Themes: Animals, Nature, Survival Of Fittest, Predators, Nonfiction, Tween, Emergent Reader, Chapter Book, Hi-Lo, Hi-Lo Books, Hi-Lo Solutions, High-Low Books, Hi-Low Books, ELL, EL, ESL, Struggling Learner, Struggling Reader, Special Education, SPED, Newcomers, Reading, Learning, Education, Educational, Educational Books. There are over 1,500 animals that eat their own kind. They come in all sizes and shapes. From the praying mantis to the polar bear. Cannibal animals eat to survive, possibly because of global warming. To keep their population in check. To get a healthy snack. To show another animal who's boss. And to ensure the perfect mate. Engage your most struggling readers in grades 4-7 with Red Rhino Nonfiction! This new series features high-interest topics in every content area. Visually appealing full-color photographs and illustrations, fun facts, and short chapters keep emerging readers focused. Written at a 1.5-1.9 readability level, these books include pre-reading comprehension questions and a 20-word glossary for comprehension support.

Describes the reasons for and instances of cannibalistic behavior in a variety of animals, including guppies, black widow spiders, sharks, gerbils, and brown bears.

A look at canibalistic animal survival and defense reactions.

There are over 1,500 animals that eat their own kind. They come in all sizes and shapes. From the praying mantis to the polar bear. Cannibal animals eat to survive, possibly because of global warming. To keep their population in check. To get a healthy snack. To show another animal who's boss. And to ensure the perfect mate. Engage your most struggling readers in grades 3-8 with Red Rhino Nonfiction!

Many animals hunt other animals for food. All food chains and food webs are based upon this eat-or-be-eaten relationship among living things. There is something really disgusting, though, about animals that eat their own kind. And some, such as the ground squirrel or the bullfrog, may live in your own backyard! With the stress on STEM learning increasing, finding texts that both engage and teach key life science concepts is essential. Students will uncover information on life cycles and food chains while they enter the creepy, yet enthralling, world of animals that eat their own species.

“Surprising. Impressive. Cannibalism restores my faith in humanity.” —Sy Montgomery, The New York Times Book Review For centuries scientists have written off cannibalism as a bizarre phenomenon with little biological significance. Its presence in nature was dismissed as a desperate response to starvation or other life-threatening circumstances, and few spent time studying it. A taboo subject in our culture, the behavior was portrayed mostly through horror movies or tabloids sensationalizing the crimes of real-life flesh-eaters. But the true nature of cannibalism--the role it plays in evolution as well as human history--is even more intriguing (and more normal) than the misconceptions we’ve come to accept as fact. In Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History,zoologist Bill Schutt sets the record straight, debunking common myths and investigating our new understanding of cannibalism’s role in biology, anthropology, and history in the most fascinating account yet written on this complex topic. Schutt takes readers from Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains, where he wades through ponds full of tadpoles devouring their siblings, to the Sierra Nevadas, where he joins researchers who are shedding new light on what happened to the Donner Party--the most infamous episode of cannibalism in American history. He even meets with an expert on the preparation and consumption of human placenta (and, yes, it goes well with Chianti). Bringing together the latest cutting-edge science, Schutt answers questions such as why some amphibians consume their mother’s skin; why certain insects bite the heads off their partners after sex; why, up until the end of the twentieth century, Europeans regularly ate human body parts as medical curatives; and how cannibalism might be linked to the extinction of the Neanderthals. He takes us into the future as well, investigating whether, as climate change causes famine, disease, and overcrowding, we may see more outbreaks of cannibalism in many more species--including our own. Cannibalism places a perfectly natural occurrence into a vital new context and invites us to explore why it both enthralls and repels us.

This is a study of the phenomenon of cannibalism in those animals known to prey upon and eat their own kind. The book is structured in accordance with conventional taxonomy and ranges from microbes to mammals. Where such information is available, the reasons for cannibalistic behaviour are presented for some 2000 species. These show that eating your own kind is very largely a result of the natural struggle for survival or procreation, and not an 'evil' aberration. The behaviours - unpleasant though it may appear - must be far more common in nature than might be imagined, and therefore, has probably evolved as an advantageous adaptation in many species. The book is unusual in its wide survey of cannibalism in nature and may be of use to animal breeders, conservationists, and those who study animal behaviour. Other readers with an interest in natural history, for whatever reason, may find useful information and some surprises in these pages. Even some very familiar household pets are included!