Extraordinary Animals Revisited

by Karl Shuker

This delightful book is the long-awaited, greatly-expanded new edition of one of Dr Karl Shuker's much-loved early volumes, Extraordinary Animals Worldwide. It is a fascinating celebration of what used to be called romantic natural history, examining a dazzling diversity of animal anomalies, creatures of cryptozoology, and all manner of other thought-provoking zoological revelations and continuing controversies down through the ages of wildlife discovery. Handsomely supplemented by a vista of enchanting Victorian engravings to evoke the spirit of the period from which the inspiration for this book is drawn, Extraordinary Animals Revisited offers an enthralling introduction to a veritable menagerie of truly astonishing beasts: From singing dogs to serpent kings, pseudo-plesiosaurs to quasi-octopuses, hounds with two noses and birds with four wings, the Sandwell Valleygator and New Mexico's medicine wolf, cobras that crow and snake gods that dance, giant solifugids and rodent colossi, devil-birds and devil-pigs, furry woodpeckers and marsupial hummingbirds, archangel feathers and the scales of the Eden serpent, scorpion-stones and elephant-pearls, tales of the peacock's tail, parachuting palm civets, missing megapodes, blue rhinoceroses, glutinous globsters, anomalous aardvarks, a platypus from Colorado, man-sized spiders from the Congo, de Loys's lost Venezuelan ape, Margate's marine elephant, a flying hedgehog called Tizzie-Wizzie, a mellifluous mollusc called Molly, India's once (and future?) pink-headed duck, the squeaking deathshead, the vanquished bird-god of New Caledonia, and much much more - all waiting to amaze and amuse, a pageant of natural and unnatural history.

Genres: Cryptozoology, Natural History, Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Animals

328 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2007

About the author

Dr. Karl P.N. Shuker BSc PhD FRES FZS is a zoologist who is internationally recognised as a world expert in cryptozoology (the scientific investigation of mystery animals whose existence or identity has yet to be formally ascertained), as well as in animal mythology and allied subjects relating to wildlife anomalies and inexplicabilia. He obtained a BSc (Honours) degree in pure zoology at the University of Leeds (U.K.), and a PhD in zoology and comparative physiology at the University of Birmingham (U.K.). He is now a freelance zoological consultant and writer, living in the West Midlands, England.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

EXTRAORDINARY ANIMALS REVISITED — KINDLE EDITION

Please do note that for Extraordinary Animals Revisited my one star rating is NOT AT ALL about the books’s contents, is definitely and certainly NOT IN ANY WAY dealing with author Karl Shuker’s presented text but is one hundred percent and ONLY regarding the absolutely horrid, totally reader unfriendly fashion in which Extraordinary Animals Revisited has unfortunately been rendered into an e-book (Kindle) format.

For honestly, my review actually could NOT even be about the themes and contents of Extraordinary Animals Revisited as no indeed, I would not even know what Karl Shuker’s printed words have to say and whether his Extraordinary Animals Revisited presents itself as scientifically sound or as mostly cryptozoological fantasy, since in the Kindle format, the text of Extraordinary Animals Revisited is printed so abominably tiny, so massively minuscule and blurry that I have not been able to read the words presented with any kind of ease and mostly have been visually confronted with and by completely, totally illegible blobs.

And while I do feel just a trifle guilty ranking a book that I could not peruse and finish, and that yes, I in fact could actually not really even start because of a totally reader unfriendly Kindle format with one star, I still firmly stand by my one star rating. For indeed, there are far too many horrible and painful on the eyes (and as such unable to be read due to tiny and often wishy-washy print) Kindle books out there for me to simply ignore how problematic and yes how completely visually unappealing and impossible to peruse normally (and even with my strongest reading glasses, even with a magnifying glass) the Kindle edition of Karl Shuker’s Extraordinary Animals Revisited has been (and to totally and loudly, vociferously warn potentially interested readers away and yes, recommending most strongly for them to instead look for the traditional dead tree version of Extraordinary Animals Revisited, albeit that it does appear as though it is not all that easily and readily available).