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The Hunt for the Golden Mole: All Creatures Great & Small and Why They Matter
This story is a quest for an animal so rare that a sighting has never been recorded. The Somali golden mole was first described in 1964. It is mentioned in a number of textbooks, but the sole evidence for its existence is a tiny fragment of jawbone found in an owl pellet. Intrigued by this elusive creature, and what it can tell us about extinction and survival, Richard Girling embarks on a hunt to find the animal and its discoverer - an Italian professor who he thinks might still be alive...
Richard's journey comes at a time when one species - our own - is having to reconsider its relationship with every other. It is also a quest for knowledge. He delves into the history of exploration and the tall tales of the great hunters, explores the science of collecting and naming specimens, traces the development of the conservation movement and addresses the central issues of extinction and biodiversity. The Hunt for the Golden Mole is an engaging story which illustrates the importance of every living creature, no matter how small, strange or rare. It is a thoughtful, shocking, inspiring and important book.
Richard's journey comes at a time when one species - our own - is having to reconsider its relationship with every other. It is also a quest for knowledge. He delves into the history of exploration and the tall tales of the great hunters, explores the science of collecting and naming specimens, traces the development of the conservation movement and addresses the central issues of extinction and biodiversity. The Hunt for the Golden Mole is an engaging story which illustrates the importance of every living creature, no matter how small, strange or rare. It is a thoughtful, shocking, inspiring and important book.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published June 5, 2014
21 people are currently reading
329 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 14, 2014
4.5
Imagine a work colleague asking you what you were going to do for your summer holidays and you replied that you were off to Africa to shoot a few elephants, tigers and possible even a rhino. Ridiculous and appalling of course – but it wasn’t long ago that holiday snaps would feature ‘hunters’ standing proudly next to their kill.
And not long ago that giraffes were shot purely because their tails made good fly swishes.
I wouldn’t classify myself as particularly animal loving but to read about the hundreds of species that are hurtling towards extinction is truly shocking. Of course the public get behind campaigns to save the iconic (and usually large) creatures such as elephants and whales. But Girling argues that everything, from the tiniest shrew or insect, is equally as important.
His book starts off with a mission to find out more about the Somali Golden Mole. This creature’s very existence is to be found purely down to a fragment of jawbone found in an owl pellet!
Girling is a wonderful story teller, with a passionate belief in the importance of every living thing, however big or small. His voice remains steady until we reach the chapter on ivory, a chapter that made me want to weep. He apologises at the end – “I’m afraid that my voice in this chapter may have become somewhat shrill”.
This book made a huge impact on me. I finish some books and instantly forget them as I move onto the next. But this one will stay with me.
Imagine a work colleague asking you what you were going to do for your summer holidays and you replied that you were off to Africa to shoot a few elephants, tigers and possible even a rhino. Ridiculous and appalling of course – but it wasn’t long ago that holiday snaps would feature ‘hunters’ standing proudly next to their kill.
And not long ago that giraffes were shot purely because their tails made good fly swishes.
I wouldn’t classify myself as particularly animal loving but to read about the hundreds of species that are hurtling towards extinction is truly shocking. Of course the public get behind campaigns to save the iconic (and usually large) creatures such as elephants and whales. But Girling argues that everything, from the tiniest shrew or insect, is equally as important.
His book starts off with a mission to find out more about the Somali Golden Mole. This creature’s very existence is to be found purely down to a fragment of jawbone found in an owl pellet!
Girling is a wonderful story teller, with a passionate belief in the importance of every living thing, however big or small. His voice remains steady until we reach the chapter on ivory, a chapter that made me want to weep. He apologises at the end – “I’m afraid that my voice in this chapter may have become somewhat shrill”.
This book made a huge impact on me. I finish some books and instantly forget them as I move onto the next. But this one will stay with me.
May 21, 2021
A little more sidetracking than was proper to keep up on, from someone who enjoys meandering in these kind of books.
Apart from that, what kept taking me out of the story was his repeated insistence on absolving his moral issues with eating meat by becoming an apologist for the industry, using the same key concepts such as dominion, that religion which he decries in the rest of the book, uses as a reason for man to be above other animals and entitled to use and discard them.
A rather hypocritical arrangement in this and declaring big game hunters of the old age as products of their time, to not be judged for their atrocities by today's standards, to turn around and use the same argument in order to keep eating meat guilt free.
