Oops and SMALL and TALL TALES

First of all – oops. Last night’s episode of “Agents” is called “Nothing Personal” and it aired on April 29, not May 5, as it is self-evident. My bad, I had a rather exciting evening.

Second, I want to talk about a book called SMALL and TALL TALES of EXTINCT ANIMALS. This is a rather interesting book, albeit published primarily for children, about extinct animals, of course. It discusses 27 species of extinct birds and mammals – the odd animal out is Lonesome George the giant Galapagos tortoise, who is a reptile instead.

The book’s design is simple: it got a prologue, a map of where the extinct animals were located before they died out, the animals’ entries, a glossary of some of the more obscure terms and...not exactly an epilogue, but a ‘frieze’ of the animals, done in black silhouettes over a more colorful background – a rarity in many books.

Let me elaborate. The animals’ entries consist on one half, of a comic that tells some sort of an ancient myth or legend, makes some sort of an anecdote, depicts just how exactly the animal in question died out and why, etc. The other half is essentially a fact-box that depicts the animal’s statistics – just how big and heavy it was, what were its’ particular features (the horny plates of Steller’s sea cow,  the giant claws of the giant ground sloth, the tail of the Glyptodont, etc). Artwork dominates the text in the book, no doubt, but the half-comic half-factbox works – it conveys enough information for its audience (especially the younger readers) for them to understand what is going on (the animal has died out and this is why) and to be, hopefully, intrigued enough to continue to read about the modern animal extinctions and perhaps later on to do something about it – join the World Wildlife Fund or something...

The book’s other features are slightly more ambiguous. The book’s map, depicting where each extinct animal lived is rather simple – it is an ecological map, not a political one, it just shows the relative ecosystems of the world – the deserts, the jungles, the mountains – and where each animal lived. It is also colored-coded – the Americas’ animals are outlined by a different color than Africa’s or Eurasia’s or Oceania’s. The book itself is divided into four parts – Americas, Africa, Eurasia, Oceania – but there is no warning, no specified separation between the parts: for example, you flip over the page with Lonesome George and without any warning you’re suddenly dealing with African extinct animals instead. It is not very clever and subtracts any possibility of any intermediate conclusions being presented in EXTINCT ANIMALS. (The final conclusion is something else and will be discussed below.)

Second, there is the glossary. It discussed such terms as biodiversity, extinction and myths & legends. True, EXTINCT ANIMALS aims at children readers, rather than the grown-ups, but by now (the book was first published in 2010, translated into English in 2012) even children probably know what biodiversity or myths & legends mean. Thus, the glossary is probably unnecessary and again, it actually subtracts from the overall value of the book. 

Finally, the frieze in question. It creates a semi-panoramic timeline view of the 27 animals described by EXTINCT ANIMALS as it was said before, and it also acts as a conclusion of sort: it shows how the described animals have died out throughout the ages, as a rule – after coming into contact with men. This frieze just emphasizes the book’s message – all of these animals died out because of human action – one last time and is a rather effective medium, especially for a younger audience.

But what about the book’s message? Were humans responsible for all of the extinctions? Perhaps unintended by the makers of EXTINCT ANIMALS – Hélène Rajcak and Damien Laverdunt – show several waves of animal extinction during the last 15 000 years or so. The oldest mammals, the so-called mega-fauna of Pleistocene (and Pliocene, by extension), from the giant echidna of Australia to the woolly mammoth of Siberia (Eurasia) died out when humans were just beginning to make their mark on the world and probably had nothing to do with the following extinctions. However, the animals that died out during the last 2 000 years – yes, they probably perished due to human actions, whether you’re talking about the Sicilian dwarf elephant and the European lion (a subspecies of the modern lion, actually) or Chinese river dolphin and Lonesome George the giant tortoise, undoubtedly. During the Pleistocene, humans were still not numerous enough to affect the world around them – but during the Holocene (a la right now) they most certainly are: the frieze shows how the extinction process speeds up from the 1700s-1800s. 

Thus, the message of EXTINCT ANIMALS implies that and suggests that humans have to clean up their act or the Chinese river dolphin and Lonesome George (who died on June 24, 2012, two years after the book was originally published by Gecko Press) will be succeeded by more mammals, birds, reptiles and other animals – a message worthy enough to be thought about and to be, possibly, prevented.