Customer Reviews

After Man: A Zoology of the Future

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What would happen if mankind disappeared and the animals of Earth went back to following the rules of evolution? This book will show you. Each part of the book deals with another region of the Earth; deserts, glasslands, polar regions and so on. See meat-eating predators evolved from rats and bats, large grazers and browsers developed from fast breeding rabbits and the sea going creatures descended from penguins.
Like the book 'Man After Man', the book starts off with science chapters that in this case do their best to explain evolution, the food chain and the history of life on Earth.
Unlike 'Man After Man' it is not set up like a story, but a true non-fiction text book, like one you might have in a class room or while out camping. It also has maps and gives you information on the environments and what changes have happened to the Earth during the 50 million years. With just over 120 pages and full of color pictures, I wish there had been more! 'Man After Man' felt longer because it had more text and less pictures.

"After Man" is one of the most engaging, creative books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. While one might think from its outlandish illustrations that it is a book for children, this is simply not the case. That's not to say a ten or eleven year old wouldn't enjoy this book, but there's plenty an adult can take away from it as well.

Beginning with a basic review of the principles of biology and evolution, Dixon proceeds to apply them across a range of environments on an Earth 50 million years removed from mankind. The result is a menagerie of remarkable creatures. Remarkable in that they are frequently unique, even bizarre, but even more remarkable because they represent the result of a familiar creature's evolution. Dixon's world isn't a fantasyland, every creature in it holds true to the principles he so effectively explains in the first chapter. Moreover, they all fill an important ecological niche; he hasn't created 150 pages of carnivores. Rather, he presents a balanced, albeit limited, ecosystem that sheds light on the state of our own environment today.

Beautifully illustrated and highly engaging, "After Man" is a must read for anyone interested in evolution and anthropology. Furthermore, this book is educational without being heavy handed. One by no means needs to be an expert to learn from and enjoy this very unique work.

I bought my copy of this book in 1992 and not a day goes by since then that I haven't stopped imagining myself what the animals of the future world will look like. Unfortunately there aren't many scientists thinking about this side of zoology and evolution, so when I see a book about this kind of subject I snap it up like a flash! I was highly disappointed by Animal Planet's "The Future is Wild", but NOT this book! This book thrills me to no end. It only has a relatively few pages, but it has inspired a whole world of imagination for me! My favorite animals in this book is hands down the predatory rats. To look in this book is to view the "real" Age of Mammals in the way it should be. I refer everybody who views my webpage (about future mammal evolution) to this book, and I hope they enjoy it as much as I do.

This Dougal Dixon guy knows his stuff. I really enjoyed this book because the creatures in it could easily evolve alongside the ones from "The Future is Wild." Sure, they may look like Pokemon, but there'd be no reason or method for most Pokemon to actually evolve. These creatures actually *could* very well exist one day, if the Earth changes the way science predicts it will. There really isn't much to say except: 1) Good pictures, lousy cursive captions. They're tiny and hard to read. 2) IT'S A GOOD BOOK! You should read it.

Now, to comment on some of the animals depicted within its pages.
---In the future, I might want to get reincarnated as a Rabbuck. These tall giraffe/deer/rabbit cross-looking things are cool, especially the Arctic one, which looks like some kind of llama mixed with a sheepdog and an Afghan hound.
---The Falanx is a brutal predator with the legs of a hound dog and the body of a very large weasel.
---The reedstilt, seen on the cover, is one fantastically imagined animal: using its thin legs to stand in the water and fish, it catches prey by pretending its legs are simply reeds. An interesting body with many extra neck vertebrae make this one of my favorites in the book.
---Hornheads are moose/mammoth looking creatures with large bony growths on their heads.
---The pamthret looks like a pine marten or some other creature from that family, mixed with a lion.
---The chiselhead is a bizarre squirrel with enormous teeth and jaws.
The Truteal is an extremely cute little teal thing. A blind, nocturnal animal might not sound too adorable, but it is.

---My favorite animal in "After Man" is the Shurrack, which strikes me as a cheetah crossed with a Scottish Deerhound. Its thin legs, long striped tail, leopard pattern, and short, bristly grey coat give it a super-cool look. Reincarnate me as a Shurrack, if you please!
---But *whatever* you do, don't bring me back as a Desert Leaper! These kangaroos look disgusting both when their bodies are bloated with fat, and then when it fluctuates and they become emaciated, with wrinkly folds of skin all over...and they do NOT look like cute little Shar Peis or Sphynx cats!
---Horranes are cool, and weird; they have the head of a gorilla on the tiger-striped body of a cheetah. Try to imagine this. *nuumm*
---The Striger looks like something out of T.S. Eliot's Book of Practical Cats.
---Khiffahs look like the Warner Brother's interpretation of the Tasmanian Devil with blue chests.
---Okay, NEVER EVER EVER do I wish to reincarnate as a Slobber! This aptly named "sloth of the future" is truly a vile imaginary creature.
---The Gurrath is another jaguar- or cheetah-looking thing, but it's not the coolest form the cheetah will take on in the future (go Shurrack! That honor rests with you, buddy!)
---Wakkas look like two-legged giraffes. They also remind me of something out of a Salvador Dali painting.
---The Flooer disguises itself as a flower but is still ugly with those beady little eyes and teeth. On the other hand, the Night Stalker is just plain hideous, looking like a monstrous explosion of other random animal parts thrown together. With a face not even a mother could love and a pair of "legs" that look like arms, this has more of a Pokemon appearance than anything else in "After Man."
---If I get reincarnated as every other animal in this book, please let there be one that I NEVER become, and I must save this for last because it is so revolting. The poor, miserable creature that is (or will be, rather) the Cleft Back Antelope is truly something to pity. First of all, their vertebrae have large "clefts" that grow upwards and form a "nest" along their backs for birds to lay eggs in. If I were a Cleft Back Antelope, I'd say, "Forget you, birds!" and shake the eggs from my back, then try to remove those ugly protrusions. Symbiosis, whatever. It's just too unsightly. But that's not even so bad when you consider this: They grow warts on their bodies that ooze pus. Flies lay their eggs in the pus. The baby birds hatch on the backs and eat the fly eggs. Can you imagine all this happening on the poor Antelope?!

