A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals by Tim Flannery

A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals Reviews

• 
  Kerfe

  A beautifully illustrated survey of 103 mammals, birds, and reptiles that have gone extinct since the year 1500. Flannery and Schouten provide geographical and historical background, giving a better understanding of the earth's continuing and irrevocable losses.
  
  Of course humans bear a large responsibility, and isolated ecosystems encountering humans and the other invasive species they bring with them are most vulnerable. There are many many species here that resided on islands.
  
  People change and destroy environments to suit their needs. This can result in direct loss of habitat, or breaks in the food chain that lead to an indirect species decline. Ecosystems have many threads needed to keep them whole.
  
  Animals are hunted for food, or fur and feathers, or by collectors, or those seeking trophies. Collectors, ironically, seem to have had a huge impact in some cases. But one of the biggest surprises to me was the role that rats escaping from docked ships have played in both the loss of other rodent species and even more often in the extinction of bird species. Of course other introduced species--foxes, cats, rabbits, weasels, snakes, owls, even cockroaches, have played a part in displacing native animals. But rats seem to have been the original and primary cause for many species' decline.
  
  The loss to the world's diversity is stunning. By pairing the words with detailed illustrations based on known descriptions and collected samples of these creatures, the authors make this point strongly. And we can't bring these animals back. As both witness and teaching tool, this book will hopefully reach enough hands and eyes to help save what remains.
• 
  John Nelson

  The introductory essay provides an overview of the phenomenon of human-caused extinction among wild animals. The author makes clear the point that this phenomenon has existed at least since Paleolithic times. As humans slowly expanded out of their original East African homelands, they brought extinction and death to species unable to adapt to this exotic new predator. In continental areas, losses were concentrated among large vertebrates, the so-called "charismatic megafauna" which excites people's imaginations. On islands, victims included smaller species such as flightless birds which had no defenses against humans or the pigs and rats they brought with them. Ironically, the part of the world least effected was Africa, probably because its wildlife had co-existed with humanity since the "naked apes" first had appeared, and therefore had time to adapt to the gradually increasing powers of humans.
  
  By the time modern sailors and market hunters appeared, there often was nothing more than a remnant population to be extinguished. For example, Stellar's Sea Cow - the world's largest sirenian, essentially a manatee the size of a small whale - originally was common throughout the North Pacific on both the Siberian and Alaskan coasts. By the time modern hunters appeared, it was confined to a small group of islands off the coast of Alaska. The last Stellar's Sea Cow was killed in 1768, just 27 years after Georg Stellar identified the species.
  
  Perhaps the most appalling extinctions were those of several species which met their final extermination at the hands of museum collectors eager to acquire a specimen before the species disappeared. If anyone in the nineteenth century should have known better, it was the patriarchs of the natural history museums.
  
  (Although the book does not mention it, a still-extant species, the Northern Elephant Seal, almost met the same fate when a hunter seeking to fill orders from museums around the world arrived at Guadalupe Island, Mexico and shot seven of the eight members of what was believed to be the species' last surviving population. Fortunately, several other individuals survived elsewhere on the island, and with stringent protection the species rebounded to a population of over 50,000. Today, the species as a whole is safe, and individual seals are threatened only by the population of Great White Sharks which has taken up residence in the area.)
  
  The reader then proceeds to the main portion of the book, which consists of natural history paintings of nearly 90 now-extinct species from around the world, together with a brief description of each species and how it became extinct. The selection necessarily is tilted toward species which became extinct during the past 125 years or so, and for which sufficient museum specimens and descriptions exist for the artist to determine what they looked like. Although not great art, these paintings are affecting for obvious reasons. Absent a Jurassic Park-style resurrection, no one will see any of them ever again.
• 
  Laurie

  Not really a book to read straight through, but this is a beautifully illustrated book of 103 different animals that have gone extinct sine 1492. Interesting, but most worth it for the illustrations.
  
  
• 
  Catherine

  Gorgeously illustrated, well-balanced, document of natural life and human history. Made me a bit wobbly and salty-eyed.
• 
  Steven Bennett

  A very early favorite that represents the dawn of a period in my life when I could never find enough information of extinct animals. It wasn't the fact that they are all gone that had me enraptured, it was the stories, the lives, the worlds they lived in. To remember them is just one tiny step toward preserving species that are no more.
  
  A Gap In Nature I've recommended to perhaps 100 people over the years. The illustrator is truly gifted, having made every painting of each species on par with the skill of Audubon & Gould. This book is one of the best for introducing yourself to the lives of extinct animals. Ultimately, it is not the goal of the book to focus the attention toward extinction itself, the book is far from depressing. That they are no more is only one element to their stories. It is that they lived & that is what should always be remembered.
  
