The latest book releases for curious minds

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL NATURE

ALSO FREAKY, HORRIBLE AND DOWNRIGHT DISGUSTING

AUTHOR BEN HOARE

ILLUSTRATOR KALEY MCKEAN

PUBLISHER DORLING KINDERSLEY

PRICE £20 / $24.99

RELEASE OUT NOW

One way to describe the plants, animals and natural phenomena in this lovely hardback from DK would indeed be weird and wonderful. The

Cook’s pine trees on the New Caledonian islands in the Pacific Ocean fit the bill: they all tilt towards the equator no matter where they grow, and the farther from the equator they are, the more they lean towards it, which scientists still cannot explain. Weird and Wonderful Nature is full of these little mysteries, as well as odd stuff that science can explain like the immortal jellyfish, which we’ve featured in How It Works before – it effectively cheat death by putting its life cycle into reverse and reverting from adult to polyp form, doing so over and over again.

But some behaviours and characteristics are much better described as freaky, gross and even horrific. Case in point, lily beetle larvae, which smear their entire bodies with their own poo to put predators off eating them. Or the horned lizard, which shoots blood from its eyes at any potential threat, and the female Surinam toad, whose eggs are implanted into her back, subsequently swelling up under the mother toad’s skin like bubble wrap before they hatch.