What can I say? I love Australian mammals.
★★★★★ – CALSPIE: 9.57
Title: Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals
Author: Jack Ashby
Genre: Non-Fiction / Natural History
Keywords: Australia / monotremes / marsupials / nature
First Published: 2022
Edition: Audio & hardback, published by William Collins in 2022
Audio narrator: Elliot Fitzpatrick
FROM THE BLURB: Think of a platypus: they lay eggs (that hatch into so-called platypups), they produce milk without nipples and venom without fangs and they can detect electricity. Or a wombat: their teeth never stop growing, they poo cubes and they defend themselves with reinforced rears. Platypuses, possums, wombats, echidnas, devils, kangaroos, quolls, dibblers, dunnarts, kowaris: Australia has some truly astonishing mammals with incredible, unfamiliar features. But how does the world regard these creatures? And what does that mean for their conservation?
***
This is one of those book I knew that I would love. because it is about a niche subject that I am interested in. The author writes passionately about a group of animals I love. Ever since spending some time in Australia as a young woman, I have been fascinated with Australian wildlife and maybe especially the monotremes; the platypus and the echidna. Although I have only seen a platypus in a zoo (it was smaller than I thought it would be), I had the pleasure of encountering a few echidnas in the wild in Tasmania.
Thus I cannot be completely unbias towards this book. I loved every page and I loved learning about these incredible animals. From the aforementioned monotremes to the lovable wombat, Australia has some of the best animals in my opinion. The sad thing is that so many marsupials are already extinct and that Australian wildlife is being wiped out like nowhere else on earth. That makes me incredibly sad, because how wonderful are these creatures!
Of course there is a colonialism narrative. There has to be. Much as I wished it was only about animals and their lives, the fact that colonialism changed everything for these animals and all inhabitants of Australia cannot be ignored. I also found the way narratives are changed and adjusted to suit a zeitgeist very interesting, as well as the history of some museum and research specimens.
All in all, this was a very me kind of book and I loved it. It is niche, but I think anyone who loves learning about animals would thoroughly enjoy this one.
4.75 out of 5 stars
CALSPIE: 9.57*
- Characters: 10
- Ambience: 10
- Language: 9
- Story: 9
- Pacing: 9
- Interest: 10
- Enjoyment: 10
*CALSPIE is designed for fiction, but I can roughly apply it to non-fiction books. I think of characters as subject. Ambience as the tone of the book. Story as the explanation. Pacing as the length and depth to which it goes into the subjects.
Lola Et La Vie 