Rumors of Existence / Matthew A. Bille

 

3 out of 5 stars 

Book 15 of the 2024 Read Your Hoard Challenge

I have utterly forgotten where I bought this slim volume of cautious cryptozoology. It is nearly 30 years old at this point (1995) so some of the mysterious creatures referenced have been figured out (the Giant and Colossal Squids, for example).

The author takes pains to remind us how little is known about life in the ocean, especially the deep abyss. It is difficult and dangerous to access, so little time gets spent there. Additionally, the vast volume means that animals can be spread out widely. Scientists definitely have new discoveries awaiting them in the deep. Both the coelocanth and crinoids (sea lilies) were presumed extinct until living specimens were dredged up.

The large mammals that are discovered certainly dominate press coverage of such matters. Fewer people care about new species of bats, shrews, mice, or invertebrates. Birds get more attention because of enthusiastic birders who truly want to see each new one.

Bille tries very hard not to get into the weeds of lake monsters or giant apes. It's a difficult needle to thread, as that's what the general public thinks of when cryptozoology is broached. I know I have read his second book, although I don't own it. If I remember correctly, it addresses some of the more questionable critters. I would be very interested in an updated version, but I shan't hold my breath waiting for one.

The Fossil Hunter / Shelley Emling

3.5 stars out of 5

Mary Anning was only twelve years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton--of an ichthyosaur--while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Until Mary's incredible discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct. The child of a poor family, Mary became a fossil hunter, inspiring the tongue-twister, "She Sells Sea Shells by the Seashore." She attracted the attention of fossil collectors and eventually the scientific world. Once news of the fossils reached the halls of academia, it became impossible to ignore the truth. Mary's peculiar finds helped lay the groundwork for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, laid out in his On the Origin of Species. Darwin drew on Mary's fossilized creatures as irrefutable evidence that life in the past was nothing like life in the present.

Give this about a 3.5 star rating for my general reading experience. I knew the basic outlines of Mary Anning’s story—a woman with a talent for finding marine reptile fossils, held back by her social status, her lack of access to education, and her gender. In a world which favoured wealthy men with leisure time, she was at a tremendous disadvantage and achieved a great deal despite that.

This book filled in the gaps in my knowledge of the woman and made me admire her fortitude all the more. The author is a journalist, so it is written in a rather journalistic style—not surprising. There is some speculation, trying to guess what may have been going on in Ms. Anning’s mind, but nothing that is too unreasonable. Since the author seems to have done her research on the time period, she makes safe assumptions.

I found it interesting that on pages 209-210, more current research was referenced:

”And new species of plesiosaurs—a most diverse group of aquatic carnivores—are being discovered to this day. One of the oldest and most complete skeletons of a prehistoric aquatic reptile has been uncovered in North America, representing an entirely new group of plesiosaurs. This 8.5 foot specimen, known as Nichollsia borealis, is one of the most complete and best-preserved North American plesiosaurs from the Cretaceous Period.”

It is too bad that the author didn’t mention that this creature is named after Elizabeth (Betsy) Nicholls, who was a paleontologist specializing in Triassic marine reptiles at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada. Betsy worked on a back-breaking dig in northern British, excavating Shonisaurus sikanniensis, a Triassic marine reptile and she probably would have identified with Mary Anning’s perilous labours. Nicholls at least got the recognition for her work, receiving awards and having marine reptiles named in her honour. Sadly, both Anning and Nicholls died young of breast cancer, another thing they have in common.

Nichollsaura borealis  (source: Wikipedia)

Resurrecting the Shark / Susan Ewing

4 out of 5 stars

In 1993, Alaskan artist and paleo-shark enthusiast Ray Troll stumbled upon the weirdest fossil he had ever seen—a platter-sized spiral of tightly wound shark teeth. This chance encounter in the basement of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County sparked Troll’s obsession with Helicoprion, a mysterious monster from deep time.

In 2010, tattooed undergraduate student and returning Iraq War veteran Jesse Pruitt became seriously smitten with a Helicoprion fossil in a museum basement in Idaho. These two bizarre-shark disciples found each other, and an unconventional band of collaborators grew serendipitously around them, determined to solve the puzzle of the mysterious tooth whorl once and for all.

Helicoprion was a Paleozoic chondrichthyan about the size of a modern great white shark, with a circular saw of teeth centered in its lower jaw—a feature unseen in the shark world before or since. For some ten million years, long before the Age of Dinosaurs, Helicoprion patrolled the shallow seas around the supercontinent Pangaea as the apex predator of its time.

Just a few tumultuous years after Pruitt and Troll met, imagination, passion, scientific process, and state-of-the-art technology merged into an unstoppable force that reanimated the remarkable creature—and made important new discoveries.

