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    Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World
    Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World
    Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World
    Audiobook7 hours

    Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World

    Written by Richard Conniff

    Narrated by Richard Davidson

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    With this fascinating book, award-winning journalist Richard Conniff satisfies your cravings for the thrill and horror of formication-that chilling sensation of something crawling across your skin. Blending humor and sophistication, he introduces you to a host of spineless creatures, from moths to leeches, and the extraordinary enthusiasts who study them. For over 20 years, the author has trekked through jungles, oceans, and deserts in search of invertebrates. Off the coast of Florida, he encounters bizarre, giant squid and the scientists who dine on the extra specimens. He chases ground spiders in the Amazon with a collector who keeps 2,000 pet tarantulas. And while covering the invasion of fire ants in Texas, he attends a festival featuring a roundup of the angry insects. Packed with anecdotes and astonishing facts, Spineless Wonders will fill you with a sense of marvel for the thousands of animals who inhabit the invertebrate world. As you hear Richard M. Davidson's dramatic narration, you will gaze on crawling creatures with new respect and appreciation instead of fear and loathing.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 20, 2014
    ISBN9781490639420
    Spineless Wonders: Strange Tales from the Invertebrate World

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    Reviews for Spineless Wonders

    4/5

    17 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Ready for some really creepy, bizarre, and fascinating stories? This book is packed with incredible stuff - and it's all true. Starting with the common housefly and ending with slime hags (ewww!), this takes various different "spineless wonders" and presents them in all their weird glory.I was extremely glad to discover that fire ants are not likely to become my near neighbors, reminded again of why I *hate* mosquitoes, and found out what it takes to study beetles in the jungle. My favorites were the dragonflies - I just think they are beautiful - and the giant squid.Even weirder than the creatures, though, are the people who study them. From the guy with a stained glass picture of a flea (no joke) to the researcher who pulled a gun on a fellow beetle enthusiast, these folks are odd. Imagine being married to the leech fancier. He had tanks and tanks of leeches in a barn. He didn't even make any money on them. But now, thanks to his research, pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to be the first to buy his discoveries and market the drugs based on what he has learned. Not bad, right?This one was fun to listen to in the car with my son.
    • 3/5
      Ew. Now how did this relate to physics? This was my summer reading book the year before junior year of high school, and it had a little more information than I wanted to know about creepy crawly things. On the plus side, however, the author was funny and I learned things.