Netbook Times - Sept/Oct 2006

Mammals are the animals that most people come to wilderness areas to see. They range in size from the pygmy shrew (2g) to the blue whale (120 tons). But what makes a mammal a mammal - indeed why is a blue whale not a fish? How does the elephant's trunk work? Why do many mammels have coat patterns?

The title of this exceptional book about South African wildlife may obscure its real worth. While fiels guides help us identify the creatures we see in the wild, this books explains what they are doing and how and why they do it.

Field guides for all decriptions have graced bookshelves over the past decade but it's encouraging to find a "field guide" whitch sticks out from the rest. This offering is an ambitious groundbreaking book which succeeds in what it sets out to accomplish. The book answers everyday questions about those animals we observe when in the bush.

At first glance this seemed a rather daunting book, one perhaps too academic to recommend for popular reading. Getting to grips with the taxonomy of placental mammals is not everybody's cup of tea. But what a pleasant surprise it turned out to be. This is a bush guide in very much the same sense as birds,butterfly, tree and such guides which are aimed not at the classroom but at what evidently represents a growing market out there of lay people wanting to get a better understanding of nature around them. It in effect deals with exactly the kind of question that often comes to mind when walking in the veld or driving through a nature reserve.