Customer Reviews

Guide to the Mammals of Madagascar

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Ecotourists visiting Madagascar are really lucky.

After the excellent Birds of the Indian Ocean Islands: Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues, Seychelles and the Comoros, an excellent, affordable field guide to mammals in now finally available!

It's hard to know where to start praising this book, but perhaps most importantly, it really IS complete, describing all mammal species found in Madagascar.

The species accounts are incredibly detailed, not only providing extensive info on each species' appearence, behaviour, habitat & distribution, but even telling you where to go to see each one!

Of course excellent photographs (except for a few obscure rodents and bats) and very detailed range maps accompany each species as well.

Additionally, there are highly informative chapters on the various habitats found in Madagascar, on conservation issues, and finally detailed descriptions of the country's top mammal-watching sites, with lists of the most important species to be expected, access, facilities, best season to visit...

For those seriously interested, there is an incredibly long bibliography listing as well.

If I really had to make one complaint about this book, it would be that the format is a bit too large to be convenient for carrying in the field. I wish it could be smaller and thicker, but this size may have been necessary to accomodate several impressive full-page sized photographs.

I was looking for a good photographic guide to the mammals of Madagascar. I have several good books about Ecology, Evolution, Taxonomy, Biogeography and other related topics, but I really was needing one that would show the variety of mammalian species of the island. I finally found this little guide showing most of the species. It is good in size, although I wish it was larger because the excellent photos could be more enjoyable being larger. Also, I would love to have more images of the natural history of certain species, rather than have them just frozen in resting position. The written information is also good and enough for a guide of this quality, level and purpose. It is not for experts, but I am sure that even the experts, as well as anyone, will enjoy the book. Congratulations to the author Nick Garbut, it is an excellent work!

A wonderful, colorful guide to the creatures of Madagascar. Highly recommended to anybody interested in the wildlife here, or anyone planning to visit!

This a great reference for mammals of Madagascar. It is in between pure wildlife biology book and simple guide for mammals of Madagascar. My only complain is that taxonomic revisions of the primates (lemurs), may be from two years ago, is not there yet. I guess a work in progress.

I recommend this book for anyone; simple tourist planning to visit Madagascar, teachers who want kids to know more about the island's mammals, and pure biologists.

OK, so maybe you aren't a nature freak, and lemurs don't rank high on your list. Well, did you see the cartoon film "Madagascar"? See the lemur king singing "I like to boogie?" Even if you don't fall in love with this book your kids will. Because Madagascar was separated by oceans from all other landmasses for millions of years, its mammals evolved on entirely different trajectories from the rest of the world. Lemurs are remarkable creatures -- genetically part of the same primate branch as apes and homo sapiens. When you study them, lemurs strike you as big rats --- until you pay attention to their fingers, eyes, movements and colony behavior. And then you start to see human characteristics, and it is a bit jarring -- and funny.