Customer Reviews

Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals

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The Booklist review gives a far more accurate picture of this book than the description on the book jacket. I agree with the Booklist reviewer who says the "emotional writing style is not for everyone." It was not for me. I picked up this book to learn more about the animals and their natural behaviors. The summary on the book jacket promised facts and anecdotes. Instead of learning about 100 animals, I learned about Masson's opinion on the 100 animals. There were facts and anecdotes, but they overshadowed by Masson's strong opinions. Being such a popular author, I am sure many will be interested in his opinions. Many strong animal lovers will also be grateful to read such a book. If you like the sound of the Booklist review, you will probably enjoy this book.

Descriptions, stories, and opinions about a hundred different kinds of animans, all interesting. Well not quite all.

The first animal is the armadillo (It's the national bird of Texas - I know, it's not a bird.) You see them lying beside the road. A car goes over them, it scares them, they jump straight up, hit the bottom of the car which kills them. Armadillos are the only animals that catch leprosy. And they routinely have genetically identical quadruplets, after having had sex as long as three years ago. Now where else could you get all this information about armadillos.

Would you like to know about bats or beetles? What about the Yeti? Yes, even he asks about putting in such a creature/myth in an animal book, but then he gives what evidence there is. Some like octopuses are fascinating (200 seperate species, lay two to four hundred thousand eggs, and quite smart - equivalent say to about a dog). Some merely there - Okapi, the only know relative of the giraffe who has such a long tongue that it can clean its own ears.

Well by now you get the picture, 100 fascinating little stories.

Before writing this review, I took a look at what some of the other reviewers have said. It seems that this book has gotten mixed reviews. My review is not overly positive or overly negative. Starting off with what I like, I am impressed by the wealth of knowledge that is kept inside this book. There are a lot of facts about animals that I did not know, and also some that I did. I also like that he covers so many animals, and that each chapter is easy to handle--not too short, not too long.

There is really only one thing that I don't like about it: It's depressing and has a dark tone to it. Instead of simply giving a lot of interesting information on the animals, Masson dwells on the darker aspects of the species, for instance animals that are going extinct. The entire chapter on the Bison was riddled with their horrible history in North America, how there was one remaining herd in Yellowstone of only a few hundred animals in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. He dwells on these bad things, completely ignoring how the Bison has flourished since then because of conservation efforts.

I think this is a great book for facts on animals if you can get past the dark tones of Masson's writing. It really does have a lot of interesting facts on 100 animals.

Harmony,
Janet Roper

I was a little leery about getting another Jeffrey Mason book after reading his account of the presumed "wild-child" Kaspar Hauser. It turned out that Mason gave a lot of unwarranted credence to the belief that Hauser had been raised with a minimum of human contact and grew to become a sort of innocent savant. There were facts available refuting this interpretation of Hauser's history at the time Mason wrote.

Then too, I had seen Mason giving interviews in which he seemed to attribute a bit too much innocent wisdom to animals. Add to these two disillusioning exposures, the cutsy, anthropomorphizing title of this book - and I really began to doubt that Mason's research could be trusted.

But I was drawn in by the first sentence in the Preface. "My idea was that if I were to sit down with you for an evening, and we began to talk about animals, and you were to say to me, `What is your favorite animal?' - I would honestly answer, `Well, I have at least a hundred favorite animals, but we have all night, let's talk about them.'" That expansive, unhurried telling of tales/tails around the fire approach captivated me.

And as it turned out, "Altruistic Armadillos" restored much of my faith in Mason as a reporter and a naturalist. In most of the instances I've had a chance to cross-check the amazing details he outlines here about the lives of animals - his facts have been confirmed.

Amazing facts are indeed revealed about every one of the 100+ creatures profiled - from animals we think we know a lot about, such as bats - to animals most of us probably have never heard of, such as tuataras (dinosaur-like reptiles found only in New Zealand).

Along the way, we also learn a lot of geography and history, for example in Mason's account of the silk trade that spawned whole industries and that defined people's lives after the discovery in China of the singular properties of the silkworm's cocoon threads.

You'll find accounts of the kind of cruelty to other species that we've come to expect from our own oblivious species. What's that - a giant panda? Shoot it! Which is exactly what one of Teddy Roosevelt's sons did, operating with a typical specimen-collecting mentality. But a lot of the violence revealed in these accounts is of the kind that most readers probably would never have considered before becoming familiar with the miracle of these other species. For example, those silkworm pupae are electrocuted or boiled inside their cocoons so as not to spoil the silk. Cochineal bugs are left to die slow miserable deaths in the sun in order to make the red dye they produce more vivid.

Despite these accounts of brutality, this book would make good reading for all ages. It's a real eye-opener about the subtle, marvelous range of responses even the seemingly most humble creature such as the eel, the Portia spider, or the chicken, has to its environment.

I was occasionally tripped up in my reading by finding an animal listed out-of-place. I felt the book's alphabetical format sometimes forced an animal unnaturally into sequence, as when I found the albatross near the end of the book under the letter "W," - probably to beef up the W's by specifying the bird as the "Wandering Albatross."

My only real disappointment with the book though was that it didn't include color pictures or at least more detailed black-and-white drawings, so we could better visual each animal as we read about it, and so the book would be more child-friendly.

