What Do You Do When Something Wants to Eat You?

What would you do if something wanted to eat you?

Walk on water? Stick out your tongue? Play dead? Animals in the wild use all kinds of methods to protect themselves from their enemies.

The book observes how an octopus squirts a cloud of black ink to confuse its attacker, while a flying fish leaps from the water to glide on winglike fins. A clown fish hides safely inside the poisonous tentacles of a sea anemone where pursuers are stung.

Jenkins captures creatures relying on bodily defenses, showing how a puffer fish swells like a prickly balloon and a pangolin rolls into an armor-plated ball. Other species turn to camouflage, including the Javanese leaf insect that conceals itself as foliage.

Using dynamic and intricate cut-paper collages, Steve Jenkins explores the many fascinating and unique defense mechanisms creatures use to escape from danger.

• Animal Adaptations: The bombardier beetle fends off predators by shooting a mixture of hot chemicals from its rear end up to five hundred times in a single second.
• Unusual Animals: In Asian treetops, the gliding frog leaps into the air and uses its large webbed feet to glide as far as fifty feet to safety.
• Survival Techniques: When grabbed by the tail, the legless glass snake escapes by letting its tail break into wriggling pieces.
• Mimicry: A harmless hover fly protects its stingless body from predators by copying the look of a wasp.
• Also by This Author: Actual Size, What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? and The Animal Book.