Animal books that other ZooChatters should read

birdsandbats

birdsandbats

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5+ year member
This thread if for talking about animal books you think other ZooChatters should read. Here are some I have read:

The Photo Ark by Joel Sartore
I know a lot of ZooChatters have read this one already, but I can't recommend it enough. I would also recommend Sartore's book RARE: Portraits of America's Endangered Species.

Out on a Limb by Benjamin Kilham
An amazing book that will have you rethinking what you thought you knew about American Black Bears. Paperback edition published as In the company of Bears.

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
In incredible book about how intelligent birds really are.

Any others?
 
David Taylor's books are worth a read, they really show how little we knew about zoo animal medicine/health in the early years of zoos and how far we have come. Some of the stories are quite humorous and they cover a range of species and many different zoos.
 
Peter Allison's books, they're hilarious.
Witness to Extinction by Samuel Turvey.
Follow that up with Hope for Animals and Their World by Jane Goodall.
The entire "Animal" series by Reaktion publishing is fantastic.
 
Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. Witten almost 30 years ago, it is a tour of endangered species and their habitats and the people trying to save them. Some of the species they visit like the kakapo, mountain gorilla, and fauna of Mauritius are doing better than they were 30 years ago. Some sadly really were in the last phase of extinction - the northern white rhinos and the baiji. Zoochatter Carl Jones is profiled for his heroic work on the fauna of Mauritius.
 
Here are some books hat I read recently, am currently re-reading or have partially read am planning to fully (re-)read and which I think are not only excellent books but also important books and ones that would and should be of interest to anyone on here.

Witness to Extinction - How We Failed to Save the Yangtze River Dolphin by Samuel Turvey

The Song Of The Dodo - Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions by David Quammen

Monster of God - The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind by David Quammen

The Unexpected Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos and Other Wild Tales by Lucy Cooke

The Ark and Beyond: The Evolution of Zoo and Aquarium Conservation by various authors, edited by Ben A. Minteer, Jane Maienschein and James P. Collins, foreword by George Rabb

Chimpanzee Politics - Power and Sex among Apes by Frans de Waal
 
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From a quick skim through my GoodReads read list:

· ‘In Bear Country’ by Brian Payton
· ‘On the Trail of the Whale’ by Mark Carwardine
· ‘Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue’ by William Stolzenburg
· ‘Next of Kin’ by Roger Fouts
· ‘When Elephants Weep’ by Jeffrey Masson
· ‘Wild Echoes: Encounters with the Most Endangered Animals in North America’ by Charles Bergman
· ‘In the Shadow of the Fox’ by David Macdonald
· ‘Leviathan: Or, the Whale’ by Phillip Hoare
· ‘Solo, the Story of an African Wild Dog’ by Hugo van Lawick
· ‘Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures’ by Virginia Morell
· ‘Thylacine: The Tragic Tale of the Tasmanian Tiger’ by David Owen
 
birdsandbats said:
I read My Family and Other Animals and didn't think it was that good. But I would love to read The Aye-Aye and I.
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I read all the Durrell books when I was young and at that time the "Corfu trilogy" were my least favourite of the non-fiction books, probably because they had a larger focus on his family than on animals. When I was older I appreciated them more.

You should try his animal collecting books from his West Africa and South America expeditions.
 
katinakalinakaterina said:
David Taylor's books are worth a read, they really show how little we knew about zoo animal medicine/health in the early years of zoos and how far we have come. Some of the stories are quite humorous and they cover a range of species and many different zoos.
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On the subject of Taylor, was he a fantasist? In one of his books he claims to have been picked up on a motorbike by the chimpanzee Cheetah, who drove him through L.A stopping at red traffic lights. I know chimps are cleaver but riding motorbikes takes a bit of believing.
 
Ned said:
On the subject of Taylor, was he a fantasist? In one of his books he claims to have been picked up on a motorbike by the chimpanzee Cheetah, who drove him through L.A stopping at red traffic lights. I know chimps are cleaver but riding motorbikes takes a bit of believing.
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Don't remember that one? It's been a while since I read the books, maybe due for a refresher. To be fair it was the killer whale stories that really got my attention. The giant pandas, sharks and elephants were also intriguing. I suppose when you are the founder of zoo animal medicine and practices being what they were, some of the stories are bound to be a bit out there.
 