I don’t remember exactly which year it was that I was kind of accidentally introduced to the artwork of Ray Troll. I work on a university campus and occasionally there will be an event which catches my attention that I’ll attend after work. I’m also a paleontology enthusiast, so when I saw a session about fossil fish and I had no other responsibilities for the day, I went. Little did I know, that I was going to become a fan of fin art! Mr. Troll was giving a presentation on his artwork which featured fossil fishes and I was hooked, so to speak. Ray Troll also ends up being a central character in this history of the understanding of the whorl-toothed shark, Helicoprion. The fossil whorl captivated him and he spent years talking with paleontologists about Paleozoic sharks, trying to accurately illustrate the animal. Because of when he started his quest, he knew the old guard (now deceased) and was able to dispense some of their wisdom to younger researchers (and point them toward appropriate papers). In fact, he seems to have become the fairy godfather of the Helicoprion project, facilitating contact between professionals which might never otherwise have happened. I would have to say that popular works on paleo-fish research are few and far between and Susan Ewing has written a very enjoyable contribution to the field. She manages to cover all the factual data and still have a sense of humour, as when she describes one researcher using CT scans to “squeeze out every last ounce of sharky goodness.” I would also encourage you to check out Troll’s webpage and art: http://www.trollart.com/trollart_topl... Thank goodness for people like him, who have the passion to pursue these fascinating research projects, being cheerleaders and facilitators.

What a Fish Knows / Jonathan Balcombe

4 out of 5 stars

Do fishes think? Do they really have three-second memories? And can they recognize the humans who peer back at them from above the surface of the water? In What a Fish Knows, the myth-busting ethologist Jonathan Balcombe addresses these questions and more, taking us under the sea, through streams and estuaries, and to the other side of the aquarium glass to reveal the surprising capabilities of fishes. Although there are more than thirty thousand species of fish—more than all mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined—we rarely consider how individual fishes think, feel, and behave. Balcombe upends our assumptions about fishes, portraying them not as unfeeling, dead-eyed feeding machines but as sentient, aware, social, and even Machiavellian—in other words, much like us.

What a Fish Knows draws on the latest science to present a fresh look at these remarkable creatures in all their breathtaking diversity and beauty. Fishes conduct elaborate courtship rituals and develop lifelong bonds with shoalmates. They also plan, hunt cooperatively, use tools, curry favor, deceive one another, and punish wrongdoers. We may imagine that fishes lead simple, fleeting lives—a mode of existence that boils down to a place on the food chain, rote spawning, and lots of aimless swimming. But, as Balcombe demonstrates, the truth is far richer and more complex, worthy of the grandest social novel.

Highlighting breakthrough discoveries from fish enthusiasts and scientists around the world and pondering his own encounters with fishes, Balcombe examines the fascinating means by which fishes gain knowledge of the places they inhabit, from shallow tide pools to the deepest reaches of the ocean.

Fish get short shrift when we are thinking about animal behaviour. Consider the poor maligned gold fish, which is reputed to have an attention span of mere seconds. Incorrect, as it turns out—gold fish can learn tasks and retain that learning for months.

I’m not a diver. I can’t swim and water will always be a scary place for me, but I can see where this book would be very interesting to anyone who spends time in the underwater world. Fish are much more interesting that I gave them credit for. I’m a birder, after all, and so I’m a little biased (although I certainly know that the term “bird brain” is actually more of a compliment than an insult).

It’s difficult for us to imagine what a fish’s life is like—they live in a completely different medium than we do, have extra senses that we can’t fathom, and have unexpressive faces. I think that last point is the one that leads us to underestimate fishes—we value expressiveness over evidence, I think, because it’s something we’re good at.

If you are interested in matters of animal intelligence (and human judginess) I would recommend Franz de Waal’s excellent book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?.

Among Penguins / Noah Strycker

4 out of 5 stars

The year he graduated from college, 22-year-old Noah Strycker was dropped by helicopter in a remote Antarctic field camp with two bird scientists and a three months’ supply of frozen food. His subjects: more than a quarter million penguins.

Compact, industrious, and approachable, the Adélie Penguins who call Antarctica home visit their breeding grounds each Antarctic summer to nest and rear their young before returning to sea. Because of long-term studies, scientists may know more about how these penguins will adjust to climate change than about any other creature in the world.

Bird scientists like Noah are less well known. Like the intrepid early explorers of Antarctica, modern scientists drawn to the frozen continent face an utterly inhospitable landscape, one that inspires, isolates, and punishes.