"After Man" is a great book.

The first time I saw "After Man" was in sixth grade. Our science teacher used it for a project, where we designed a 'creature' of our own - however, it was returned to the library before I read it, and I thought I would never see it again - I was estactic when I found "After Man" in my public library. The book was much better than I had ever remembered, and besides being educational, it's beautifully illustrated and just plain fun! If this book can't spark your interest, you're in trouble. :) I also find it to be a good 'idea resource' for my fantasy writing - it gets me thinking and gives me seeds of ideas that I use to create plausible animals.

I have been fascinated by many natural history books, especially
"Walking with Dinosaurs: A Natural History". However, after I got " After Man" from the library, I thought that the other book, based on the world-famous TV series, would be put back into editing. The reason is becasue Dixon's imagination is wonderful as well as realistic. Even some of the strangest creatures, to me, looked scientificly accurate, such as the leaping devils, stigers, and rabbucks. Although I am only ten years of age, I could probably zoom through "After Man" and already remember what happened.

Okay, for those of you kids who don't know the actual plot, I will tell. Well, first of all, it is about 65 million years from now, and humans have left the planet in search of other Earth-like worlds because we think our home's getting too
hostile.(Dixon says we'll become extinct in this book, but I hardly believe in that.) The lesser animals, those that survived man-caused extinctions, now dominate the planet. And some are so different from their ancestors. For example, Old World rats form the dominant carnivorous group, looking more like wolves, lions, and carnivorous dinosaurs than modern rats. And deer-like rabbits called rabbucks have replaced the sheep, goats, and deer of our time. A small insectivore has replaced the desert shrews, and the elphants, horses, and rhinos are also extinct. Now there are advanced antelope instead. And instead of sabre-tootehd cats ( which were gone by the end of the last Ice Age), there's a shaggy, predatory rodent that roams the Arctic tundra in search of prey.

I think "After Man: A Zoology of The Future", although it may go against people's religous beliefs, would make a good Christmas of birthday present. And look how many people give it 5 stars; no wonder it is a good reference book. And nothing would have made it better than the pictures, and to me they seem to build the world of the future in your mind. Just imagine hopping along with leaping devils looking for prey, or swimming with the vortex, a giganticc, 40-foot long penguin, in the Antarctic seas. Or what about joining the woolly gigantelope's migrational journey accross the Northern Continent. Really, the pictures make " After Man" a better book than it actually is.

There one more thing I'd like to say; that there are very few copies left of "After Man", but don't freak out. There could be some more hidden!!!

I've been sharing this book with my biology students as something to read when they're done with tests. It is an excellent tool for grasping the foundations of evolution. Dixon overviews the basics of evolutionary theory in clear and precise language at the beginning, and then provides amazingly beautiful (and in some cases, nightmarish) illustrations of what the future might hold for us. Or rather, not for us, since he posits that our species dies out, which is admittedly a little depressing. Similarly to Vonnegut's Galapagos, Dixon hypothesizes that a large brain might not actually be an evolutionary advantage, but rather a disadvantage. Through the disappearance of humanity he shows how our destruction of the environment is causing wholesale destruction of countless species, and causing damage to our own. It is only when our species disappears, and the earth has 50 million years to recover, that evolution can continue again.

I love the drawings, particular of naked Sandsharks that look like something from the spice worms of Dune, Striger cats that have prehensile tails and grasping paws, Predator Rats, Swimming Monkeys, the penguin become 12 meter whale-like plankton-eating Vortex, Slobbers who catch insects with their slobber, and look like a marsupial bundle of moss, and bipedal walking screaming 1.5m tall bats, the Night Stalkers. Some of these ideas may sound outlandish- a good number of them certainly are. But the best part is Dixon gives solid evolutionary theory for how each would evolve, dictated by a changing environment and the raw material of previous genetic code. So we get classic island giganticism and the freedom of evolution on islands. We get the foreseeable continual development of symbiosis between antelopes and tick birds, such that now the tick birds nest in a special dorsal cleft on the antelope. And those animals that are the most successful today, such as the rodents, insectivores, and lagomorphs (especially rats and rabbits) are the ones with the greatest opportunity for diversity in the future.

I would highly recommend this book for any student of evolution. It's not fact; it's simply based on sound theory. It's the best kind of science fiction, as it all could happen. It's certainly fiction, but more than fiction, as it will help you contemplate the foundational truths of evolution.

Future Evolution

This book is an acheivement in the combination of natural history and science-fiction. Dougal Dixon has taken animals that we take for granted today and turned them into the major wildlife players 50-million years from now. These creatures are amazing. My favorite is the phalanx, a wolf-like rat of the future.

The book is very realistic, describing continental drift, environment, and evolution to every detail with incredible (if imaginary) creatures. I deeply enjoyed the realistic pictures as well as the explanation for their appearance. The coexistence is remarkably believable. I hope he writes a sequal to this increadible book. How will the rabbucks evolve, and the pelagornids? We can only imagine.

It's odd that a book of fiction occupies pride of place in my library of natural science books. However, when I feel the need to explain evolution to a friend who falls asleep watching the Discovery Channel, this is invariably the book I reach for. Beautifully illustrated as well.