The Golden Mole And Other Vanishing Treasure

by Katherine Rundell

Genres: Science
Pages: 208
Rating:

Synopsis:

In The Golden Mole, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's strangest and most awe-inspiring animals, including pangolins, wombats, lemurs and seahorses.

But each of these animals is endangered. And so, this most passionately persuasive and sharply funny book is also an urgent, inspiring clarion call: to treasure and act - to save nature's vanishing wonders, before it is too late.

Katherine Rundell’s The Golden Mole gives us snapshot discussions of various rare creatures, often ones we don’t know much about, and which we’re in danger of losing due to the human impact on the world (climate change, habitat loss, hunting, etc). Each chapter is illustrated at the start with one image of the animal discussed, and takes up just a few pages — it’s a very lightweight taster session about the animals, rather than anything in depth.

Her anecdotes are often charming, and her enthusiasm for the animals is clear. In the end, I found it more tantalising than anything, as I love to read in-depth about all kinds of things, and no sooner would I get interested than the chapter would be over. Still, there are some fascinating mental images (I like the queue of hermit crabs holding claws, in size order, ready to climb into each others’ shells — though I think I knew about that already) and anecdotes, which mostly seem true enough when I check up on the sources.

In the end, it’s fun but very light. If you already know a lot about conservation and endangered animals, then perhaps it’s just a bit too frothy — but if you’re looking for some light reading with some curious “did you know” facts to share, it’d work. (Did you know that someone trained a capybara as a “guide dog”?)

Rating: 3/5