As it is though, I'm going to keep my copy of the book handy on my shelves - as reference, and as a truly fascinating reminder of the marvels of the other creatures who share the planet with us.

Jeffrey Masson presents a world of animals like none we've ever known. Although we may have heard the names of most of the animals in this compendium, even read articles about them in a science magazine, Masson opens our minds to each animal's startling beauty, quirkiness, or clever sophistication. It's hard to believe they inhabit the same one dimensional planet to which we're accustomed. The book is frequently brightened with anecdotes, mostly involving the author's childhood relationships with different animals, or reactions of his own children to the animals they encounter. The book makes the reader all the more acutely aware of the tragedy of the impending extinction of these extraordinary animals through our unthinking environmental practices.

Do badgers plan funerals? Have zebras ever been tamed? Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras puts a creative twist on the traditional encyclopedia concept by discussing such matters in a conversational tone rather than in the language of scientific certainty.

Masson gets up to the nests and down to the burrows, supplying anecdotes to illustrate the psychological experiences of other animals. Just as intriguing, if not more so, are the author's sensitive interpretations of these anecdotes. Masson declares a feeling of "complete respect" for bald eagles, whom we have utterly failed to understand. To talk wisely of other animals is a paradoxical task, Masson explains, for knowing them as individuals has historically involved their habituation to our presence.

The factual information selected for this book is exquisite. Bats, we learn, can hear an insect walking on a leaf. Prairie dogs have distinct calls to warn of various dangers, including one call when a human is approaching, and another call when a human approaches with a gun.

Bison have been wiped out by the same "curious hatred" that decimated pre-colonial peoples. But then there was the pet buffalo who killed the Idaho rancher who owned and rode the animal. Recounting the story, Masson reflects critically on our quest to make other animals like us and to transform them into our companions.

Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras is the perfect pick for a budding animal-rights activist or those who enjoy linguistics and creative questions. The seasoned activist too will find this book valuable, because it sustains so gracefully the theme that's surely the core of animal rights theory: the interest of other animals in simply being permitted to live unmolested. Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras is an important book for showing how much richer we'd be if we would consciously strive to acknowledge other animals on their terms.

ALTRUISTIC ARMADILLOS, ZENLIKE ZEBRAS: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals is a dream book for someone who already knows way more than the average person about many animals, is interested in language and naming, and likes to consider what we humans do with and to animals in the name of, well, whatever we want (because we're the boss of them). But there's also a lot of fascinating material for the meat-eating, cat and/or dog lover.

Masson explores not only the emotional lives of animals, but his emotional experience of them. This isn't merely a book of facts and statistics about animals; it's a window into the life of the author, who reveals himself by describing animals.

ALTRUISTIC ARMADILLOS, ZENLIKE ZEBRAS raises issues that most people, even vegetarians, don't necessarily concern themselves with. Masson might make you think twice about using items such as honey, royal jelly, silk, pearls, mother-of-pearl and other by-products of some form of use and abuse of nonhuman animals.

For the meat-eating, cat and/or dog lover, Masson provides insight into the lives of animals that you ordinarily aren't privy to. From chickens to lobsters to pigs to turkeys to red foxes to wolves (and I thank the author for alluding to the reality that wolf-hybrids shouldn't be pets), there's a lot to learn about the animals we take for granted, and often assume were put here primarily for our use.

The mantra "leave them alone" is echoed throughout the book, and it's a valuable message that's more relevant than ever.

As for criticism regarding the author's style or content, in his Preface he states: "I have not shied away from speculation, personal remarks, personal enthusiasm, and pet peeves. . . . In line with my own personal publishing history, which has been primarily about the feelings of animals, I felt it only fitting that I should acquaint the reader with MY feelings about animals for a change."

Any grad student in literature will tell you that you can't criticize someone for not writing the book you wanted them to write. You must base your criticism on the author's intent. Masson provides that intent, then follows through.

I am disappointed in this book, which is why I am writing this somewhat negative review of it. I give this book one star. I have to say, it is a very terrible read. The author is 'Psychoanalyst' turned writer, who has decided to share with us 100 of his favorite animals from the animal kingdom, and presuambly present us with interesting facts and anecdotes about them. Not so.

Instead, this book reads like Animal Rights propaganda. Facts are skewered and unsupported, opinionated, entirely made up in some cases. There are frequent derailings that turn into very long and frustrating rants from the author about various injustices the animal faces in the world.

The author doesn't try to hide that he has written this book entirely for himself. Nearly each paragraph begins with 'I think' and drones on for several more about Masson's own views.

The chapter on the Mulberry Silkworm can be summarized thusly: "I don't buy silk any longer. Far better the silk-cotton tree filaments! In India, the company Designer Weaves is making silk from cacoons of caterpillars who are allowed to be months and fly away. Now, that's progress!"

If you love animals and want to read one-sided arguments against foresters and 'animal exploiters,' this is the book for you. If you want actual information on 100 different animals, you will learn more from a page on Wikipedia than the sum of the entire 'book.'

About: Profiles of 100 different animals

Pros: Very interesting, I learned plenty about animals I knew something about and even more about animals I had never heard of. Includes a photo of each animal profiled. Short chapters for easy reading. Bibliography at end.

Cons: Masson can get opinionated occasionally but puts this in a nice warning up front.

Grade: A-