Review of a Marvelous Modern Bestiary

The Modern Bestiary: A Curated Collection of Wondrous Wildlife

Joanna Bagniewska 

Smithsonian Books, 2022, 256 pp.

Happy World Animal Day: October 4, birthday of Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals.  

As a sometime writer on zoology, my first thought in browsing through this book, was, “Damn, why didn’t I write this?” Fortunately for readers, Dr. Bagniewska, a zoologist who is, among other things, a science comedian, does it better than I ever could. This is an animal book you will browse, devour, keep, and use to pose zoological trivia questions no one will answer. She writes that a classic bestiary should reflect a sense of wonder, and she delivers.

On the question of what species to include in her 100 subjects, Bagniewska took an unusual approach. First, she determined to include animals from every branch of the kingdom. There are some “stars” like the panda and the platypus here, but most of the two-page essays concern animals the general public knows little about or hasn’t even heard of. Then she applied the “Marie Kondo rule” – did writing about it give her joy?

The result is fascinating, Her writing is superb, both technically precise and funny. Bagniewska anthropomorphizes quite a bit and spends a lot of time on animals’ bizarre reproductive habits, which reduces the chance of this being adopted as a textbook but makes it the most enjoyable animal book of the year  A few times, this very well-read animal aficionado had to stop and grab the Oxford Dictionary of Zoology. Then you hit the end of the essay and she closes with the kind of bad animal pun I always appreciate – the way frog-to-frog predation is “a classic case of cold-blooded murder” or (I wonder how long this took her)  the dictatorial queen of a naked mole rate colony, whose subjects eat her feces, has shown that “a combination of bullying and crap meals is an effective way of running an underground organization.”

I never knew that female Giant Australian cuttlefish who are not in the mood create a highly visible white stripe on their fin. (A human equivalent would save a lot of hurt feelings.) Or that an Australian musk duck learned to imitate its keeper; just imagine hearing “You bloody fool!” from a duck. Or that some pangolins effectively have scales lining their stomachs as well as their backs. Or that velvet worms form territorial packs, with the dominant female having first dibs on food. They somehow hunt together at a speed of 4 cm per minute. Or how fish gather around a "Bobbit worm" and annoy iit until it until it retreats under the seafloor. And I certainly didn’t know a coconut crab, member of a species prone to talking off with odd objects, once stole a gun from a military guard. (OK, that's "alleged," but I don't care.)

The good doctor walks us through complex processes like the multiple survival mechanisms of the Saharan silver ant, which moves as fast as a human even when it’s 46.5 degrees (115 if you like your degrees in Fahrenheit). You’ll learn how herring communicate by farts, how the Mary River turtle breathes through its rear end, and Common swifts build muscle for their intercontinental journeys by doing push-ups with the tips of their wings.

 There’s a surprise on every page, and Bagniewska has done a monumental job of research. Extensive sourcing information for each essay and an index (which should not be a big deal, but some publishers no longer pay for it) complete a wonderful book. 

 Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

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