This book is fantastic! Perfect for dipping in and out of when you get a spare moment to read. The facts are really interesting and written in a clear and entertaining manner that makes you forget you’re reading a factual book. This book is also really funny and I LOVE the anecdotes about the history of the animals and the truths that you don’t hear about often. I didn’t realise how interesting an Eel could be until I read this!

A really exceptional popular science book. Filled with fascinating and hilarious tidbits about some of our most misunderstood animals. Fans of Mary Roach will love this book!

What a brilliantly fun book. Providing a combination of the history of the natural history of various animals alongside details of their habits and quirks. Here we learn of the ways that people have thought about animals through the ages especially their misconceptions so that you get an idea of how dynamic science is and that we are discovering more all the time. The book is written with a humorous style and you can feel the love for animals that the author has, I admire the way the author uses good scientific facts and relates them in an extremely accessible way. I would encourage Lucy Cooke to write more as I have learnt so much and enjoyed doing so too.

#TheTruthAboutAnimals #NetGalley

I found the description of this book a bit misleading. I was expecting to learn quirky facts about animals, and there was a bit of that, but mostly this book is about myths, misunderstandings, and the foibles of those who have studied animals. It is interesting, but not what I was anticipating.

The book is written in a snarky tone that is fun in small doses but wore on me after a while. Example: “Alas, Pliny’s asexual friction was nothing but fiction.” Also, she goes off on some odd tangents at times that were probably supposed to be funny, but again, I found it a bit wearying as the book progressed.

The author includes plenty of notes and an extensive bibliography for those who want to explore the subject matter further. She clearly did a great deal of research in preparing this book.

If you like books about the history of science and you don’t mind authors with a rambling style, you may enjoy this book more than I did.

Thanks to Hachette Book Group for providing me with an ARC through NetGalley that I volunteered to review.

An illuminating, hilarious, thought provoking and at times truly uncomfortable read about the odd and sometimes deviant behaviour of some of the celebrities of the animal world, including us humans.

This was an entertaining book! I have heard many of these misconceptions about the animals Ms. Cooke writes about. Good for her and the taking up the poor misunderstood sloths cause! I enjoyed reading this book, it makes a nice browse in the evening. I intend to read chapters I have an interest in and return to others at my leisure, after all, each chapter is about a particular animal, so no reason to rush through! I think any animal lover will enjoy this story. Might make a great gift! Kids who love animals may enjoy it also- 6th grade up. Great book!

Any animal lover would love this book full of fascinating facts about animals all over the world from the exotic to the everyday

Definitely took me a while longer to read as all the animals were very interesting to conserve. Its interesting to learn about what we consider some animals to be "lazy" but it plays a role in nature for them to be the way they are. I requested this book merely out of curiosity and I am very happy I was given the opportunity to expans my literature on different topics.

I highly recommend this book to everyone to educate themselves more about our animals and their true nature they evolved throughout the years!

Unfortunately I had to DNF the book as the author was incredibly annoying to read and if I did finish it I'm sure my rating would have been very low for the way author was making it sound. I am a huge lover of animals but this was too much even for me.

I love learning about nature and animals. The world is so precious. This book was very factual and very interesting. I'd recommend this one to my Dad, who's actually a professional on the subject.

I LOVED this book!! As someone who gets a kick out of random facts, this was my kind of book. The formatting and weird non-capitalization of letters took some getting used to, but the content was great.

"The Truth About Animals" is a non-fiction book about the various misunderstandings naturalists and scientists have made about a variety of animals which has often led to public misunderstandings about these animals.

Some examples include: the laziness of sloths (actually they are very adept at conserving energy and surviving their environments; the general evilness of hyenas, vultures and bats - they all have their own special way of surviving their environments and communicating with their species.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading every chapter which was centred on a specific animal. At times it was tough to read about scientific experimentation that took place back in the day but those experiments did happen so it is important to read about. However, the author did not focus on that for the most part. She mostly focussed on how our understanding of animals has changed through the ages.

It was, indeed, fascinating to read about.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of Mary Roach (the author infuses a similar sense of humour as Roach to this book) and/or is interested in the animal world.

I'd like to thank the publishers who sent me a digital review copy of this book on net galley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is delightful to read. Every chapter discusses one animal and goes into related myths and misunderstood traits, the history of research into the animal and what is known about its behavior today. Never before have I learned so many random facts in just one book. And I never knew I could be interested in baby eels, sloth poop or bat genitalia. Also: I am now fascinated by hyenas.

Do not read this book on the bus or the train when surrounded by school children who may peak a look over your shoulder and grab an eye full of hyenas mating! Otherwise a brilliant book! It is really fascinating and I can't believe that I have lived all of my life so far being so oblivious to some of the truths about these wonderful animals. Lucy Cooke tells captivating and extremely funny stories about the past scientific theories about a great variety of animals - painting a very funny story of the history of natural science. With the gift of modern scientific knowledge it leaves you laughing and puzzling over the strange stories some of these scientists dreamed up.

