The Book of Animal Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
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 © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
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. --Nancy Bent

Product Description
Fast on the heels of the New York Times bestseller The Book of General Ignorance comes The Book of Animal Ignorance, a fun, fact-filled bestiary that is sure to delight animal lovers everywhere. Arranged alphabetically from aardvark to worm, here are one hundred of the most interesting members of the animal kingdom explained, dissected, and illustrated, with the trademark wit and wisdom of John Lloyd and John Mitchinson.

Did you know, for instance, that
• when a young albatross takes wing, it may stay aloft for ten years
• vampire bat saliva—unsurprisingly, when you think about it—is the source of the world’s most powerful blood thinning drug, appropriately called draculin
• bombardier beetles fire a boiling chemical spray out of their rears at 300 pulses per second
• a bald eagle’s feathers weigh twice as much as its bones
• a giant tortoise recently died at the documented age of 255
• octopuses are dexterous enough to unscrew tops from jars
• spider silk is so light that a strand long enough to circle the world would weigh as much as a bar of soap?

So meet the water bears that can live in suspension for hundreds of years, the parasite carried by your cat that makes men grumpy and women promiscuous, and the woodlouse that drinks through its bottom. Marvel at elephants that walk on tiptoe, pigs that shine in the dark, and woodpeckers that have ears on the ends of their tongues.

If you still think a pangolin is a musical instrument, that hyenas are dogs, or that sheep are pointless and stupid, The Book of Animal Ignorance has arrived just in time.

About the Author
JOHN LLOYD is the producer of the hit British comedy shows Not the Nine O’Clock News, Blackadder, and Spitting Image. He earned a lifetime achievement award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

JOHN MITCHINSON is a former publisher and bookseller who now writes for the British television show QI (Quite Interesting).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Aardvark

Ancient, odd, and out on its own

Aardvarks are the last survivors of a primitive group of mammals that have lived in Africa since the dinosaurs. They were originally classified alongside anteaters and armadillos in the order Edentata ("no teeth"), but they are not remotely related, having evolved on different landmasses.

In fact, aardvarks don't have any close relatives: they are the only mammal species that boasts an entire order to itself. Tubulidentata means "tube-toothed" and aardvark teeth are completely different from those of any other animal. They are twenty flat-topped pegs, made up of hexagonal tubes, right at the back of their mouths. Instead of enamel, they are covered with cementum, the stuff that is normally inside teeth. Like rodents' teeth, they never stop growing.

The aardvark has a primitive, "designed by committee" look to it: the nose of an anteater, the ears of a donkey, the feet of a rabbit, and the tail of a giant rat. But don't be fooled: it has outlasted many other species because it does one thing supremely well. It is a termite-eating machine.

As soon as darkness falls it leaves its burrow and applies its snout to the ground, snuffling in huge zigzags across the savannah in search of mounds to crack open and lick clean. It can cover thirty miles and vacuum up more than ten pints of termites in a single evening. The aardvark nose contains more bones and scent receptors than that of any other mammal. Its ears can pick up the tiniest of underground movements and its powerful claws tear open mounds that would blunt a pickax. Aardvarks are strong: they can grow to the size of a defensive tackle and dig a burrow faster than six men using shovels. Their thick skin protects them from termite bites, and as the long, sticky tongue reels in supper, they can close their nostrils at will, to stop the insects running up inside.

They have also built up a remarkably beneficial relationship with a plant known as the aardvark cucumber, which grows its fruits underground. Aardvarks dig them up and eat them when water is scarce, then bury their seed-laden droppings, ensuring the plants' survival. The San (bushmen) of the Kalahari call the fruit "aardvark dung."

Humans and hyenas are the only predators that will attack a fighting-fit aardvark. Despite its solitary, reclusive nature, a cornered aardvark is a formidable foe, slashing with its claws, kicking its legs, and executing high-speed forward somersaults.

Aardvarks are hunted for meat and leather: aardvark is Afrikaans for "earth pig" and they are said to taste like gamey pork. They are also called ant bears, but their Latin name, Orycteropus afer, means "African digger-foot." The bushmen believe that aardvarks have supernatural powers because they are literally in touch with the underworld.

This elusive nocturnal animal probably only became known in the English-speaking world because it is so close to the start of the dictionary. It very nearly didn't make it. Aardvark, the fourth noun listed in the 1928 Oxford English Dictionary, owes its inclusion to the editor James Murray, who overrode his assistant's opinion that the word was too technical.

Albatross

Flying nonstop for a decade

There are twenty species of albatross from the gull-sized sooty to the vast wandering albatross (Diomedes exulans, or "albatross in exile"), with its record eleven-foot wingspan. They fly farther and for longer than any other family of birds. Satellite tracking reveals that some albatrosses fly around the entire planet in less than two months and can soar for six days without flapping their wings. Rather than soaring high up in the thermals like birds of prey, they keep close to the surface of the sea, using the lift generated by wind from waves. The most energetic part of any albatross flight is takeoff: it is the only time the bird needs to flap its wings vigorously.