If you have enjoyed Ron Naveen’s Waiting to Fly or Gavin Francis’ Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence, and Emperor Penguins, you will likely also enjoy this book. In many ways, Among Penguins is like an update of Naveen’s work, documenting just how far research in Antarctica has come in 20 years. I also found the book somewhat reminiscent of Kenn Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder. Like Kaufman, Strycker is a young man obsessed with birds. Unlike Kaufman, he chooses to find research positions to facilitate his quest for a larger, more exotic life list (a list of all the species of birds that one has seen during one’s life, for those who are not members of the birding cult). Although Strycker isn’t sleeping in ditches or hitch-hiking his way to his next birding destination, he does still endure some hardships during his Antarctic sojourn—his tent is destroyed in hurricane force winds, his boots (when outfitted with crampons) wound his ankles, he is unable to shower for 3 months. Nevertheless, he seems a cheerful and willing researcher, completely under the spell of the penguin. There is a fair bit of interesting penguin info in this slim volume and some insights into the research process, but there is also an awful lot about Noah Stryker! If you are looking for penguin facts and statistics, this may not be the best reference for you. However, if you are interested in the lives of researchers in far flung parts of the planet, it will scratch that itch. Stryker’s tale also convinces me that biological field work is not for me! In my life, roughing it is a cheap motel and my knees long ago betrayed me, making me far too unstable on my feet for the type of terrain that he takes in stride. However, I can admire and enjoy his hard work and tenacity. On the main point, I agree fully with the author: there is absolutely nothing like watching a wild penguin go about its business! I have spent many happy hours doing just that and hope to still clock a few more before I’m physically forced to give up such pursuits.

The Secret Life of Germs / Philip Tierno

3 out of 5 stars

They're on everything we touch, eat, and breathe in -- on every inch of skin. And despite the advances of science, germs are challenging medicine in ways that were unimaginable ten years ago. No wonder the world is up in arms -- and using antibacterial soaps.
From the common cold, E. coli, and Lyme disease to encephalitis, mad cow disease, and flesh-eating bacteria, Tierno takes readers on a historical survey of the microscopic world. Rebuffing scare tactics behind recent "germ events" Tierno explains how the recycling of matter is the key to life. Yes, he'll tell you why it's a good idea to clean children's toys, why those fluffy towels may not be so clean, and why you never want to buy a second-hand mattress, but he also reveals that there is a lot we can do to prevent germ-induced suffering. You'll never look at anything the same way again.


I chose to read The Secret Life of Germs because I have often heard the author on CBC radio, brought in as an expert on microbial issues. It was published back in 2001, so some of the information it contains is out-of-date, though it was cutting edge at the time.

There is still plenty of good info in this volume. If nothing else, the author’s attention to prevention of disease was an excellent reminder as the cold & flu season approaches. I’m washing my hands more often and for longer than I had been—its so easy to get lazy about this! And handwashing goes so far towards keeping us healthy.

If I have any quibbles, it is with referring to all microbes as “germs.” To me, a germ is a disease causing agent, not a benign or helpful microbe. But I am sure that this title caught a bit more attention through using “germs” in the title than it might otherwise have garnered.

If you are interested in microbiology, may I recommend I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, which offers more recent information, also in an easy to read format.

Survivors / Richard Fortey

4 out of 5 stars

Evolution does not simply obliterate its tracks as more advanced organisms evolve. Scattered across the globe, organisms and ecosystems that survive from far earlier times can speak to us of seminal events in the history of life. It is these animals and plants that Richard Fortey visits in the field, taking the reader on a voyage to the exotic, and sometimes everyday, places in which they live. Landscapes are evoked, boulders are turned over, seas are paddled as he explains the importance of understanding plants and animals as pivotal points in evolutionary history itself. Survivors: The Animals and Plants that Time Has left Behind is a journey across the globe and across time that weaves a rich and brilliantly delineated tapestry of how life and our planet have evolved together.

 I love Richard Fortey’s science writing. Two of his books are among my absolute favourites (Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth and Dry Storeroom No. 1). Perhaps because there’s an awful lot of stuff happening in my life right now, I didn’t get into this book in quite the same way as those two.

Still, it’s an extremely enjoyable book if you are a fan of paleontology and natural history. I’ve been fascinated by the idea of a “living fossil” and Fortey explores it thoroughly in this book (while explaining that the whole idea of a living fossil is a bit off-base—they may look the same, but many things will still have changed over the millennia). I am more than a little envious of Mr. Fortey, as I would dearly love to travel to see some of the creatures that he visited for this book. I mean, Horseshoe Crabs? Sign me up to go see them at spawning time! Wouldn’t you like to hold a Lungfish in Northern Australia? Or is it just me?

What I truly appreciate about Fortey’s writing is the enormous depth and breadth of knowledge of paleontology. Now, he does shine brightest when talking about invertebrates, as you would expect of a trilobite specialist, but he’s a dab hand at fish too and obviously an enthusiastic naturalist when it comes to plants and birds. I am amazed how much natural history knowledge resides in one person’s skull.

Add to that the charm of quoting poetry and literature in meaningful ways, making allusions to dance and art, and one has to admit that this is a well-rounded scholar.

Recommended for those who are fascinated with paleontology in all its glory.

The Genius of Birds / Jennifer Ackerman

4 out of 5 stars

Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. In fact, according to revolutionary new research, some birds rival primates and even humans in their remarkable forms of intelligence.  Like humans, many birds have enormous brains relative to their size. Although small, bird brains are packed with neurons that allow them to punch well above their weight.

