Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds
Stories of Extinction
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- $34.99
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- $34.99
Publisher Description
A moving and motivating collection of portraits of extinct species, revealing the profound implications of their disappearance.
This book presents thirty-one extinct species through personal portraits. The intimate approach not only highlights each particular species but also explores the broader implications of losing a species forever. How do we honor such a loss? Can we grieve for species we never knew? These animals range from the well-known passenger pigeon, thylacine, and great auk, to lesser-known creatures like the Arabian ostrich, Saint Helena earwig, and Bramble Cay melomys. Through her poignant portraits, Barbara Allen not only tugs on the heartstrings but also aims to inspire readers to protect vulnerable and endangered species today, motivating us to play a positive role in conserving our planet’s biodiversity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this plaintive if occasionally grating history, Allen (Broken Heart, Shared Heart, Healing Heart), an Australian minister, presents intimate portraits of 31 extinct species. She recounts each animal's story from its own perspective, as when she describes how hungry sailors hunted the manatee-like Steller's sea cow to extinction in the 1700s: "Our tasty flesh, wonderful fat and hides, which would be made into shoes and belts, led to our downfall." Reconstructing how species likely behaved in the wild, Allen notes that quagga, a subspecies of zebra, congregated near hartebeest and ostriches, whose superior eyesight and sense of smell helped alert the quagga to predators. Though the first-person voice aspires to instill empathy, it instead comes across as childish ("The ‘dodo'. What a stupid name! Sets me up as a thing of ridicule"). The fascinating trivia does a better job of driving home the wondrous biodiversity lost in the extinction of any species. For instance, Allen describes the remarkable reproductive practices of the female gastric-brooding frog, which would suspend the production of gastric acid before swallowing her own fertilized eggs and then wait for them to grow into frogs in her upper intestine and crawl out of her mouth about six weeks later. The annoying narrative voice aside, this will hold the interest of animal lovers. Photos.