  A beautiful book.
• 
  Bec

  What I learned from this book is how little humans know about extinct animals. The book is decently well-written, and the author obviously worked to carefully research each animal, but often even the cause of extinction is unknown, much less anything about the animal's behavior or place in the ecosystem. Flannery often points out how naturists themselves often caused the final demise of a species, by killing so many animals for their collections, and how the exponential effects of the careless introduction of ship-hopping rats was particularly destructive to island birds. The real draw of this book, though, are the gorgeous illustrations by Peter Schouten, which resonate with much more life than something that was apparently painted from a museum specimen.
• 
  Pauline

  The art work in "A Gap in Nature" is stunning. As you look at the pictures of the extinct animals and as you read the stories of how they became extinct it is hard not to get tears welling up in your eyes.
  
  A wonderful informative book that gives you a look at what our earth is sorely missing mostly through the ignorance of mankind.
  
• 
  Laura McLain

  Beautiful but depressing. Text by Tim Flannery and gorgeous paintings by Peter Schouten, describing extinct species, the vast majority of which extinctions were directly or indirectly caused by humans. The most depressing part is that the species featured are only:
  1. mammal, reptile, or bird;
  2. extinct between the years 1500-1999;
  3. have sufficient museum study specimens to allow a detailed illustration.
  That ignores hundreds-thousands-millions? of other species lost due to humans.
  
  Peter Schouten also illustrated
  End of the Megafauna: The Fate of the World's Hugest, Fiercest, and Strangest Animals, which features earlier-but-probably-also-human-related extinctions like ground sloths and mammoths.
• 
  Peacegal

  Astonishing paintings resurrect animals who no longer roam this Earth. (Where else can you learn about a creature called the "Terror Skink?") True, much of the content is depressing, especially when one considers how many species have died out thanks to utter human stupidity---the passenger pigeon comes to mind. It was a bit bothersome when the author projects fault for species extinction upon other animals, without clear evidence that this was indeed the case.
• 
  Donovan Colegrove

  Gorgeous pictures. The paintings were my favorite part of this book. Other than that, I found this book to be incredibly depressing. Basically, this book is an elegy to a bunch of species that no longer exist. I found that part of this book to be rather depressing. There's no happy ending to this book. But it is well written and interesting with great pictures, which is why I am giving it 5 stars.
• 
  spacenaiads

  The illustrations were beautiful, the writing plebeian. My only wish is that there was less focus on near-identical looking rodents and birds. It could have done with more variety in the subject matter.
• 
  Willow

  "Extinction must be regarded over the vastness of evolutionary time as the fate of all species--as unavoidable as death and taxes."
  
  This book was both beautiful and heartbreaking.
• 
  Kaushal Misra

  I got its reference from Bill Bryson's brilliant book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. The Authors have painstakingly demonstrated a tale of only a few of the species lost forever from planet earth in the last 150 years. Most were lost due to human action, or say havoc we caused either directly by eating, shooting, burning forests, clearing trees; or by introduction of cats, black rats, bacteria, viruses and because we never paid attention to bio diversity preservation despite being the lethal top predator with enough intelligence to comprehend. These have been brought back to life with scientific accuracy of the sketches that are based on museum artifacts, research, fossils and interviews.
  Why should you care? A striking example is island of Guam where the extinction has caused so much damage that there is much less flora and fauna, the trees have disappeared due to lack of pollination, and life is dull where once it thrived so richly. A lesson we can learn to further aid current diversity initiatives and the fact the we owe are survival to other species as well, instead of regretting later.
• 
  Jamieson

  A beautiful book that showcases extinct species that have gone extinct in modern times with the oldest being the Upland Moa (going extinct c. 1500) and the newest being the Atitlan Grebe (going extinct in 1989). Each species gets a beautiful painting and a page describing the creature and how it went extinct. In the back is a list of more extinct species that were left out because of either Taxonomic Uncertainty, Appearance Insufficiently Known (though two of these had specimens that were discovered as the book was going to print), or Extinction Not Certain. Most of the species are birds, though there a fair amount of mammals (mostly rodents and bats) and a handful of reptiles. A great book for the curious without being too technical or in-depth.
• 
  Mark

  Reading this wonderful picture book left me feeling contrasting emotions: (1) amazement with regard to all the biodiversity in our world, and (2) heartache with regard to the disappearance of so much of it. The illustrations for each extinct animal are beautiful; the half page explanations helpful while not being inundating. For many of the animals listed, I found myself looking up geographical locations or searching online for more information about the particular species. I would like to imagine that one day in a New Earth humanity could once again experience the uniqueness of these creatures without once again (in most cases) being an agent of their demise. A terrific read!
• 
  elstaffe