In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds and how it came about. As she travels around the world to the most cutting-edge frontiers of research— the distant laboratories of Barbados and New Caledonia, the great tit communities of the United Kingdom and the bowerbird habitats of Australia, the ravaged mid-Atlantic coast after Hurricane Sandy and the warming mountains of central Virginia and the western states—Ackerman not only tells the story of the recently uncovered genius of birds but also delves deeply into the latest findings about the bird brain itself that are revolutionizing our view of what it means to be intelligent.

 The insult “bird brain” has always bothered me—how exactly is this insulting? I suppose if the only birds you are familiar with are domestic chickens and turkeys, you might think it’s appropriate, but if you’ve ever studied wild birds, you’ll know that it’s completely off the mark. Detailed observation of the domestic fowl might change your mind, too.

Think of the hummingbird—with a brain smaller than a pea, it manages to migrate long distances and maintain detailed mental maps of nectar sources in its territory, knowing when each flower will be refilled with sweet goodness and ready to be drained again! Or think about the Gray Jay, with its multitudinous stored foodstuffs, to be recovered before they have spoiled. Even the lowly pigeon can do amazing things—witness the homing pigeons, used successfully by people to communicate over great distances.

This book, while enjoyable, it not a scientific tome. Much of it consists of anecdotal evidence, which seems self-evident, but hasn’t necessarily been peer reviewed. If you are searching for a definite science textbook on bird intelligence, this book may leave you frustrated, but if you are a bird enthusiast you will enjoy gaining a new appreciation for our feathered neighbours.

One Wild Bird at a Time / Bernd Heinrich

3 out of 5 stars

In his modern classics One Man’s Owl and Mind of the Raven, Bernd Heinrich has written memorably about his relationships with wild ravens and a great horned owl.   In One Wild Bird at a Time, Heinrich returns to his great love: close, day-to-day observations of individual wild birds. There are countless books on bird behavior, but Heinrich argues that some of the most amazing bird behaviors fall below the radar of what most birds do in aggregate. Heinrich’s “passionate observations [that] superbly mix memoir and science” (New York Times Book Review) lead to fascinating questions — and sometimes startling discoveries. A great crested flycatcher, while bringing food to the young in their nest, is attacked by the other flycatcher nearby. Why? A pair of Northern flickers hammering their nest-hole into the side of Heinrich’s cabin deliver the opportunity to observe the feeding competition between siblings, and to make a related discovery about nest-cleaning. One of a clutch of redstart warbler babies fledges out of the nest from twenty feet above the ground, and lands on the grass below. It can’t fly. What will happen next?   Heinrich “looks closely, with his trademark ‘hands-and-knees science’ at its most engaging, [delivering] what can only be called psychological marvels of knowing” (Boston Globe).   An eminent biologist shares the joys of bird-watching and how observing the anomalous behaviors of individual birds has guided his research.

If you are a back yard bird watcher who keeps a nature journal, you might well take inspiration from Bernd Heinrich. He takes it a step further than most of us would, I suspect, because of his background as a biology professor. For instance, I don’t know how many people would be willing to thaw, count, and examine grouse scat in order to prove a theory!

The writing certainly reminded me that the author has an academic background. It is not as stiff as a professional paper, but neither is it as conversational as I would prefer for such a work. Having said that, it is inspirational in the level of observation and effort that Heinrich was willing to put into his record. A birder doesn’t have to travel to the far-flung places on the map in order to have a satisfactory birding life—looking deep into the world just outside the window has its rewards. His illustrations are admirable (much superior to anything in my field notebook) although certainly not up to field guide quality, encouraging to those of us who will never be professional artists.

I would imagine that this book would have a limited audience of those who are devoted birders or nature enthusiasts, but I think such people would find it a worthwhile read. Definitely an stimulus to me to spend more time in the outdoors and in the environments right around my own city and to take more time to watch each bird and its behaviour.

Candid Creatures / Roland W. Kays

4 out of 5 stars

In "Candid Creatures," the first major book to reveal the secret lives of animals through motion-sensitive game cameras, biologist Roland Kays has assembled over 600 remarkable photographs. Drawing from archives of millions of color and night-vision photographs collected by hundreds of researchers, Kays has selected images that show the unique perspectives of wildlife from throughout the world. Using these photos, he tells the stories of scientific discoveries that camera traps have enabled, such as living proof of species thought to have been extinct and details of predator-prey interactions.

Each image captures a moment frozen in the camera's flash as animals move through their wild habitats. Kays also discusses how scientists use camera traps to address conservation issues, creating solutions that allow humans and wild animals to coexist. More than just a collection of amazing animal pictures, the book's text, maps, and illustrations work together to describe the latest findings in the fast-moving field of wildlife research. "Candid Creatures" is a testament to how the explosion of game cameras around the world has revolutionized the study of animal ecology. The powerful combination of pictures and stories of discovery will fascinate anyone interested in science, nature, wildlife biology, or photography.
 
Have you ever bookmarked a webcam? Maybe one at an African watering hole or at a bird’s nest?  Have you found yourself obsessively checking back, to see what’s been happening, which animals are visiting or what the parent birds are feeding their chicks?

