Platypus: The Extraordinary Story
of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World.
Ann Moyal. 2001. Smithsonian Institution
Press, Washington, D.C. 226 pp.
If
the platypus first came to light today, people would undoubtedly
suspect it of being a creation of genetic engineering. Seemingly
assembled from a jumble of ill-assorted pieces, the singular
platypus resembles no other species; rather, it resembles
many. Like a creature collage—the ones kids put together
when they mix and match cardboard body parts—it has a
beak and webbed feet like a duck; its furry body is otter-like;
its tail like a beaver’s. Its mode of reproduction defies
credulity: Young hatch from eggs then suckle milk from nipple-less
mammary glands!
Without recourse to the bogeyman of genetic engineering, the scientists who first encountered the poorly preserved platypus specimen that reached Britain from Australia in 1799 suspected a hoax. That it turned out not to be a “colonial prank” was almost worse. The animal fit into none of the categories or classification schemes that Western scientists and philosophers knew. It challenged the then-dominant view of a fixed, well-ordered God-given world of creation, and helped stir the bubbling pot of new ideas about evolution. And it vexed more than a century’s worth of the West’s best biological minds.
In Platypus: The Extraordinary Story of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World, Australian historian of science Ann Moyal uses the mystifying platypus to illuminate the history of biological thinking, focusing especially on the tumultuous years between the publication of Linnaeas’s Systema Naturae and Darwin’s Origin of Species. Moyal writes easily and well about these weighty issues, all the while telling delightful tales of biological exploration Down Under. This slim volume will please anyone who enjoys tales of wildlife spiced with a dash of history and philosophy.
Animal: The Definitive Visual
Guide to the World’s Wildlife.
David Burnie and Don E. Wilson, Editors-in-Chief.
2001. DK Publishing, Inc., New York. 624 pp.
This
beautiful, profusely illustrated reference book, produced
in association with the Smithsonian Institution (co-editor
Don E. Wilson is a mammalogist at the Smithsonian’s Museum
of Natural History), is a tremendous resource for anyone who
needs a one-volume reference to the world of wildlife. Students
at all levels, armchair biologists, zoo animal aficionados,
and wildlife scientists will turn to it for authoritative
information on the biology, ecology, behavior, and conservation
of animals from elephants to ants. But it’s also a book
that rewards browsing, not only to gasp at the stunning photos
but to explore the splendid diversity of the animal kingdom.
The 3,000 color photographs are supplemented with color illustrations,
and species accounts include thumbnail distribution maps.
There’s plenty of text, too, but most of it comes in
bite-size morsels—as captions and in boxed short features—so
you can dip in and out.
Some might quibble with the proportionate coverage of the various groups of animals, which reflects their popularity rather than their species numbers. For instance, the world’s approximately 4,000 species of mammals get 174 pages while the millions of invertebrates get 74. But for most readers this enhances rather than detracts from the book’s charm. Adding still more value is the included CD-ROM Encyclopedia of Nature, which covers all of the natural world.
Animal is highly recommended and, with its wide appeal, would make a great gift to an entire family.
A Gap in Nature: Discovering the
World’s Extinct Animals.
Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten. 2001.
Atlantic Monthly Press, New York. 184 pp.
An
encyclopedic book of extinct animals, or even one covering
just those whose extinctions humans hastened, would demand
many more than the 184 pages of A Gap in Nature. Since
we emerged from out of Africa more than 50,000 years ago,
thousands of species have gone extinct, and those are just
the big ones we know about, like mammoths and sabertoothed
cats. A Gap in Nature, however, is all the more poignant
for covering just 103 carefully selected species. They are
mammals, birds, or reptiles that went extinct between A.D.
1500 and 1999 about which enough material—descriptions,
drawings, museum specimens, and the like—existed for
artist Peter Schouten to illustrate them accurately. I learned
in the introduction that the original illustrations are even
accurately life-sized, including that of the Steller’s
sea cow, which at more than 26 feet long was the biggest animal
after the whales to survive beyond 1500. It was extinct by
1768, lost to over-hunting just 27 years after Western explorers
first sighted it in the Bering Sea.
The species appear in chronological order, according to the date of their demise, and each illustration is accompanied by text describing what is known, and what is not, about the animal and its end. The book begins with New Zealand’s upland moa—which disappeared about 1500—and ends with the Atitlan grebe, lost in Guatemala in 1989. Along the way, you witness the passing of familiar North American species like passenger pigeons (1914) and Carolina parakeets (1918), and lesser known ones like South Africa’s bluebuck (1800) and New Caledonia’s terror skink (1876). There are some species whose names trip happily off the tongue: Delalande’s coucal (1834), white-footed rabbit-rat (1845), Bogota sunangel (1909), Ilin Island cloudrunner (1953). It’s sad to have this reason to say them.
This is a lovely, moving book. Anyone who cares about the fates of creatures great and small will treasure it.
Africa.
Art Wolfe. 2001. Wildlands Press,
Seattle. 240 pp., hardbound. $75.
“Africa
is earthy and alive like nowhere else on Earth.” Anyone
who’s been to Africa will appreciate these words from
photographer Art Wolfe. Anyone who hasn’t will understand
them after absorbing the breathtaking pictures that Wolfe
has taken in more than 25 trips to this most theatrical of
continents. The cover image itself makes the dark clouds of
a gathering storm characters in a unfolding drama, as full
of life as the zebras and wildbeest that graze beneath them.
The 252 photographs span the continent’s habitats: savanna, rainforest, wetland, woodland, and desert. Images of landscapes, wild animals, and indigenous people are included for each habitat. An evocative introduction by writer Michele Gilders opens each section and puts the images in context.
Wolfe is best known for his wildlife photography, and the images in Africa show why. They are spectacular. But in this book he reveals himself as a gifted photographer of people and place. Panoramic shots of dazzling sunsets are mixed with close-ups of the dry, cracked soles of a San person’s feet. The understated juxtaposition of corresponding images of people and wildlife, particularly of mothers and babies, speaks volumes about our kinship with the natural world.
Give Africa to someone who needs to hear the message.
—Susan Lumpkin
ZooGoer 30(6) 2001. Copyright 2001 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.
