Tag Anja Sušanj

Curious Creatures Talking Together

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Curious Creatures Talking Together
Zoë Armstrong and Anja Sušanj
Flying Eye Books

It’s common knowledge that humans spend a considerable amount of time communicating with one another in various ways, mostly though not always using words, but less well known is that all manner of animals communicate wordlessly by means of movements, sounds and smells.

In this latest Curious Creatures book, Zoe Armstrong presents in her relatable style, some of the ways this happens in the animal kingdom. Many times I’ve stood in Bushy Park and watched what the two hikers in the highlands of Scotland are witnessing: two stags roaring, stamping and bellowing. This happens during the mating season when males compete for females and one wants to prove himself stronger. Having described their mode of communication, the author briefly compares their actions with ways we humans might sort out a disagreement. I especially like this feature, which is part of each section.

The next couple of spreads present examples of other creatures that communicate by means of visual signals, the peacock spider being one. I love the description of the male’s dance vibrations as ‘rumble rumps’ ‘crunch rolls’ and ‘grind-revs’. 

The book continues with spreads each focussing on in turn, sound signals, 

chemical ‘smelly’ signals, tactile or ‘touching messages’. There’s also a spread on ways some domesticated animals communicate with humans and finally comes a reminder that if we pay close attention to signals from animals, we can discover what they want, need and perhaps, feel, and thus develop empathy with them, which should emphasise the importance of protecting the world’s fauna and treating them with respect.

Anja Sušanj’s vibrant illustrations augment the text and will help to entice children into exploring the information. A worthwhile addition to primary class collections and libraries.

Curious Creatures: Working With Tools

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Curious Creatures: Working With Tools
Zoë Armstrong and Anja Sušanj
Flying Eye Books

I wonder how many children know that using tools for tasks we do often, daily even, is not confined to humans. There are, so we read in this enormously engaging book, animals in various parts of the world that display amazing problem-solving skills and adaptability, recognised by zoologists as tool using.

One such is the sea otter: these animals sometimes make use of kelp for several mooring purposes and also use rocks as hammer and anvil, for example to break open a clam shell or mussel to extract what’s inside for food.

Did you know, several creatures use sticks as tools: elephants in Bangladesh have been observed waving twigs or branches to ward off troublesome insects while others sometimes use a spiky stick as a back-scratcher. Indeed so Zoë Armstrong states, ‘the elephants choose the right tool for the job.’ So too we learn, do several primates: mandrills clean the dirt from beneath their nails with a small twig; gorillas sometimes take a long stick as a measuring device to gauge the depth of water they wish to cross before wading right in; and chimpanzees in Tanzania smooth a stick and use it to extract insects from a termite mound, eating them as we might a lollipop. I’d have been so excited had I been Dr Jane Goodall who first noticed and recorded this phenomenon.

I was especially interested to read though that tool use techniques among primates such as Orangutans sometimes differ according to the particular habitat in which they live.

Indeed some living near a research camp in Borneo’s Tanjung Putting National Park have been observed in a boat paddling it around with their arms – just one of several clever habits they’ve worked out.
Birds too are skilled tool users and author Zoë and illustrator Anja Sušanj provide several examples of them. Crows in particular are known to forage and perform other tasks with sharpened sticks they shape in a variety of ways: indeed New Caledonian crows are among the most skilled toolmakers in the entire animal kingdom.

Altogether a fascinating tribute to creature ingenuity: children (and adults) will be surprised and awed by these clever animals in a book that conveys a wealth of STEM information. There are lots of potential cross-curricular links: I particularly like the way these animals encourage child readers to think creatively to solve problems, just like the exemplars herein have done.

Curious Creatures: Glowing in the Dark

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Curious Creatures Glowing in the Dark
Zoë Armstrong and Anja Sušanj
Flying Eye Books

Author Zoë Armstrong and illustrator Anja Sušanj take us close up to some of the world’s most incredible animals – some of those that are bioluminescent and others that are biofluorescent.

The former use chemical reactions to create sparkles, flashes and flickers of light within their bodies by mixing together two chemicals luciferin and luciferase plus oxygen. This is then shown in a variety of ways. Some creatures including two earthworm species one from New Zealand, the other from the American South ooze a gooey gunk. The New Zealand species dribbles orange goo, the American, blue.

In contrast there are sea creatures such as Flashlight fish that use the bioluminescence of glow-in-the-dark bacteria they carry around and can switch on and off in the blink of an eye. Amazing! Amazing too is the fact that beneath the sea around the Florida coast over three-quarters of the marine creatures glow in the dark, using light to communicate.

It’s not only marine animals that use light to signal to one another. I once spent hours over many evenings in the hills near Dharamshala, fascinated by the myriads of fireflies flickering in the evening dark after a rainy day. In this book, the author focuses on those found at the forest edge in Japan; apparently there are over 2000 species of firefly around the world.

Biofluoresent creatures such as scorpions that are nocturnal, need to absorb invisible ultraviolet light from the Sun (or Moon) in order to glow.

However, so we read, this whole phenomenon is ‘something of a mystery’ and increasing numbers of familiar creatures, so scientists are discovering, are able to glow in the dark.

Having presented all these amazing animals, it’s exciting to read that scientists are making use of both bioluminescence and biofluorescence to research new ways to track diseases moving around the body, as well as looking at ways to save energy and to test for pollution. WOW!

Beautiful illustrations and a highly readable text make this a book for KS2 readers either in the classroom or at home.