The Truth about Animals

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.