  I absolutely loved the art. I wish the text had more citations for some of the info, but it was well written and engaging. I could only read a few pages at a time not just because of my nonfiction-sleep association, but because it was a little heartbreaking. My biggest takeaways:
  - rats will screw up an ecosystem so fast. Stop drydocking at islands, guys.
  - outdoor cats have literally wiped out species. Stop it, non-mouser cat owners.
• 
  Alexis

  Really lovely drawings and blurbs about each animal. I would have liked more information and more consistent information, but of course that isn't always possible with these obscure animals. Overall a beautiful book.
• 
  Lisa

  I think this book disturbing because of the reality of the demise and destruction by humanity. It could easily be read as a horror, with its no nonsense, emotionless factual context.
• 
  Oliver Holm

  An impetus for misanthropy.
• 
  Jason

  A list of animals (with beautiful drawings) that disappeared after encounters with humans (mostly) - 1 animal disappeared due to a volcano
• 
  Sal

  Beautifully illustrated book! It is a testament to human destruction.
• 
  Daniela Lupsanu

  Really beautifully illustrated, it’s a shame it went out of print.
• 
  Kayla K

  Very depressing. The art was amazing, it makes me so sad we will never see these species again. At least this book was written to witness their existence
• 
  Rachel

  I seem to have a habit of reading books that make me feel sad. I found this an incredibly moving book. Superficially it is a nice-looking coffee table book with exquisitely detailed illustrations, each page devoted to one mammal, bird or reptile that is widely accepted to have gone extinct within the last 500 years. But this is more than just a nice picture book with accompanying text; it is a document of wilful neglect, downright persecution, human egotism and even bungled conservation attempts.
  
  The author states in the introduction that the selection of candidates for inclusion in this book (103 species) is just the tip of the extinction iceberg, so I’m feeling rather depressed before I’ve even got to the individual accounts. The dodo features early on with the second entry and I’ve already got my jaw on the floor as I read that, never-mind the living bird, we were even careless with the last complete stuffed dodo specimen. Mouldering in Oxford Ashmolean’s Museum in the 1750s someone decided to burn it and only the head and right foot were rescued; which, apart from all other considerations, probably accounts for the widely varied pictorial representations we have of the poor creature. Next up is Stellar’s Sea Cow, a magnificent creature reaching over eight metres in length, once common and widespread and hunted to extinction for food, oil and skins. The tone is set and each subsequent entry has its own brief and sad story to reveal. Memorable ones include the shameful history of the beautiful passenger pigeon, whose vast numbers darkened the skies as they flew past, shot in their thousands and in just a few decades hunted to extinction. Who can not feel shamed by the knowledge that we caused the demise of the most abundant bird on the planet and that we simply shot them out of the sky?
  
  Most moving of all though is the story of the stunning thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), persecuted to extinction in the wild and finally given legal protection in the same year it became extinct. The last remaining captive animal was a female kept in Beaumaris Zoo near Hobart. I’ll simply quote rather than paraphrase: “Personnel problems developed at the zoo during 1935-36, which meant the animals were neglected during the winter. The thylacine was left exposed night and day in the open, wire-topped cage, with no access to its sheltered den. September brought extreme and unseasonal weather to Hobart. Night-time temperatures dropped to below zero at the beginning of the month, when a little later they soared above 38 degrees Celsius. On the night of 7 September the stress became too much for the last thylacine and, unattended by her keepers, she closed her eyes on the world for the last time.” This image will stay with me for a long time and I hope the extract makes you want to read it.
  
  Rather poignantly the book mentions in its introduction China’s Yangtze River Dolphin which, at the time of publication (2001) had one known survivor. In 2007 this species was declared extinct. This is not ancient explorers wreaking havoc bringing disease-bearing rats which jump ship, nor is it starving convicts on isolated islands eating every last specimen, nor settlers clearing land and destroying unique habitat. Neither is this Victorian collectors carelessly shooting the last remaining individuals of a species, nor trophy hunters tracking down the few remaining survivors as a species freefalls to extinction. This is but one modern day example which happens to be high profile because it belongs to a family of ‘ambassador’ animals of the ‘cute or cuddly’ type. There are countless daily other extinctions of less glamorous or popular plants, invertebrates, amphibians and fish that have happened and are happening on our watch. Extinction is a natural part of life and is the ultimate fate of all species, including, I believe, us. But what humans have done and continue to do is massively accelerate the rate at which species are disappearing. I subscribe to the theory that we are on the edge of the sixth mass extinction and, to get back to this particular book, its content makes the possibility feel all the more real. I haven’t checked every entry for accuracy on the internet but it is an engaging and convincing read. Although it left me with an overwhelming sadness and sense of futility I am very glad I read this book.