Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I defy you to read even a few pages of this little book and not be tempted to yell out to whoever else is in the house: "Did you know that ...?" The other person will laugh and say "You made that up!"

This is a perfect book for people who love animals and/or arcane bits of trivia. It is a bestiary of 100 animals -- some common, some you've probably never heard of -- all with secrets you would never guess. You'll never look at your dog the same way; did you know that Labrador retrievers can correctly identify lung cancer in humans 99 percent of the time... just by smelling their breath?

Each animal gets two or three pages, with a couple of black and white illustrations. Organized in alphabetical order, you won't want to stop until you get to the lowly, fascinating worm. Did you know that ribbon worms will eat their own bodies if their food supply runs out? They can eat up to 95 percent of themselves and still survive.

No, I didn't make that up.

John Lloyd and John Mitchinson also wrote The Book of General Ignorance.

a book from which i can truly say i gained a wealth of information...whimsically written while maintaining an informational voice...only caveat i can complain of is the authors' consistent failure to provide a simple description of each animal's size...given that some of the animals were previously unknown to me, i would have appreciated the information..

If you have read "Everything you think you know is wrong" and liked it, you will def like this one as well. Most of the topics are intriguing and funny. There are a ton of interesting facts and things that i never knew about animals. A must read for people who like useless knowledge.

My 14 year old daughter just loves to share information from this book. There are a lot of very funny & interesting facts about animals. She's truly enjoying the book!

Well written and very concise. This is a really good consensus of information
that I have never seen or even heard of in the past.
It is very informative and very entertaining.

Interesting small little facts about a bunch of animals. It's really entertaining for vacations with children, and adults.
I really like the small facts that keep you reading

I found this book thinking it was going to be the boring, everyday facts about different animals. I had no idea what I was in for. My mind has now opened and I cannot even look at an Ant, Spider, Cow or any animal without trying to sort through the web of ways that a single creature impacts our everyday life. Great book! Probably one of the most worth while I have ever read!

This was a very interesting and fun read. If you like animals you will enjoy this book. Very educational. Enjoy!

I gave this book as a gift to a child and he loved it. He loves animals, all animals, so I knew this would be a winner with him. It shows how intelligent animals are, how capable they are and the strange and wondrous adaptations they have made. It's filled with illustrations and is entertaining for children and adults. The focus tends to be on the bizarre but makes one appreciate animals for being so magnificent in unique ways.

I like the book if only for the reason that I'm now aware that there are ants in Brunei whose role in the colony extends to exploding their own heads in order to spread a gooey mess to entangle intruders. Of course the relative size of the animal and human penis rates a mention but never fear it's all done in excellent style. It's not War and Peace but a bit of fun and yet another reminder that truth is stranger than fiction.