The book is scattered with this sort of thing, while at first an interesting discussion on the moral conundrum and where to draw the line, what acts are okay, and what are not, in the pursuit of science, in the old days, it becomes a self validating industry apologist by the same method of thought of the times, as well as the previously mentioned excuse.
This logic overlaid with twists to ensure he feels no guilt or contemplates the nature of why there might be too much more than surface level, undermines the rest of the logic used without this snarl and in truth for me, the rest of the book, it's rather jarring when it keeps coming up scattered throughout, without the slightest change in self validating apologist behavior in hindsight.
Kept taking me out of the main stories and felt like a twisting to jump through mental gymnastics to not have to think too hard or lose self assurance on this matter.
Out of consistency with the level of thinking and contemplation other topics seem to get, and it became quite irritating to keep running into it, alongside the thinly veiled opinionated statements within this topic.
Apart from that, what kept taking me out of the story was his repeated insistence on absolving his moral issues with eating meat by becoming an apologist for the industry, using the same key concepts such as dominion, that religion which he decries in the rest of the book, uses as a reason for man to be above other animals and entitled to use and discard them.
A rather hypocritical arrangement in this and declaring big game hunters of the old age as products of their time, to not be judged for their atrocities by today's standards, to turn around and use the same argument in order to keep eating meat guilt free.
The book is scattered with this sort of thing, while at first an interesting discussion on the moral conundrum and where to draw the line, what acts are okay, and what are not, in the pursuit of science, in the old days, it becomes a self validating industry apologist by the same method of thought of the times, as well as the previously mentioned excuse.
This logic overlaid with twists to ensure he feels no guilt or contemplates the nature of why there might be too much more than surface level, undermines the rest of the logic used without this snarl and in truth for me, the rest of the book, it's rather jarring when it keeps coming up scattered throughout, without the slightest change in self validating apologist behavior in hindsight.
Kept taking me out of the main stories and felt like a twisting to jump through mental gymnastics to not have to think too hard or lose self assurance on this matter.
Out of consistency with the level of thinking and contemplation other topics seem to get, and it became quite irritating to keep running into it, alongside the thinly veiled opinionated statements within this topic.
October 1, 2020
This book is one man's opinion and ideas surrounding natural history and wildlife conservation, covering widely disparate topics from trophy hunting to poaching, taxonomy and the history and practice of conservation. And oh, there is the quest to find the few pieces of skull of the only specimen of the Somali golden mole ever to have been collected, but that is only an excuse to launch into lengthy discussions of the aforementioned topics. To say the book lacks focus is a huge understatement. I found it to be rambling and directionless, going off on various subjects seemingly at random. The reader will likely find a few of these interesting enough if encountered for the first time, such as the history of big game and ivory hunting in Africa or how community run nature conservancies work in practice. As a whole though it was tough slogging through the long chapters with no ultimate conclusion other than the author's final pilgrimage to a museum in Italy to meet the titular subject.
January 14, 2024
this guy loves to go off on tangents. i learned way more than i thought i would about cows in kenya
June 18, 2015
From Victorian animal collecting to present-day poaching, Girling surveys the contradictory human instincts toward exploitation and preservation of mammals. The book is rather scattered, with too little about the actual quest for the mole, but the message about species extinction is powerful. (The Somali golden mole has never been seen in the wild, except as a few bones in an owl pellet found by an Italian zoologist in 1964. For some reason, it captured Girling’s imagination, becoming a symbol of rarity and fragility.)
See my full review at The Bookbag.
(I would recommend The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert and A Buzz in the Meadow by Dave Goulson over this one.)
See my full review at The Bookbag.
(I would recommend The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert and A Buzz in the Meadow by Dave Goulson over this one.)
October 16, 2024
I thought this would be the author's travelogue on his journey to find the Somalian Golden Mole. Well it is, but he takes a lot of digressions on the way!
The Somalian Golden Mole was first described in 1964, based on a few bones found in an owl pellet by Professor Alberto Simonetta. Since then, no trace of it has ever been found again.
Richard Girling sets out to see the evidence of the mole's existence and to ponder why such an insignificant species should matter, and along the way looks at the history of our human relationship with wildlife. We are told how many animals have been driven to extinction, not helped by the fact of how often capturing wild animals for zoos would lead to animals dying in transit. He talks about the history of conservation organisations and their work in the field and the importance of the Red List of endangered animals, which can act as a driver to enhanced conservation measures for imperilled species. There are many species that have rarely been seen, and yet for many of them little effort is put into finding them and securing their existence. Trophy hunting is a huge risk to big game species and yet the rangers who are employed to protect the animals are at a great disadvantage compared to the hunters, many rangers are killed in their line of work.
