Fur, feathers and scales are all animal coverings or skins. Animals use their skin to stay warm and dry, protect themselves or hide or even to warn other animals to stay away. Following Animal Noses, Animal Tails, Animal Ears, Animal Eyes, Animal Mouths (NSTA/CBC Outstanding Trade Science Award), and Animal Legs, Mary Holland continues her photographic Animal Anatomy and Adaptations series by the many different ways that animals use and rely on their skin covering adaptations to survive in their habitats.

Sarah Kay s interests in this book are, first, to examine how medieval bestiaries depict and challenge the boundary between humans and other animals; and second, to register the effects on readers of bestiaries by the simple fact that parchment, the writing support of virtually all medieval texts, is a refined form of animal skin. Surveying the most important works created from the ninth through the thirteenth centuries, Kay connects nature to behavior to Christian doctrine or moral teaching across a range of texts. As Kay shows, medieval thought (like today) was fraught with competing theories about human exceptionalism within creation. Given that medieval bestiaries involve the inscription of texts about and images of animals onto animal hides, these texts, she argues, invite readers to reflect on the inherent fragility of bodies, both human and animal, and the difficulty of distinguishing between skin as a site of mere inscription and skin as a containing envelope for sentient life. It has been more than fifty years since the last major consideration of medieval Latin and French bestiaries was published. Kay brings us up to date in the archive, and contributes to current discussions among animal studies theorists, manuscript studies scholars, historians of the book, and medievalists of many stripes."

What did the 13th Earl of Derby, his twenty-two-year-old niece, Manchester’s Belle Vue Zoo, and even some ordinary laborers all have in common? All were avid collectors and exhibitors of exotic, and frequently unruly, specimens. In her study of Britain’s craze for natural history collecting, Ann C. Colley makes extensive use of archival materials to examine the challenges, preoccupations, and disordered circumstances that attended the amassing of specimens from faraway places only vaguely known to the British public. As scientific institutions sent collectors to bring back exotic animals and birds for study and classification by anatomists and zoologist, it soon became apparent that collecting skins rather than live animals or birds was a relatively more manageable endeavor. Colley looks at the collecting, exhibiting, and portraying of animal skins to show their importance as trophies of empire and representations of identity. While a zoo might display skins to promote and glorify Britain’s colonial achievements, Colley suggests that the reality of collecting was characterized more by chaos than imperial order. For example, Edward Lear’s commissioned illustrations of the Earl of Derby’s extensive collection challenge the colonial’s or collector’s commanding gaze, while the Victorian public demonstrated a yearning to connect with their own wildness by touching the skins of animals. Colley concludes with a discussion of the metaphorical uses of wild skins by Gerard Manley Hopkins and other writers, exploring the idea of skin as a locus of memory and touch where one’s past can be traced in the same way that nineteenth-century mapmakers charted a landscape. Throughout the book Colley calls upon recent theories about the nature and function of skin and touch to structure her discussion of the Victorian fascination with wild animal skins.

Introduces the tools, equipment, and techniques used in tanning hides and tells how to make useful objects out of leather.

Hairless Animals looks at those animals without hair. This title shows examples of dogs, cats, pigs, dolphins, and more. It also discusses what they feel like to touch and why some animals don't even need hair. With very easy text and colorful images showing a variety of different animals, young readers will gain a better understanding of our bald friends. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Abdo Kids is a division of ABDO.

An introduction to the various kinds of skin and skin coverings that animals have.