@article{10.4159/harvard.9780674060852,
      author = {Denny, Mark, and McFadzean, Alan,},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/450073},
      title = {Engineering animals how life works / [electronic resource]  :},
      publisher = {Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,},
      abstract = {From an engineer's perspective, how do specialized  adaptations among living things really work?  In this book  the authors offer a look at animals, including humans, as  works of evolutionary engineering, each adapted to a  specific manner of survival whether that means spinning  webs or flying across continents or hunting in the dark, or  writing books. The alarm calls of birds make them difficult  for predators to locate, while the howl of wolves and the  croak of bullfrogs are designed to carry across long  distances. From an engineer's perspective, how do such  specialized adaptations among living things really work?   And how does physics constrain evolution, channeling it in  particular directions?  This particular book, containing  more than a hundred illustrations, conveys the physical  principles underlying animal structure and behavior.   Pigeons, for instance, when understood as marvels of  engineering, are flying remote sensors: they have wideband  acoustical receivers, hi-res optics, magnetic sensing, and  celestial navigation. Albatrosses expend little energy  while traveling across vast southern oceans, by exploiting  a technique known to glider pilots as dynamic soaring.  Among insects, one species of fly can locate the source of  a sound precisely, even though the fly itself is much  smaller than the wavelength of the sound it hears. And that  big-brained, upright Great Ape? Evolution has equipped us  to figure out an important fact about the natural world:  that there is more to life than engineering, but no life at  all without it.},
      number = {10.4159/harvard.9780674060852},
      recid = {450073},
      pages = {1 online rewsource (viii, 385 p.) :},
      address = {Cambridge, Mass. :},
      year = {2011},
}