This book gives you another look into the secret lives of animals. Biologists are getting more & more creative about collecting data without invading animal lives overtly.  I’ve read in the past about setting bait with barbwire surrounds, meaning that the animals that claim the bait will leave behind hair on the barbs from which genetic info can be gleaned, but this is even less invasive—let a remote camera gather your data.

The only downside that I can see is that animals DO notice the cameras, with greater and lesser amounts of hostility. Chimps check them out, but generally leave them alone once they’re sure the camera isn’t harmful.  Elephants, on the other hand, seem to use the “Hulk smash” form of camera exploration.

I spent over 15 years in volunteer natural history education, often feeling like I had been studying for that position since I first began to read, and yet there were animals covered in this collection that I had never heard of. Plus interesting ways of using camera trap data to learn more about these elusive creatures’ lives.  However, the book begins with an animal we all feel familiar with: tigers.  (Because the world and the internet are all about teh kittehs.)  Field work with big predators can be difficult (they are elusive) and even dangerous (the big ones can kill humans), so remote cameras are a boon to the researcher.

Covering animals from Aardvarks to Vampire bats, in this book you get the “greatest hits” from camera traps from all over the world. I particularly appreciated a few illustrations from the Canadian Rocky Mountains, just west of my city.  U of Calgary’s Environmental Design department featured a display a number of years ago of photos from some of their trail cameras which were fascinating.  A group of hikers on a trail, followed seconds later by a cougar or a grizzly bear.

Nature lovers will be rewarded with interesting & up-to-date info, plus the great photos. Since I recommended that our public library purchase this book, I am very pleased that it is such an interesting volume.

Julie of the Wolves / Jean Craighead George

3.5 out of 5 stars

Miyax, like many adolescents, is torn. But unlike most, her choices may determine whether she lives or dies. At 13, an orphan, and unhappily married, Miyax runs away from her husband's parents' home, hoping to reach San Francisco and her pen pal. But she becomes lost in the vast Alaskan tundra, with no food, no shelter, and no idea which is the way to safety. Now, more than ever, she must look hard at who she really is. Is she Miyax, Eskimo girl of the old ways? Or is she Julie (her "gussak"-white people-name), the modernized teenager who must mock the traditional customs? And when a pack of wolves begins to accept her into their community, Miyax must learn to think like a wolf as well. If she trusts her Eskimo instincts, will she stand a chance of surviving?


***Wanda's Summer Carnival of Children's Literature***
Although I know that I read Julie of the Wolves when I was about 11 years old, I could not recall a single detail of it, just a general impression that it had been an enjoyable book. I think I got much more out of it reading it as an adult!

What I can truly appreciate now is the wonderful depiction of the natural world, the Arctic environment. The author spent some time in Alaska, doing biological research, and her knowledge of the area just shines through. Not just wolves, but lemmings, skuas, foxes, and a variety of other birds and animals populate these pages, strongly appealing to the naturalist in me.

As a child, I certainly did not understand the sadness about the changing way of life of the people of the Arctic. George was obviously sorry to see the Native people losing their traditional way of life and becoming initiated into regular North American culture. The ending is particularly heart wrenching, as Julie faces the fact that she must also join in settled life. I experienced similar feelings when visiting Bhutan—the young people were all excited about the internet and joining in world culture, but as a visitor, I saw that their culture risked losing so much of its uniqueness as a result. Yet who in their right mind would deny them the right to modernize? It’s a balancing act, to take the best of other cultures while retaining what is best of your own.

I think there are echoes in this book of the idea that Native peoples and their cultures would inevitably die out, something which so many are still struggling against. So many indigenous languages are quickly going extinct, being replaced by European languages. Hopefully, these communities will be able to hold the line against further erosion of their cultures and languages.

My Side of the Mountain / Jean Craighead George

3 out of 5 stars

Every kid thinks about running away at one point or another; few get farther than the end of the block. Young Sam Gribley gets to the end of the block and keeps going--all the way to the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. There he sets up house in a huge hollowed-out tree, with a falcon and a weasel for companions and his wits as his tool for survival. In a spellbinding, touching, funny account, Sam learns to live off the land, and grows up a little in the process. Blizzards, hunters, loneliness, and fear all battle to drive Sam back to city life. But his desire for freedom, independence, and adventure is stronger. No reader will be immune to the compulsion to go right out and start whittling fishhooks and befriending raccoons. 


 ***Wanda’s Summer Carnival of Children’s Literature***

This was one on my favourite novels as a youngster and it was a pleasure to revisit it. It is a completely unrealistic fantasy about a young boy who runs away to the ancestral land in the Catskills mountains and who proceeds to learn how to live off the land for a whole year.

