book: Life in Cold Blood, David Attenborough
species that were thriving when the first pages of this book were being written, are now extinct in the wild and seem likely to be lost for ever in the near future.
...absolutely devastating introduction, Dave. This section is immediately followed by a photograph of a Panamanian golden frog; the 2006 BBC series, which this book is related to and which shares its name, was the last time these frogs were ever filmed.
as for the book itself: Pretty solid read for if you’re wanting surface-level reptile/amphibian facts. Attenborough truly loves the animals featured, which makes things a joy to read, even if you’re not necessarily learning anything new.
I really appreciate the time it gives to lesser-known reptiles/amphibians, like the tuatara, caecilian, amphisbaenians, slowworms, etc. this makes it a pretty great whirlwind tour of a lot of Weird Animal Things, and it delves a LOT into leglessness – makes sense because so many lineages lost their legs.
Moreover, it delves more into phylogeny, e.g. explaining how legless lizards =/= snakes and why, and also what we believe their evolutionary histories look like based on living-species comparative anatomy + paleontology. That said, it always sticks with me that, especially re:palaeontology, science moves quickly here. This book was published in 2008. Take everything it says with a grain of salt.
Probably the best aspects of the book are its animal-loving prose and many high-quality photographs of all sorts of animals – makes understanding anatomical features being discussed a lot easier to parse.
however, if you’re looking for an in-depth read on a handful of particular lineages or species, look elsewhere.
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