Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife
February 19, 2018
Zoologist and documentarian Cooke (A Little Book of Sloth) reveals hidden truths and little-known facts about a “menagerie of the misunderstood” in this peculiar and intriguing volume. She sheds significant light on beavers, for instance, whose unique physical attributes help them to thrive. Their “ever-growing, self-sharpening teeth, eyelids that act as swimming goggles, ears and nostrils that shut automatically underwater” allow them to gnaw wood below the surface without drowning. Cooke, founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society, pays particular attention to sloths, “one of natural selection’s quirkiest creations, and fabulously successful to boot.” Often and historically maligned for their lack of speed, sloths have nonetheless survived “in one shape or another for around sixty-four million years” and have outlived both the saber-toothed tiger and the woolly mammoth. Other sections deal with hyenas, frogs, storks, and hippopotamuses. Especially enlightening chapters on pandas (who eat exclusively bamboo) and penguins (whose “stiff feet, so ill at ease on land, act as a rudder underwater”) round out the narrative. Readers keen on animals and natural history in general should find Cooke’s discussion fascinating and educational.
March 1, 2018
As founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society, British author and wildlife documentarian Cooke (A Little Bit of Sloth) has a particular affinity for the world's most misunderstood and maligned creatures--hyenas, turkey vultures, bats, and the like. Here, the author demystifies layers of myth and legend surrounding 13 animals, tracing the source of negative and erroneous views about them to the Bible, medieval bestiaries, and ill-informed naturalists, both ancient and modern. Whether she's ingesting castoreum (beaver anal glands) to see if it can cure a headache or hand gliding on thermal updrafts to experience vulture aerodynamics, Cooke is game to try almost anything to get to the bottom of absurd animal myths. She even sets the record straight about some of our favorite animals: penguins and pandas. Each essay in this collection brims with the author's sense of wonder at the quirky but successful ways evolution has equipped certain species to survive. VERDICT In word and deed, Cooke is a one-woman animal appreciation society. Her wit, humor, and infectious curiosity about this "menagerie of the misunderstood" will appeal to natural history enthusiasts of all stripes.--Cynthia Lee Knight, Hunterdon Cty. Historical Soc., Flemington, NJ
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 1, 2018
Charming forays into the world of natural history and the ways of animal behavior."Much of zoology is little more than educated guesswork," writes Cooke (A Little Bit of Sloth, 2013), a London-based filmmaker and former student of biologist Richard Dawkins. Thus, even in the recent past, well-meaning people could aver that eels spontaneously generate out of mud and hyenas change sexes at will, and we imagine today that animals lack consciousness or emotion. All of this, writes the author, traces back to our "habit of viewing the animal kingdom through our own, rather narrow, existence." Is the sloth lazy? Through that narrow lens, yes, but the sloth moves at a speed that evolution has suggested is most appropriate to it. Does the beaver gnaw off its testicles and hurl them at would-be attackers, stunning them so that it can escape? We laugh at the thought; however, as Cooke's lighthearted but scientifically rigorous exploration reveals, there is a biological basis for the myth, and it is instructive as to the nature of the "cognitive toolbox" the beaver employs. The cognitive and biological toolboxes of the animal kingdom are overstuffed and full of surprises--e.g., one reason we find vultures to be unpleasant is that they practice urohidrosis, "a scientific euphemism for crapping on your legs to keep cool." That's the kind of behavior that can get a bird a dodgy reputation, but the resulting ammoniac tang bespeaks a solution to a problem that definitely needed one. Along the way, Cooke touches on theories about bird migration (Aristotle conjectured that some species might transmute into others and thus disappear seasonally), the habit of some animals of dipping into fermented fruit for a little recreation, and our misguided efforts at species-driven animal conservation rather than the preservation of whole habitats.A pleasure for the budding naturalist in the family--or fans of Gerald Durrell and other animals.
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