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Ned said:
On the subject of Taylor, was he a fantasist? In one of his books he claims to have been picked up on a motorbike by the chimpanzee Cheetah, who drove him through L.A stopping at red traffic lights. I know chimps are cleaver but riding motorbikes takes a bit of believing.
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It sounds like a pure fantasy.

I've lived in LA for 20+ years, and nobody drives as well as he claims that chimp did.
 
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Chlidonias said:
I read all the Durrell books when I was young and at that time the "Corfu trilogy" were my least favourite of the non-fiction books, probably because they had a larger focus on his family than on animals. When I was older I appreciated them more.

You should try his animal collecting books from his West Africa and South America expeditions.
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birdsandbats said:
I'll keep them in mind!
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I would suggest his first four expeditions: The Overloaded Ark, The Bafut Beagles, Three Singles to Adventure and The Drunken Forest. Some of my favourites.

:p

Hix
 
Along with the Durrell and Attenborough books already cited - which I can strongly recommend myself - I think the following books by Errol Fuller are also very much on the "must-read" list for any Zoochatters with a serious interest in recently-extinct species:

Lost Animals
Dodo - From Extinction to Icon
Extinct Birds
The Great Auk

They are listed in order of ease-of-obtaining; the first is still in print, the second reasonably cheap and easy to find second-hand, the third easy to find second-hand but pricey, and the final one difficult to obtain and usually pricey when you do.... although I struck lucky and found a copy for 20 quid in Oxfam a year or two ago :P

Of these, the first and the latter two are the most important; Lost Animals reproduces photos of a great number of species or subspecies which (although now extinct) were photographed whilst extant, in some cases depicting the only such records known; Extinct Birds is a comprehensive look at all extinct bird species and subspecies known from good material from the historical era; The Great Auk is a monograph compiling more or less everything known about the species in question, including images of every extant taxidermy mount.
 
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TeaLovingDave said:
Along with the Durrell and Attenborough books already cited - which I can strongly recommend myself - I think the following books by Errol Fuller are also very much on the "must-read" list for any Zoochatters with a serious interest in recently-extinct species:

Lost Animals
Dodo - From Extinction to Icon
Extinct Birds
The Great Auk
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I've got all except the last one (doubt I'll get as lucky as you and find it in Oxfam!). They're all excellent books, but Extinct Birds is probably my favourite.

Errol Fuller has also recently written a book about the Passenger Pigeon, which I haven't got round to reading yet, but it's on my bookshelf waiting.
 
A couple more I just remembered, both by Phillip Hoose:

The Race to Save the Lord God Bird
Moonbird
 
TeaLovingDave said:
Along with the Durrell and Attenborough books already cited - which I can strongly recommend myself - I think the following books by Errol Fuller are also very much on the "must-read" list for any Zoochatters with a serious interest in recently-extinct species:

Lost Animals
Dodo - From Extinction to Icon
Extinct Birds
The Great Auk

They are listed in order of ease-of-obtaining; the first is still in print, the second reasonably cheap and easy to find second-hand, the third easy to find second-hand but pricey, and the final one difficult to obtain and usually pricey when you do.... although I struck lucky and found a copy for 20 quid in Oxfam a year or two ago :p

Of these, the first and the latter two are the most important; Lost Animals reproduces photos of a great number of species or subspecies which (although now extinct) were photographed whilst extant, in some cases depicting the only such records known; Extinct Birds is a comprehensive look at all extinct bird species and subspecies known from good material from the historical era; The Great Auk is a monograph compiling more or less everything known about the species in question, including images of every extant taxidermy mount.
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Um... The last one is available on Amazon for 10 USD.
 
birdsandbats said:
Um... The last one is available on Amazon for 10 USD.
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Is that for the 1999 book 'The Great Auk', or the 2003 book 'The Great Auk: The Extinction of the Original Penguin'?
 
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