The photos are amazing but mainly it is written in such an entertaining way there is no doubt that anyone with the slightest interest in sloths, bats or frogs would really enjoy this. And it gives a great sneak peak into the life of a natural history documentary maker as well as she has a funny collection of stories from all of her past experience. I really recommend you pick up a copy!

<i>ARC received from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review </i>

This is a fascinating read dispelling some ancient myths about animals and chock full of interesting facts written with a large dose of humour.

It also made me look at the whole Chengdu panda sanctuaries (on my wishlist to visit) in a whole new light - can pandas really be off the endangered list if all we have done is successfully breed them in a captive environment and they cannot be successfully reintroduced to the wild?

A must read for all animal lovers!

I learned a lot and I had fun. I think that's probably the best thing one can say about non-fiction. I'm no stranger to the idea that animals have salacious sex lives, and I've long rather liked vultures and yet I learned so much from Cooke. She seems to have really zeroed in on what is missing from pop-zoology texts and found her niche of fun facts and "darker" sides of popular animals. Her writing is clear, she is neither too in the narrative nor out of it, and her tone is always curious and fun-loving.

This is the book I have been waiting for my entire life. I love crazy animal stories as much as the next person, but The Truth About Animals brought a whole new level to the genre that has yet to be reached. This book dives into the forgotten history and little known facts about some of the most misunderstood animals, in order to increase awareness and respect for some of the most amazing organisms that roam the planet (and yes, before you ask, the moose was indeed one of them).

What struck me immediately was the level of detail and the artful manner in which Cooke (a biologist and who studied under Richard Dawkins at Oxford) tells the stories of “less delightful” animals. She begins the book with the tale of the search for the eel’s gonads, which I had no idea were even missing. The mature humor was astounding and left me literally laughing out loud in the middle of busy train station.

And it only gets better from there. While most animals touched on fall under the vertebrate category and very few outside of the mammals, I found this read to be both engrossing and delightfully entertaining. I can easily say that this book ranks top for me in animal fact books.

*I would like to thank the publisher, author, and NetGalley for providing an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

I enjoyed reading this book. It was entertaining from a scientific perspective as Lucy Cooke brings to light some of the most ridiculous misconceptions held by an old society. Taking bonkers suspicions to the max, Cooke informs us in minute detail about the elusive search for eel genitals which took up more research time than necessary, self-castrating beavers, iron-eating ostriches, and a range of laughable things.

Lucy Cooke is a biologist and TV presenter who writes this book to help upgrade the reputation of some much maligned animals including the sloth, bat, and hippo. She begins with historical accounts, some of which are amusing, and then brings the science up to date. She is not a riveting author nor a comedian, but the book is well written science-for the layman.

Not all of the chapters are equally interesting, but all are worth reading. I enjoyed the natural history most, especially about the bird migrations. In 1789, in "The Natural History of Selborne" (a favorite book of mine that you would benefit from reading) Gilbert White discusses the question of what birds do in winter. He comes down on the side of hibernation in caves and burrows. That this debate persisted among English scientists surprised me because in England scientists could interview sailors and folks living on the southern shore who would observe the annual migrations which would be less apparent to people living in the center of the European continent. The biology of eels is the most interesting. From an historical perspective, there is no way that scientists in previous centuries could have guessed its complexity.

Before I started this review I took a look at some non-5* reviews online and I was surprised by some of the comments. Do people not know that animals tortured in early science research? (I'm not arguing that they are not now, but that 200 years ago ethical standards for animal treatment were more retrograde than those of today.) Do they not know that we eat animals? If these things upset you, please don't read this book. Please do not give it to sensitive younger children.

This is a book filled with very interesting information about a select set of animals including sloths, bats, penguins, hippos, frogs, eels, pandas, chimpanzees, hyenas and others. Lot of the information is lesser known, and makes for engrossing reading.

For instance, hippos genetic makeup shows a closer match with whales rather than any land animal. How do vultures promptly appear when animals die? And so many other interesting bits of information.

Lucy Cooke closes the book with some excellent passages about how in our thinking we have distanced ourselves so much from animals. We think of them as things which exist for our use, and have license to perform cruel experiments on. The passages in the book on the cruel experiments performed on bats to satisfy our curiosity on how they navigate and using frogs for pregnancy tests is sad to read. Pandas for their cute appearance have become a political industry where they are artificially birthed in captivity and don’t lead very satisfying lives.

While the book for the large part makes for excellent and very engrossing reading, it would have benefited from some more material on what motivates the behaviour of each of these animals.