Product Description

A bestiary for the 21st century from the writers of the hit BBC show 'QI'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1636 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-04
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Synopsis
Join the QI team for an off-road safari through a hundred of the most interesting members of the animal kingdom, armed with illuminating illustrations and diagrams by award-winning artist Ted Dewan. Meet the water bears that can live in suspension for hundreds of years, the parasite carried by your cat that makes men grumpy and women promiscuous, and the woodlouse that drinks through its bottom. Marvel at elephants that walk on tiptoe, pigs that shine in the dark, and woodpeckers that have ears on the end of their tongues. If you still think a pangolin is a musical instrument, that hyenas are dogs, or that sheep are pointless and stupid, "The Book of Animal Ignorance" has arrived just in time.

From the Publisher
Includes a Foreword by Stephen Fry, and a Forepaw by Alan Davies.

From the Author
Hello, Lloyd & Mitchinson here. In case you hadn't spotted it, this is the second QI book, designed to fit snugly next to The Book of General Ignorance.

What is it? It's about animals and how little we know about them. It paints a picture of an unfamiliar world in which elephants can't run, geese mourn their dead, koalas don't drink, leeches have 34 brains, lobsters live for a century, mice sing while having sex, monkeys pay to look at porn, spiders can fly, termites mate for life and worms get addicted to nicotine. It will make you look at our furred- feathered-scaled-creepy-crawly-slimy-wiggly, friends with new-found respect.

Almost none of this material has appeared on the QI TV show before. And, better still, it features 400 diagrams and cartoons by the brilliant Ted Dewan: artist, author, polymath and engineer (we nearly called it The Book of Animal Engineering) plus a Foreword by Stephen Fry (see Treasures, National) and a Forepaw by Alan Davies (see Animals, Best impressions of).

As Mr Fry so elegantly puts it: 'Animals are the oats in the QI muesli, the basic black frock in our wardrobe, the baseline to our phat phunky dub...'

Customer Reviews

Fabulous
Fabulous fabulous fabulous fabulous fabulous book. Fabulous. Ideal for reading to your other half when lying in bed after an overly heavy meal.

Animals or Robots?!
Thanks, Jon, for getting me onto Peter Cave's Robots as well as Stephen Fry's Animals. Both books were great and very good for the enquiring mind. Thoroughly recommended.

Animal Thoughts move on!


I did enjoy Stephen Fry's book which certainly got me thinking.
However, something which has done so even more recently is Peter Cave's Can a Robot be Human. If you want to really get your cells working buy the two! Both are extremely readable and remind you that using your brain can be fun!