I first saw an ad for this book on the BBC website, next to one of their feature articles on Mother Nature. A great cover and a great title, for sure (notice the cigarette). Further info was hard to come by, though. Hardly any decent reviews, just the same old promotional talk taken straight from the publishing house. I mulled over it for a while, then decided to order it, as a hit or miss buy. Good news: It’s a winner! On my bookshelf, you will find very few books on animals. Animal farm (Orwell, great) and Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Bach, dreadful), that’s about it. When I was a kid, I was well into my ‘creatures of the deep’ books. I had tons. For my favourites, you got the pictures separately by collecting points from cereal and soap boxes. I could spend hours studying food pyramids and habitats, learning Latin names by heart. By the time I was twelve, though, I couldn’t be bothered any longer. In short, I’m not much of an animal lover.
My motivation in buying this book was not so much with animals as with their dark side. And the animal kingdom is not lacking in antisocial behaviour. You will learn that, given the choice between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic drink, one vervet monkey in twenty will become an instant binge drinker. Most are moderate drinkers, whereas one in seven abstains completely (or could these just be recovering alky apes?). The female house sparrow pays a visit to her partner's girlfriends, only to kill the young in their nests. No alimony for you, bitch! Providing ‘ant colony’ with a whole new meaning, some of these little fellas will invade the nest of a rival species, kidnap their eggs, then raise these young to do all the dirty work. Next time you need an excuse for transgressing, just consult this little gem. Chances are, you will be able to retort ‘It’s just nature’s way, judge. After all, the moustached tamarind does it all the time!’
The naughty stories are nice, but there is more. There are some cool animal superpowers (bees tracking bombs by scent, flying snakes) or fascinating facts on evolution (ants evolved from wasps). You have the property market of hermit crabs, where finding an abandoned shell will cause an entire group to swap houses. And one of my favourites: Fire ants facing a flood will cling together, creating a living raft to reach safer ground.
But how do you know all of this is not just meaningless drivel and urban legend, in the vein of Karl Pilkington’s monkey news? Well, Matt Walker has a degree in zoology and he quotes all of his sources in the back. Most seem solid enough (Journal of Experimental Biology etc), very few if any mentioning ‘Me mate’s sister went to the Indian Jungle and saw it with her own eyes’.
So, anydownsides? Well, I admit, I’ve been cherry picking a bit for the selection above. Not all facts are as interesting. You could live without the knowledge that most primates prefer to cradle their babies in their left rather than their right arm. Plus, the lack of narrative makes it hard to read for hours on end. For a tube ride or a visit to the smallest room, however, this is the perfect companion. And you may want to remember a few of these fun facts. Next time conversation stalls at a baby shower, you just mention “Did you know that the nine-banded armadillo gives birth to her young up to three years after insemination? Really, it does. It just waits for the right environmental conditions for raising her young to arise, then implants the fertilized egg.” Or, better still, just start humming this little tune
Bye! More soon.
P.S. Allright, if you insist, I‘ll spill the beans: The female brown trout is known to fake orgasms. She uses her superior acting skills to fool the less attractive males with whom she mates. Once she has convinced the ugly sod that he will be a father, he swims off to brag to his friends. The female then goes in search of a more attractive male with whom to get real. (Sometimes the female will not succeed in finding a better mate. She will then become old and bitter. If one of these ends up on your plate, you’re bound to taste it. Still, you should always pretend to find her really, really tasty).
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