First let’s point out the obviously unreasonable plot points—a young boy runs away from a large New York family and no one comes after him. Not until Christmas, several months into the adventure, does his father show up to see what he’s doing. Adults along the way help him to get there and keep his secret instead of turning him in. No matter how successful his venture, they should have been intent on returning him to his family and getting him back in school. Sam is very much a Gary Stu character. He is able to train a falcon by reading about it in a book, seems to be surrounded by careless hunters who helpfully “lose” deer that they have shot, and has more of a taste for cat tail roots and flower bulbs than most young men of my acquaintance.

Despite all of those fantasy elements (or maybe because of them) I really got into this book as a kid. I loved the idea of living in a tree, of having a falcon as a companion, learning to live with friendly racoons and weasels. I was a farm child, so I could at least experience the local wildlife (weasels, ground squirrels, hares) somewhat like Sam, and that was enough for me.

This book really spoke to my early love of nature. I don’t think I ever thought of it as a “how to” guide, I recognized the fantasy aspect. (And I think that most children do recognize the fantastic elements of things, whether adults give them credit for it or not).

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? / Frans de Waal

4 out of 5 stars

What separates your mind from an animal’s? Maybe you think it’s your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future—all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet’s preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have eroded, or even been disproven outright, by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Take the way octopuses use coconut shells as tools; elephants that classify humans by age, gender, and language; or Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame. Based on research involving crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, Frans de Waal explores both the scope and the depth of animal intelligence. He offers a firsthand account of how science has stood traditional behaviorism on its head by revealing how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long.

People often assume a cognitive ladder, from lower to higher forms, with our own intelligence at the top. But what if it is more like a bush, with cognition taking different forms that are often incomparable to ours? Would you presume yourself dumber than a squirrel because you’re less adept at recalling the locations of hundreds of buried acorns? Or would you judge your perception of your surroundings as more sophisticated than that of a echolocating bat? De Waal reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.


Instead of making humanity the measure of all things, we need to evaluate other species by what they are.

The field of animal cognition needs to take a lesson from the field of human education—the multiple intelligence model. Not every student will be good at every part of the curriculum, but it’s a rare person who isn’t talented at anything! Physical talent in sports or a love and understanding of nature count as kinds of intelligence, acknowledging that the academic subjects are not necessarily the be all and end all.

De Waal writes clearly and engagingly about the history of the study of animal intelligence, pointing out the many prejudices that humans bring to this endeavour. Human subjects are tested by a member of their own species and in surroundings that they are comfortable in. Animal subjects are being tested by a member of another species (whom they are not necessarily interested in) and in a captive setting that adds to the stress of the situation. Ask any university student about the stress of exams and they will tell you that it is not an ideal way to take tests.

He points out that these studies are hampered by the human tendency to try to set ourselves outside the animal world, to set a barrier between us and the rest of nature. He also discusses our relationship with the apes, especially our close link to the two chimpanzee species. Being very hierarchically focused, like chimps are, we spend a lot of time trying to set ourselves at the top of our perceived hierarchy of nature. We truly need to let go of this need to be superior and to evaluate other species according to their own talents.

When I was a volunteer nature educator, I was often asked about animals, “How smart are they?” I guess people were hoping to feel superior to other species. My answer was always, “Just as smart as they need to be to survive.” Each species is adapted to its own environmental niche and is expert at living there.

I would recommend Mr. de Waal’s books to anyone interested in animal cognition or in ape studies in general.

The Real Planet of the Apes / David R. Begun

3 out of 5 stars

Was Darwin wrong when he traced our origins to Africa? "The Real Planet of the Apes" makes the explosive claim that it was in Europe, not Africa, where apes evolved the most important hallmarks of our human lineage--such as dexterous hands and larger brains. In this compelling and accessible book, David Begun, one of the world's leading paleoanthropologists, transports readers to an epoch in the remote past when the Earth was home to many migratory populations of ape species.

Drawing on the latest astonishing discoveries in the fossil record as well as his own experiences conducting field expeditions across Europe and Asia, Begun provides a sweeping evolutionary history of great apes and humans. He tells the story of how one of the earliest members of our evolutionary group--a new kind of primate called "Proconsul"--evolved from lemur-like monkeys in the primeval forests of Africa. Begun vividly describes how, over the next 10 million years, these hominoids expanded into Europe and Asia and evolved climbing and hanging adaptations, longer maturation times, and larger brains, setting the stage for the emergence of humans. As the climate deteriorated in Europe around 10 million years ago, these apes either died out or migrated south, reinvading the African continent and giving rise to the lineages of the gorilla, chimpanzee, and, ultimately, the human.


 I love the title of this volume, a text on paleoanthropology referencing the pop culture series, Planet of the Apes. Rather than looking forward to an apocalyptic future, Begun looks backward into the Miocene, when monkeys & apes were numerous and widespread.

Judging from several of his comments, he & I were undergrads at approximately the same time. I remember the state of fossil study from a couple of introductory anthropology courses that I took back in the early 80s and I’m somewhat jealous of his ability to continue on in this field. It was fascinating to study and I’m glad to get caught up on some of the more recent research.

