the major premise of nature's logical and lovable diversity in an eye-catching and inviting narration that may inspire young readers to come up with their own examples of unlikely animals with similar traits. In the manner of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's other superb science books, author Heos offers an ample bibliography and index to lead young nature scientists to further thinking and reading.

Getting Antsy! Ants (Just Like Us!) by Bridget Heos

DID YOU KNOW that ants have been farming far longer than humans? And that in addition to raising crops. they herd (and "milk") animals? In these and other ways, ants are just like us. Ants are ANT-astic!

Ants build roads and tunnels, bridges and boats, and houses of dirt or of leaves. And ants are awesome and legendarily hard workers.

In fact, as soon as they are of their larvae diapers, they help feed the colony. As soon as they can, they are put right to work babysitting the larvae, bathing them, and (spoiler warning) gathering their spit-up and sometimes their poop (euphemistically called manna) as food for workers and queen alike. Later, the young workers graduate to outside duty, gathering and harvesting food for their siblings and acting as garbage collectors to keep the nest sanitary.

It's a dirty job, but somebuggy's got to do it.

Unlike some kids, ants are awesome at staying in line, but human kids will be glad they don't do it by following the scent trail laid down by the abdomen of their line leader! While some workers dally at the dairy, milking aphids, other workers even morph into soldier ants, with some species getting so big and strong that they make The Hulk look puny. But like humans, when the army ants lose a battle, the colony has to evacuate, Queen Ant, eggs, larvae and all, and become refugees, making a run for safety, leaving the spoils for the victors.

THIS MEANS WAR!

Bridget Heos' forthcoming Just Like Us! Ants (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) plays upon the similarities between ants and people. Both are social animals that care for their young, with job classifications that make use of their size, age, and energy to maintain their cities. Heos' text is organized into double-page sections, each of which covers a subject such as care of the young or bridge-and boat-building. David Clark's illustrations feature funny, anthropomorphic ants--armored ants with swords and shields, queen ants with baby buggies loaded with larvae, and fruit fly chasers wielding itsy bitsy butterfly nets--dotted with humorous colored drawings of Rube Goldburg gizmos to brew up baby larvae drool for worker baristas to stir up into smoothies for off-duty workers to sip at a cafe bar. The many awesome aspects of antdom are all there in Heos' new book in the Just Like Us series, augmented with the added attraction of a glossary ("Say What?"), and a bibliography for those assigned research reports that come along in the elementary grades.

Science writer Bridget Heos is also the author of Stronger Than Steel: Spider Silk DNA and the Quest for Better Bulletproof Vests, Sutures, and Parachute Rope (Scientists in the Field Series) (see review here) and Shell, Beak, Tusk: Shared Traits and the Wonders of Adaptation. (review here)