The Truth About Animalsby Lucy Cooke
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 9780465094646
Publication Date: April 17, 2018
Pages: 337
Genre: Natural Science, Non-fiction
Publisher: Basic Books
What a ride. Cooke covers 13 animals that the myths that have persisted about them over the centuries, debunking and setting the record straight. I’m going to be straight with you: there are a lot of testicles involved, both in the myths and the realities. I’d like to say that the truth is stranger than the fiction, but really, it’s a dead heat between the two when it comes to these particular animals. By far the funniest, to me, was the beaver; the most tragic, the panda bears, which are, from the looks of it, being loved into extinction.
The writing is very engaging and there’s a lot of cheeky humor; hard to avoid when there are so many testicles involved. I found myself reading so much of this aloud to MT, because much of what I read fascinated me. Some of it I was already familiar with (penguin necrophilia, most of the information about the frogs) but a lot of it was new and I’m now totally fascinated by the possibilities of hippo sweat.
A fun read if you like animals and are an armchair scientist with a sense of humor.