Their name and appearance may send chills down your spine, but thorny devils are far from fearsome! Their dangerous looks are one of the many adaptations highlighted on the pages of this beginning reader. Adding even more interest and fun are features showing off the reptile’s home range, diet, and more!

Ever heard of a lizard with a fake head? This book will delight young readers as they learn what makes the thorny devil one of the world's weirdest animals. Basic information is covered, such as predators, prey, habitat, life cycle, senses, and conservation status. Table of contents, map, diagram, fun facts, facts page, glossary, and index included. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Big Buddy Books is an imprint of ABDO Publishing.

There’s a good reason why the thorny devil has a “false head” on its shoulders. It’s an adaptation that developed to help protect the thorny devil when the reptile feels threatened. Most adaptations have a good explanation—but that doesn’t make some of them any less odd! From snakes shedding their skin a few times a year to the almost unbreakable shells of reptile eggs, reptile adaptations are made even more fascinating in this book through full-color, up-close photographs. In addition to cool adaptations, readers learn science curriculum topics such as the main features of reptiles, evolution, and life cycles.

This title covers basic information about thorny devils, one of Australia's mightiest little reptiles! Information in this title covers a thorny devil's habitat, diet, habits, and more. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Abdo Kids Jumbo is an imprint of Abdo Kids, a division of ABDO.

Publisher Description

This book provides an overview of the diversity of lizards and their major adaptive features. The authors discuss the latest research findings and provide new hypotheses about lizard diversity.

Find out what a leatherback sea turtle has in common with a pig-nosed turtle. Learn what sets a leatherback sea turtle apart from a Gila monster. Readers will compare and contrast key traits of leatherback sea turtles—their appearance, behavior, habitat, and life cycle—to similar and different reptiles. Charts and sidebars support key ideas and provide details. Through gathering information about similarities and differences, readers will make connections and draw conclusions about what makes this animal a reptile and how reptiles are alike and different from each other.

Australian Deserts: Ecology and Landscapes is about the vast sweep of the Outback, a land of expanses making up three-quarters of the continent – the heart of Australia. Steve Morton brings his extensive first-hand knowledge and experience of arid Australia to this book, explaining how Australian deserts work ecologically. This book outlines why unpredictable rainfall and paucity of soil nutrients underpin the nature of desert ecosystems, while also describing how plants and animals came to be desert dwellers through evolutionary time. It shows how plants use uncertain rainfall to provide for persistence of their populations, alongside outlines of the dominant animals of the deserts and explanations of the features that help them succeed in the face of aridity and uncertainty. Richly illustrated with the photographs of Mike Gillam, this fascinating and accessible book will enhance your understanding of the nature of arid Australia.

With its enticing and colourful design and its fascinating information, this is a book that children will want to pour over-either at home, in the classroom or on a road trip. This book brings together 55 national parks, selected across all Australian states and territories, and over 120 animals. It is divided into seven sections according to habitat (woodlands and grasslands; forests; rainforests; arid zones; mountains; wetlands and waterways; coasts, oceans and islands), each including a number of national parks and a selection of the fish, reptiles, frogs, birds and mammals that inhabit them. At the end of the book is a section on 'little critters'-beetles, spiders, butterflies, grasshoppers, bugs and so on. Each habitat section opens with photographs of the featured national parks and a description of the habitat. Each animal has its own page, which has a stunning colour photograph of the species, a map of its distribution range, its conservation status and scientific information about the species. The information is divided into the following sections: 'Fast Facts' gives you all the vital statistics, such as size, lifespan and number of young; 'Where Does It Live?' tells you where in Australia you can find the species and provides details about its home; 'What's Its Life Like?' tells you a bit about how the animal moves, behaves, eats and has young; and 'Interesting Info' has quirky and fascinating facts. This book features a foreword by the Governor-General of Australia, Sir Peter Cosgrove.