Desert Creatures Mysteries

By A. J. Grayling

Investigate some of the astonishing creatures living in the southwestern North American Desert. Learn fun new facts about how they make their living, what they eat, how they stay safe. Living in a place as extreme as a desert requires numerous adjustments—we will focus on how these show up in the way animals look and act. And for extra fun, we will take side-trips into science, research, and look for ways you can begin your own special investigations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. J. Grayling
• Release date: Jul 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310699290

A. J. Grayling

A. J. Grayling will bring you fascinating stories about birds, dogs, storms, fish, rocks, science, oceans, dunes, wild animals, and deserts.

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Quick Introduction

We hope you enjoy this collection of stories, facts, pictures, jokes, references, and questions to encourage your research into the mysterious deserts of North America, and their truly amazing inhabitants.

One thing we do here, all the time, that’s officially frowned upon, is anthropomorphize. That is, we treat other animals like they were humans, and sometimes even put words in their mouths…or beaks.

First, they would probably prefer to have someone put bugs or prickly-pear fruit in their mouths instead of words.

Second, we really have no idea at all what they are thinking. Possibly the implications of general relativity. Of dead versus really long-dead carrion meals? Or quantum theory? Or the perfect substance for lining your burrow..

But we will continue to make guesses anyway about what they think, because it’s fun, and silly, and reminds us of something we actually do know, that they have their own reasons and goals and needs and fears, just like we do.

So enjoy the stories and goofiness and pictures, and think of your own questions, and begin your very own investigations.

Investigating the Mysteries

We all love mysteries, after all, look at the popularity of Sherlock Holmes and CSI! One cool thing about mysteries is that they demand investigation. And here’s a secret: investigating is what scientists do for a living. They find mysteries, then carefully go about observing and counting and measuring (doing formal research) and sharing the results of their investigations, so they add to our knowledge of the world.

There are many similarities, but a few main differences between what all of us do casually and what scientists do for a living:

1. Once they find an interesting mystery, scientists make sure it actually is a mystery! Just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean nobody knows. So they look up the work of other scientists in the literature, the group of peer-reviewed journals where scientists double-check each other’s work, to see if anyone else has already done the research and written it up. Or made any mistakes! And if someone has made a mistake, that’s when researchers get really busy, trying to sort out the facts.

2. Then, when they know they have a good solid mystery and begin investigating, for example, by doing natural history observation, scientists make exact notes of what they saw or heard, and when, so they can compare experiences. We usually don’t do that in everyday life, because it does not matter so much if our memories get smudged together about what we saw, or when or where, or what someone told us.

3. A third thing scientists do different is controlled experiments, for example, putting up two feeders with different food, and writing down which kind of animal visits, what time, and how often. We do this informally when we are deciding which food to buy for a birdfeeder.

It’s a matter of procedures and details, but the basic process is the same—find something interesting, and start investigating. And even though you’re probably not a biological CSI at this point, maybe someday you’ll decide you’d like to do formal science, and you can use your experience now as a basis for that. In fact, a lot of working scientists were once little kids watching animals, or adults crawling around looking at rocks, or people of any age wondering about the stars.

There’s even an interesting new effort in community research, where scientists and citizen-scientists gather data and post it to a central location, so it is available for more detailed study. You can check it out by looking up the term citizen science on the web. One active example of this is Project Budburst, http://budburst.org where