Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History

by Whitney Barlow Robles, Daniela Acitelli (reader)

A compelling and innovative exploration of how animals shaped the field of natural history and its ecological afterlives
 
Can corals build worlds? Do rattlesnakes enchant? What is a raccoon, and what might it know? Animals and the questions they raised thwarted human efforts to master nature during the so-called Enlightenment—a historical moment when rigid classification pervaded the study of natural history, people traded in people, and imperial avarice wrapped its tentacles around the globe. Whitney Barlow Robles makes animals the unruly protagonists of eighteenth-century science through journeys to four spaces and ecological the ocean, the underground, the curiosity cabinet, and the field. Her forays reveal a forgotten lineage of empirical inquiry, one that forced researchers to embrace uncertainty. This tumultuous era in the history of human-animal encounters still haunts modern biologists and ecologists as they struggle to fathom animals today.
 
In an eclectic fusion of history and nature writing, Robles alternates between careful historical investigations and probing personal narratives. These excavations of the past and present of distinct nonhuman creatures reveal the animal foundations of human knowledge and show why tackling our current environmental crisis first requires looking back in time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, History, Audiobook, Biology, Animals

Audio CD

First published November 21, 2023

Reviews

[Luísa Andrade]

In "Curious Species", Robles revisits eighteenth-century natural history through four animals – corals, rattlesnakes, fish, and raccoons – to suggest something less obvious: science has never been only a story of humans observing nature, but also of animals interfering with the very process of knowledge. Throughout the book, these species appear less as objects of study and more as presences that redirect, frustrate, and reshape human curiosity.

The narrative architecture is, deliberately or not, irregular. Robles moves between episodes from Enlightenment natural history and her own experiences in the present, bringing together centuries and geographies through transitions that are not always smooth. Curiously, this structural roughness hardly undermines the reading experience, since the material itself is intellectually rich enough to sustain the journey.

Each animal opens a distinct field of reflection. Corals that confused naturalists by collapsing the boundary between plant and animal; rattlesnakes whose subterranean lives resisted the colonial project of cataloguing; fish literally flattened onto paper so they could fit within the pages of taxonomy; raccoons whose inquisitive hands challenge human exceptionalism. In each case, Robles suggests that scientific knowledge was shaped as much by human imagination as by the stubborn resistance of living matter itself.

The book also stands out for the author’s perspective. Rather than adopting the “neutral” tone that often characterizes histories of science, Robles allows a personal voice to guide the narrative and openly addresses the political dimensions of that past: colonialism, invisible labor, and the racial hierarchies embedded in the construction of taxonomy. This perspective lends the book critical depth and broadens the scope of its reflections.

The result is an intellectually stimulating natural history filled with unexpected ideas. Even with an imperfect structure, the book leaves a lasting impression by developing a narrative that restores to animals some of the agency that scientific tradition has long taken from them.

[Corvus]

DNF this one. Not bad but was telling me familiar info in a style that wasn't for me.

[Bronwyn]

This book was filled with history about natural history that I didn't know and explicit repeated acknowledgement of the contributions of enslaved people and servants whose names we will never know. This was the first popular science-ish book to do this work, and I appreciated Robles' dedication to naming this labor over and over. She discusses a couple examples of indigenous knowledge, and I would have liked more.

The narrative is a little uneven with alternating chapters about the history of the animal (she focuses on corals, rattlesnakes, fish, and raccoons) and her experience learning about it. There is a quite a bit of philosophy throughout in - for example, the history of violence implicit in many museum collections contrasting with the invaluable and irreplaceable records they contain. But it was difficult to parse what Robles thought was most important in those sections.

I will be pulling information from this book and the works it cites for the units on how science gets done that anchor all my classes.

[Јас Лично]

This was a perplexing read, housing fascinating information within an irritatingly tedious presentation. Despite the author's evident depth of knowledge, the dense prose, excessive jargon, and lack of a cohesive narrative hinder engagement. I was torn between moments of enlightenment and frustration, making the book a challenging read.

[Catharine]

Fascinating inter-disciplinary read--as hard to characterize as a raccoon (!) Suited my interests in natural history and the history of western science. It contains a dusting of epistemology that could have been made more explicit, although the variety of topics addressed already made this a bit of an effort to hold together. More enjoyable than I expected.

[Olivia Bertelsen]

2.5 rounded down.
I have a pretty solid science and biology background, but I just found this book hard to follow and I kept getting confused.
I might have enjoyed it and understood it better if I had read a physical copy instead of listening to the audiobook. While I did find it interesting, I just don't think this style of audiobook works for me.

[Geof Sage]

This book could not decide what it wanted to be: memoir, history, or science and all three parts suffered. Also, too much emphasis on COVID at random parts for the rest of the content in the book.

[Lilac]

Interesting topic, but I couldn't get into it. Not my style

[Leila]

*4.5
Incredibly interesting and exciting look at some relics of natural history collections and of natural history itself!