The Book of Animal Ignorance

September 1, 2008
Lloyd and Mitchinson, the respective creator and chief researcher of the British quiz show, Q!, present an alphabetical series of short, hammy articles concerning 100 animals, Aardvark to Gibbon to Pig to Worm. The profiles are written with a snappy ready-for-TV comic style, with a great deal of adolescent elbow-ribbing over sexual appendages and defecation-much of it bizarre and/or repugnant (to humans). One of the better essays describes how a pearl really forms inside an oyster; another looks at pangolins, scale-covered mammals related to dogs. Perhaps most interesting are the clever mechanical drawings by Ted Dewan that illustrate the multiflex wrists of gibbons and diagram the Fossa, a "dog-cat-mongoose that lives in a tree." Bomb-like dinner party conversation-starters lie in the physiological and ecological arcana the authors compile; eventually, however, one tires of the inevitable parade of strange, contorted and gruesome descriptions of animal mating. Adults will only be able to stand a few at a time, and excess of sexual description limits the use of the book by younger kids, but should get teenagers and student animal lovers giggling while they learn.

September 15, 2008
Lloyd and Mitchinson, the respective creator and chief researcher of the British quiz show, Q!, present an alphabetical series of short, hammy articles concerning 100 animals, Aardvark to Gibbon to Pig to Worm. The profiles are written with a snappy ready-for-TV comic style, with a great deal of adolescent elbow-ribbing over sexual appendages and defecation-much of it bizarre and/or repugnant (to humans). One of the better essays describes how a pearl really forms inside an oyster; another looks at pangolins, scale-covered mammals related to dogs. Perhaps most interesting are the clever mechanical drawings by Ted Dewan that illustrate the multiflex wrists of gibbons and diagram the Fossa, a "dog-cat-mongoose that lives in a tree." Bomb-like dinner party conversation-starters lie in the physiological and ecological arcana the authors compile; eventually, however, one tires of the inevitable parade of strange, contorted and gruesome descriptions of animal mating. Adults will only be able to stand a few at a time, and excess of sexual description limits the use of the book by younger kids, but should get teenagers and student animal lovers giggling while they learn.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2008
Mimicking the tone of their previous best-seller (The Book of General Ignorance, 2007), Lloyd and Mitchinson take a somewhat irreverent but accurate look at some 100 animals, some familiar, some heard of it, and some obscure. In alphabetical order from aardvark to worm, the book devotes an average of two pages to fascinating animal trivia. Pangolins, those scaly anteaters that DNA studies have revealed are actually carnivores, can open their scales to allow ants in, then close the scales until they enter a pond, whereupon the anteater opens them again and feasts on the drowned ants. Horses have the largest eyes of any land mammal, the better to see and run away from predators. Hyenas have a truly matriarchal society with all females dominant to all males. Catfish have more taste buds than any other animal. And we Homo sapiens probably owe our smarts as much to our hands as to our brains. Illustrated with amusing pseudoengineering drawings of each animal, this is for dipping into, for answering trivia questions, and for just plain fun.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)