Smithsonian Animal Cover

The Definitive Visual Guide to the World’s Wildlife

Smithsonian Institution’s ANIMAL book is probably the best animal reference book out there.  I was looking for a good book in this category and this is leaps and bounds better than the National Geographic book with a similar title.

This is by far the best and most used animal book i use.  I often visit zoos and frequent animal photos on Flickr and try to figure out animal names by seeing them and if i do not know what the animal the first thing i do is grab this book.

The main use of this book is to find out a little information about an animal that you are looking for more information about.  Smithsonian’s Animal book has over 2,000 animals in 6 main categories: Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians, Fish & Invertebrates.

This book was not compiled by one author, but by over 70 professional Zoologists, making sure that all the information in the Animal Book is up-to-date and accurate.  Also, the two editors-in-chief are two of the top Biologists in their field.

How the Book is Laid Out

Smithsonian Animal Book contents, click on the image to enlarge.

With the book divided into 6 areas that i listed above, each animal is given a small section of the book. For example, if you are looking for more information on on a certain kind of bat that you saw at a zoo, you would go to the content page (look at the image to the left for the contents) and try to find the bat area.  From there, you know to go to page 108 which has about 20+ bats listed.

From here, try to remember how the bat looked and just browse the pages to find the most similar bat.

You can really see how useful this book would be if you are a die hard animal fan like myself.  Obviously not all animals are listed, but most of the major animals are.  Some sub-species have 100’s of different animals so they can not list all of them so they will try to list the ones most different.

For example, the Gibbons page, under Primates and Apes, lists a total of 5 Gibbons: White-Handed Gibbon, Crested Gibbon, Siamang, White-checked Gibbon & Silvery Gibbon.  There are over 13 Gibbons known, so as you can see they do not list all of them, which is totally understandable.

Example Page and What is Inside

A page from the Smithsonian's Animal Book, click to enlarge

As you can see with the image on the right, there is a lot of information to be read using this book. The more popular animals will have half a page dedicated, while the lesser known animals will get 1/8th of a page.  Every animal listed will have atleast the following content, with an image for over 98% of the animals!

Listed below shows you what you can find out about each individual animal:

1. Scientific Name: Pan Troglodytes
2. Common Name: Chimpanzee
3. Length: 25- 35 in (63-90 cm)
4. Tail: None
5. Weight: 66 – 130lb
6. Social Unit: Pair
7. Location: West to Central Africa
8. Status: Critically endangered
9. Where they live: Trees
10. General Info: Chimpanzees live in communities of 15-120.  Subgroup composition varies almost hourly for activities such as grooming, feeding, traveling, and defending the territory.  This last task is usually carried out by adult male parties, who may attack and kill stray chimps from other communities.  Most daylight hours are spent eating – mainly fruits and leaves, but also flowers and seeds.  Raiding parties sometimes cooperate to kill and eat animal prey such as monkeys, birds, and small antelopes.  Social bonds may last years, but there are no long-term male-female bonds for reproduction.  The single young (rarely twins), born after a gestation period of 8 months, is fed, carried, and groomed by its mother for 3-4 years.  It is also learns her feeding techniques.  Chimpanzees not only use tools but also make them – for example, stripping side branches from a twig, which it uses to scoop out termites from their nest.  The 2 chimpanzee species are our closest living relatives, and their intelligence, range of emotions, and communication and learning skills have made them valuable to animal trainers, collectors, and researchers.  They are also killed for the bushmeat trade.
11. Photo: Sitting Chimpanzee, vocalizing chimp, nesting chimps, map of where they are found in Africa.

Other Content found in the Smithsonian Animal Book

Besides the obvious use of the book to learn more about individual animals, there is plenty of other very informative information! Key areas of the book which are described below:  Animal Groups, Behavior, Animals in Danger, Conservation, Habitats, Evolution and more!

Animal Groups. Four pages that summarize in beautiful color the classification scheme used in the book.  I recommend getting familiar with this section when trying to understand what makes animals different and similar. This will let you see which animals are grouped together and how the book is laid out.  For example, you will see  Primates as a category, Monkeys & Apes as a sub-category, and Monkeys listing 3 families and 242 species, while Apes have 2 families and 21 species.

Animal Behavior. An introduction to what makes animals different by the way that each individual animal does certain things.  Behavior can be seen as a simple actions, such as how it eats or cleans itself, to highly complex actions such as hunting in a group, courting a mate or building a nest.

Animals in Danger. This section of Smithsonian Animal explains how animals have become endangered, what humans have done to destroy the habitats and animals themselves, and which animals are on the brink of extinction.

Animal Conservation. A conversation on what you and humans can do to help preserve animals and their habitats. Some of the topics in this section include: Captive breeding, animal appeal, controlling incomers, legal protection and commercial exploitation.

Habitats. One of the largest sections of the book, this is a super informative chapter that teaches you the different places on the earth and what makes them special.  The different habitats covered are: Grassland, Desert, Tropical Forest, Temperate Forest, Coniferous Forest, Mountains, Polar Regions, Freshwater, Oceans, Coasts and Coral Reefs.  Each individual habitat gets a few pages of explanations of what kind of plants and animals live in that region, with an image of that type of area and where the animal would live in that area.

Evolution. One of the most interesting things about animals is how suibtle the differences can be between many different animals in the same group.  An example would be how many different kind of dogs there are.  With dogs this is an example of artificial selection, compared to natural selection, which is a special form of evolution.  All dogs are related to the Grey Wolf, but humans breed dogs for certain features which is called artificial selection.  This section will inform you on evolution, extinction, species and speciation and much much more!

Summary of this Amazing book

As you can see, there are many great things about this book.  I highly recommend this book to all of you animal lovers because of the amazing ammount of information found within the 600+ pages.