Deadly Animals
Savage Encounters Between Man and Beast
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
Consider, if you can, the case of Jacob Fowler, who heard what he thought was the sound of his own skull cracking between the jaws of a grizzly bear - only to discover that it was.
Or the Arizonan jogger who ran a mile back to her car with a rabid fox clamped to her arm before driving to hospital for live-saving inoculations. Or the woman who was attacked by a hyena, dragged from her tent by her face and survived to tell of her ordeal.
The dangers of the animal kingdom are the stuff of legend but the reality of man's vulnerability and of nature's savage power is far more various, improbable and chilling than even the most active imagination would fear. In this unique work of nature writing, you will encounter the most formidable predators on land and sea - as well as the most overlooked, bizarre and inventive hazards that mother nature has to offer. Meet the cougar that can leap 40 feet and clear 8-foot fences with a fully-grown deer in its jaws, the tapeworm that's been known to grow as long as 82 feet in the human gut and the elephant that single-handedly destroyed an oil tanker.
Drawing on an enormous host of true encounters between man and beast, this is the world's most authoritative compendium of animal attacks on human beings. With mordant wit and expert timing, Gordon Grice provides a gripping journey to the dark side of the animal kingdom and a celebration of its humbling, savage glory.
(Originally published in hardback as The Book of Deadly Animals.)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Even the most hardcore naturalist may rethink that camping trip or African safari after reading Grice's rundown of dangerous animals from around the world. From humpback whales to bedbugs, Grice (The Red Hourglass) delights in describing the many ways animals of all sizes can kill us or make us sick. Drawing from antiquity (Herodotus' 2,400-year-old account of self-sabotaging vipers), pop culture (the infamous mauling of Roy Horn of Sigfried and Roy by a beloved tiger), and first-hand experience (a sac spider imperiously poised atop the author's own computer), the unsettling anecdotes are far-ranging. But Grice does more than simply catalog the many ways a lion, tiger, or bear can kill he gives context to the horrors by describing the animal's place in the food chain and its evolutionary adaptations. To be sure, there are terrifying accounts of sailors lost at sea being feasted upon sharks and gruesome details of black bear attacks ("The carcasses are peeled like bananas"), but Grice tempers his book with grim humor, a genuine enthusiasm for the subject, and fascinating trivia (Herman Melville's Moby Dick was based on an actual whale named Mocha Dick that terrorized the South Pacific). A gifted writer, Grice's relentlessly detailed descriptions of the effects of spider and snake bites, as well as the outcome of tangling with pencil catfish or alligators, may make this rough going for the easily squeamish, but those with a fascination for wildlife will find this an informative and dramatic study. Photos.