I’m glad to see that more attention is being paid to fossils that are not thought to be in the direct line to humans, as well as the acknowledgement that there is a complicated path to human-ness that may be less direct than we could wish for. Just because species of apes are few in number today, we can’t assume that they have always been sparse.

Also interesting is the number of fossils being discovered in Europe and the Near East. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to be looking for apes in France, Spain, or Italy, and yet there they are! Begun introduces an interesting theory that some of the evolution towards humanity may have taken place in European environments and then been reintroduced to the African continent. Climate changes may indeed have moved populations back and forth between the two continents, making a more complicated evolutionary picture than we are used to.

It will be most interesting to see how future fossil discoveries fit into the jigsaw of human evolution.

How to Clone a Mammoth / Beth Shapiro

4 out of 5 stars

How to clone a mammoth? Well, you can’t yet. So this is not an instruction manual. Cloning requires a living somatic (body) cell from a creature and a living egg from the same or a very closely related species. Mammoths are not currently living creatures, therefore, there will be no cloning of mammoths. Cue relief for all the terrified folks out there.

This was a very interesting read, it covered a lot of ground—not just scientific issues, but the moral & ethical issues surrounding the subject too. I found it to be quite balanced—not overly enthusiastic about cloning but not scared to death of the prospect either.

The most interesting things I learned?

• Birds cannot be cloned. But there are other ways that they can be genetically modified, as the chicken farming industry has discovered.
• The closest living relative to the mammoth is the Indian elephant
• There is a Pleistocene Park in Siberia and the animals in it are certainly changing the vegetation (in a good way, if you think the tundra should be greener & more lush)
• The only DNA you get out of animals trapped in amber is fungal DNA (sorry Jurassic Park).
• Working with ancient DNA is very difficult because it is so easily contaminated and there is modern DNA just hanging in the air, waiting to contaminate everything!
• The most likely scenario is to splice mammoth genes into the elephant genome and produce a mammoth-like animal which could play the same ecological role as the ancient animal did.

The author points out quite clearly that bringing back exactly one mammoth would be a bad idea. They, like other elephant species, were very social animals and having a lone individual would be needlessly cruel. Also, any mammoth would have to be raised by elephants and would necessarily be influenced by that upbringing. Its behaviour is unlikely to be genuine mammoth behaviour. Both extant elephant species are endangered, so using females of these species to gestate mammoth babies is probably not a good idea—they need to be producing more baby elephants, not indulging our desires to resurrect an extinct animal (and with a gestation period of almost 2 years, they are already very slow-reproducing animals).

A very interesting read, especially as I went to the movie Jurassic World on the weekend (the SeaWorld like scene with the Mosasaur is awesome and I finally learned why my online women friends are enthusiastic about Chris Pratt). Plus, I heard on the radio this morning that cattle geneticists are considering splicing genes to make white Black Angus cattle, which would theoretically be less heat-stressed in this climate-changed world we inhabit. Because I had just finished this book, I actually knew a little something about the process that was being described!

The Birds of Pandemonium / Michelle Raffin

Each morning at first light, Michele Raffin steps outside into the bewitching bird music that heralds another day at Pandemonium Aviaries. A full symphony that swells from the most vocal of more than 350 avian throats representing more than 40 species. “It knocks me out, every day,” she says.

Pandemonium, the home and bird sanctuary that Raffin shares with some of  the world’s most remarkable birds, is a conservation organization dedicated to saving and breeding birds at the edge of extinction, with the goal of eventually releasing them into the wild. In The Birds of Pandemonium, she lets us into her world--and theirs. Birds fall in love, mourn, rejoice, and sacrifice; they have a sense of humor, invent, plot, and cope. They can teach us volumes about the interrelationships of humans and animals.

Their amazing stories make up the heart of this book. There’s Sweetie, a tiny quail with an outsize personality; the inspiring Oscar, a disabled Lady Gouldian finch who can’t fly but finds a brilliant way to climb to the highest perches of his aviary to roost. The ecstatic reunion of a disabled Victoria crowned pigeon, Wing, and her brother, Coffee, is as wondrous as the silent kinship that develops between Amadeus, a one-legged turaco, and an autistic young visitor.

As we come to know the individual birds, we also come to understand how much is at stake for many of these species. One of the aviary’s greatest success stories is breeding the gorgeous green-naped pheasant pigeon, whose home in the New Guinea rainforest is being decimated. Thanks to efforts at Pandemonium, these birds may not share the same fate as the now-extinct dodo.

The Birds of Pandemonium is about one woman’s crusade to save precious lives, and it offers rare insights into how following a passion can transform not only oneself but also the world.

This is a charming memoir and very well written. Many of these personal account of birds (living with them or looking for them) are often kindly meant, but the authors are not equipped to write a truly engaging account. Raffin is not only an aviculturist but a communicator and it stands head and shoulders above the books of many enthusiasts.

