The latest book releases for curious minds

THE WHO, WHAT, WHY OF ZOOLOGY

UP CLOSE TO THE WORLD’S MOST AMAZING ANIMALS

AUTHOR JULES HOWARD

ILLUSTRATOR LUCY LETHERLAND

PUBLISHER WIDE EYED EDITION

PRICE £12.99 / $19.99

RELEASE OUT NOW

Science presenter and author Jules Howard is inviting you to step into the shoes of a zoologist, arguably one of the most interesting and certainly well-travelled jobs on the planet. At least, if The Who, What, Why Of Zoology is anything to go by, then the science of studying animals involves swimming with blue whales in the Atlantic, catching invasive beetles in the Arctic, flying drones above the canopy of a Brazilian rainforest and wild beast-watching in just about any natural environment on Earth that you can think of. We suspect that the job involves a degree more laboratory work than what’s suggested here, but in the latter half of this book, even that’s made out to be a more fascinating part of being a zoologist than we imagined.

After a little history of this vocation that compares modern zoologists to those 200 years ago in Darwinian times, you’re taken on a tour of the planet to discover the kind of work that zoologists get up to – and the ‘who, what, why’, of course: what any sensible zoology practitioner should wear while scouring a hot desert, who calls the shrinking tropical coral reefs of the world their home, and why computers and advancing technology are so crucial to lab and field work. This science is inextricably woven into the study of the environment, so you can’t talk at any length about zoology today without mentioning climate change and the devastating damage that humans are doing to the natural world. The Who, What, Why Of Zoology details habitat destruction, extinction and human pollutants, a part of the discussion on the survival of various species. Zoology is very much front and centre here, so environmentalism is too – that’s just the world we live in today.