Wild Cats

28. Wild Cats: Capturing The Natural Spirit Of These Amazing Animals by Mike and Peggy Briggs

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Fantastic book full of color photographs of all sorts of big cats from all over the world. Tigers, lions, jaguars, leopards, lynxes, margays, ocelots, jaguarundis, ... You name the wild cat, it's probably in here.

The bulk of the photos are full page images. Though the captions often describe what the animals eat, there are few photographs depicting the kills.

The captions, by the way, are awesome. If you had an elementary or middle school student doing a report on big cats, this would be a great resource. They cover the sizes of the different species, what they eat, where they live, how far/high many of them can leap or jump, folklore related to some, and how many are left in the wild.

It's heartbreaking that nearly all of the species are near extinction. I knew some were endangered, but it's really all but one or two species. And that can directly be blamed on us. When you read the diminishing population numbers from decade to decade and year to year for the tigers, genocide is the word that comes to mind (at least mine). Whatever variation of that word would apply to animals would apply here. Extermination, perhaps.

The book doesn't get preachy about it. It just conveys that these are beautiful endangered animals. If we don't protect them and their habitats, more will become extinct.

(On a side note, I'm not sure what it is this year, but I keep reading books that aren't in GoodReads. Keep having to add them from scratch. Sorry that I didn't see a picture of its cover anywhere; it's very cool.)


A year ago on TTaT: Life of Art SitRep #69 Lost Weekend