As soon as a young wandering albatross gets airborne it won't land again until it is ready to breed, which can be ten years later. Albatrosses feed on fish, squid, and krill, either diving into the sea or picking it off the surface, and sleep on the wing, with each half of the brain taking turns to shut down.

Albatrosses belong to the order Procellariiformes, originally Tubinares, which means "tube-nosed." These tubes run the length of their large, hooked beaks and lead to very well developed scent organs, allowing them to detect their food and nesting sites from many miles away. In some species the tubes have a dual function, allowing them to breathe from one part while sneezing excess sea salt from another.

Young albatrosses spend several years watching their elders to learn the elaborate beak-clacking courtship dances. When they find a partner, they mate for life, developing a unique body language, which they use to greet each other after long separations. They raise only one egg every two years, with the parents taking turns to sit on the nest or go off in search of food. An albatross will regularly fly one thousand miles for a single mouthful for its chick. Solid food is regurgitated, but for longer journeys it can also be broken down into a concentrated protein-rich oil, kept in their stomachs. This can be used in place of water to quench their thirst, or regurgitated as a nutritious fish smoothie for the chick.

Albatrosses can live for sixty years but breed so slowly that they are at risk of extinction within the next century. The main threat is long-line fishing. More than one hundred thousand die each year, caught in the millions of baited hooks that are used to catch tuna.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) practically invented the myth that killing an albatross brought bad luck. In fact, British sailors regularly killed and ate them, making pipes from their bones and purses from their feet. A more widespread belief was that the albatross was the reincarnated spirit of a drowned sailor. Some Scottish fishermen still don't like using Swan Vesta matches because the bird on the box looks like an albatross.

When Portuguese explorers first saw them they called them alcatraz, their name for any large seabird. The word originally came from the Arabic al-gatta¸s, the leather bucket on a waterwheel, which resembled a pelican's bill. So, in Portuguese, the Birdman of Alcatraz literally means the "Birdman of the Large Seabird."

Anglerfish

Worse things happen at sea

Surely a life doesn't get any bleaker than that of the deep-sea anglerfish? Two miles down in the endless darkness, a gloomy motionless lump of brittle bone, atrophied muscle, and paper-thin black skin with only luminous bacteria for company. A life spent doing nothing except waiting, often for months at a time, turning your light on and off in the hope that it will attract some other creature out of the inky gloom long enough for them to stray too close to your cavernous mouth. . . .

The name "anglerfish" is used for about three hundred species--including sea toads, frogfish, batfish, and monkfish--that attract their prey with a long, flexible appendage like a fishing rod, typically growing out of the middle of their heads. At the end of it, in place of a dangling maggot, there is the esca (Latin for "food"), which can be wiggled to mimic live bait. On the deep-sea anglers, the esca lights up, thanks to a chemical process controlled by the bacteria that live on it. In return for light, the anglerfish supplies them with food. Different anglerfish have differently shaped escas. It was once thought this was to attract different prey, but it's now believed that they all have a similar diet. Perhaps having a big, bendy, glowing rod sticking out of your head is a form of sexual display.

The deep-sea anglers are some of the most ugly and outlandish creatures on the planet. They have an elastic stomach that can swallow prey twice as large as themselves (it even has a lightproof lining in case they swallow luminous fish). To prevent their prey escaping they have backward-facing teeth in their mouths and another set of teeth in their throats. The female illuminated netdevil (Linophryne arborifer) looks like a fluorescent root vegetable, with a black bulbous body and two shimmering lures streaming off like psychedelic foliage. Her Latin name means "tree-shaped toad that fishes with a net." The hairy seadevil's (Caulophryne polynema) huge spiny fins have a decayed look, its body is covered in unpleasant pale hairs, and its lure looks like a frayed stick of licorice. It has one of the most sensitive lateral lines of any fish--the tiniest movement triggers the opening and closing of its jaws. Elsman's whipnose (Gigantactis elsmani) swims along upside down, trailing its lure along the seabed. The wolftrap seadevil (Lasiognathus saccostoma, or "hairy-jawed sack-mouth") has a lure with three shining hooks on the end that it casts forward like a fly fisherman. Prince Axel's wonderfish (Thaumatichthys axeli) has its lures hanging down from the roof of its mouth like a pair of fluorescent tonsils.

The male deep-sea anglerfish is much smaller than the female and doesn't have a lure. He's interested in mating, not fishing. He uses his giant eyes to look for a suitable female, and his enormous nostrils to sniff out her pheromones. Having found her, he latches on to her with his teeth and then starts to disappear. Scales, bones, blood vessels all merge into those of the female. After a few weeks all that's left of the male are the testes hanging off the female's side, supplying her with sperm. Females have been found with eight testes attached to their sides.

In some species, if the male fails to find a female, then he will eventually turn into one himself and grow massively in size. As the anglerfish themselves are wont to remark: there's only one thing worse than being an anglerfish and that's being a male anglerfish.

Ant

Chemical-dependen...