My interest in the subject matter comes from two aspects of my life—many years as a birder, searching the wilds for birds like those Raffin is caring for, and as a volunteer, spending hours of my spring weekends dressed in a baggy white crane costume and rubber boots, exercising Whooping Crane chicks. I can personally attest to the different personalities of birds, although I didn’t find that Whooping Cranes exhibited many individual differences. They were very placid chicks, quite content to follow their odd leaders, draped in white, carrying a puppet to communicate with them and using a tape recorder of calls to make them feel comfortable. However, during my final year of this volunteer duty, I had occasion to exercise a group of three Sandhill Cranes and one Whooper. The differences between the two species were dramatic. The Sandhills soon figured out the game and would head off to do their own thing, while the Whooper and I would wander the enclosure, dutifully exercising together. I often called it my walking meditation—you had to remain silent and walk slowly, making sure that you didn’t step on the chick’s toes. Out on the rural facility where the crane breeding centre was located, it was a quiet environment beside a natural pond and I spent much of my time listening to and identifying the calls of wild birds beyond the enclosure.

Raffin explains clearly the challenges of keeping birds in captivity—they are sensitive creatures, often with very high blood pressures, which can easily be over-stimulated and suffer catastrophic deaths. They are susceptible to disease and often have very specific breeding or nesting needs. [For example, Flamingos require large flocks for successful nesting and zoos often put up mirrors in their winter quarters to visually increase the flock].

I think many of us can also relate to the incident which launched her into this world of breeding rare birds—that day that she stood on the side of a road, holding a wounded common bird, wondering what exactly to do with it. From such beginnings are great obsessions started.

Mother Nature is Trying to Kill You / Dan Riskin

3 out of 5 stars

It may be a wonderful world, but as Dan Riskin (cohost of Discovery Canada’s Daily Planet) explains, it’s also a dangerous, disturbing, and disgusting one. At every turn, it seems, living things are trying to eat us, poison us, use our bodies as their homes, or have us spread their eggs. In Mother Nature Is Trying to Kill You, Riskin is our guide through the natural world at its most gloriously ruthless.

Using the seven deadly sins as a road map, Riskin offers dozens of jaw-dropping examples that illuminate how brutal nature can truly be. From slothful worms that hide in your body for up to thirty years to wrathful snails with poisonous harpoons that can kill you in less than five minutes to lustful ducks that have orgasms faster than you can blink, these fascinating accounts reveal the candid truth about “gentle” Mother Nature’s true colors.

Riskin’s passion for the strange and his enthusiastic expertise bring Earth’s most fascinating flora and fauna into vivid focus. Through his adventures— which include sliding on his back through a thick soup of bat guano just to get face-to-face with a vampire bat, befriending a parasitic maggot that has taken root on his head, and coming to grips with having offspring of his own—Riskin makes unexpected discoveries not just about the world all around us but also about the ways this brutal world has shaped us as humans and what our responsibilities are to this terrible, wonderful planet we call home.

A catchy title designed to sell books. Obviously, Riskin decided to take a former host of Daily Planet (Jay Ingram) as a role model when he wrote this volume. (This made me realize how out of touch I am with the state of TV broadcasting in Canada, as I didn’t recognize his name at all –but I’m still glad I got rid of the television three years ago!) The author is a bat researcher and travels to see different bat species. As a birder, I was immediately on the band wagon. I believe that eco-tourism is one way of making wildlife valuable enough to convince governments to preserve it. If live animals bring in millions of dollars on a regular basis and dead ones yield only thousands for one time only, it becomes attractive to keep your wildlife alive and well.

The book is a combination of two things: use of the seven deadly sins to structure the chapters and a very Richard-Dawkins-lite (and I mean very lite) version of the world. The 7 Deadly structure was rather cutesy, but it provided a tidy framework to hang the stories on. If you are completely unfamiliar with Dawkin’s Selfish Gene theory and/or you are phobic about learning science/biology, this would be a good introductory read. I must confess that I find Dawkins a bit daunting, so I can imagine that many other folk would as well (although I think I understand his basic argument and have to say that I find it very powerful). However, Riskin’s harping on “Meat Robots” (that we are all bodies driven by our DNA) got on my nerves by the book’s end.

I think this would be an excellent book for a young audience—high school, perhaps, or as supplementary reading for freshmen university students taking science courses for non-science majors. It is fun and the science presented is very straight forward (dare I say easy?). There were a couple of “strange animal” stories that I had not heard before, but most of it was recycled material for me (I was a volunteer natural history educator for 17 years and had a long repertoire of strange and/or gross stories with which to regale my audience and I’m told I was very adept at hooking 8-9 year old boys with tales of poop and vomit).

I have to agree with one of his major ideas—just because something is “natural”, i.e. occurs in nature, that doesn’t mean that it is wonderful and harmless. You can justify almost any behavior through an animal example and parasites, disease, venom, and many other things that can threaten your well-being are very natural.

After spending the whole book convincing his audience that we are part of the natural world and dependent upon it, Riskin then switches gears to convince us that we can also rise above our genetic programming for selfishness and continue the human quest for human rights and prevention of environmental catastrophe. I have to agree with that sentiment as well.