The author makes the point that: "[c]onservation cannot succeed without popular support, and people as well as animals need to see the benefit", later adding "the tourist is a vital link in the chain of virtue that keeps animals alive and strengthens local communities". He makes a good point, but omits to add that it needs to be the right kind of tourism. He looks in some detail at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy where tourism brings in income for local education and other community projects.
We're introduced to moles as a group of animal quite late in the book, and told that golden moles are not actually related to European moles, with interesting details about how scientists, particularly in the last, would base their ideas on relations between species on superficial resemblances, whereas nowadays, we can investigate the similarities in the DNA to clarify family trees.
He talks about reintroducing species to areas where they've been lost and emphasises the importance of the right habitat still being available if such reintroductions are to be successful.
Finally, after all these digressions (fascinating, but still, definitely digressions) the author gets to meet Professor Alberto Simonetta himself, and in fact is allowed to handle the bones of the only known Somalian Golden Mole. The professor makes the point that we need to conserve insignificant species "precisely because we don't understand their value.... we have no idea what we might be losing."
The Somalian Golden Mole was first described in 1964, based on a few bones found in an owl pellet by Professor Alberto Simonetta. Since then, no trace of it has ever been found again.
Richard Girling sets out to see the evidence of the mole's existence and to ponder why such an insignificant species should matter, and along the way looks at the history of our human relationship with wildlife. We are told how many animals have been driven to extinction, not helped by the fact of how often capturing wild animals for zoos would lead to animals dying in transit. He talks about the history of conservation organisations and their work in the field and the importance of the Red List of endangered animals, which can act as a driver to enhanced conservation measures for imperilled species. There are many species that have rarely been seen, and yet for many of them little effort is put into finding them and securing their existence. Trophy hunting is a huge risk to big game species and yet the rangers who are employed to protect the animals are at a great disadvantage compared to the hunters, many rangers are killed in their line of work.
The author makes the point that: "[c]onservation cannot succeed without popular support, and people as well as animals need to see the benefit", later adding "the tourist is a vital link in the chain of virtue that keeps animals alive and strengthens local communities". He makes a good point, but omits to add that it needs to be the right kind of tourism. He looks in some detail at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy where tourism brings in income for local education and other community projects.
We're introduced to moles as a group of animal quite late in the book, and told that golden moles are not actually related to European moles, with interesting details about how scientists, particularly in the last, would base their ideas on relations between species on superficial resemblances, whereas nowadays, we can investigate the similarities in the DNA to clarify family trees.
He talks about reintroducing species to areas where they've been lost and emphasises the importance of the right habitat still being available if such reintroductions are to be successful.
Finally, after all these digressions (fascinating, but still, definitely digressions) the author gets to meet Professor Alberto Simonetta himself, and in fact is allowed to handle the bones of the only known Somalian Golden Mole. The professor makes the point that we need to conserve insignificant species "precisely because we don't understand their value.... we have no idea what we might be losing."
February 17, 2021
I found this an uneven book but well worth reading. The final chapter - will he, won't he succeed in his quest to set eyes on the Somali golden mole? - repays the trust of persisting.
I'm not really familiar with Richard Girling the 'environmental writer'. That's a good thing in some ways but does mean I didn't know if I might be wasting my time as I would reading some other contrarian and disingenuous individuals who purport to be environmental writers (I noted who was and who was not used for cover quotations). If that sounds snide, well, there's plenty of snide from Richard Girling, and I found it offputting. Not because, as he is proud to say, he is pro-GMO, pro-glyphosate, pro-nuclear and traps moles in his garden, but because he introduces those views without any explanation or evidence and generally it appears as a way to distinguish himself with those 'other' 'herd-like' writers on conservation.
The shape of the book swung about a good deal... I am well disposed to rambling but like it better when a structure reveals itself eventually... it did at times feel very much like something written by a journalist more used to producing shorter pieces, and the great quest rather manufactured. However, there is so much of interest here that outweighs the undoubted irritations. He looks at the history of zoology, the derring-do of early collectors. He visits a fascinating project in Kenya. He looks at the politics involved from top to bottom and the philosophical underpinnings of conservation. He makes taxonomy interesting.
And then in his final chapter he manages to convey the tingling totality of an experience with self-mocking.
I'm not really familiar with Richard Girling the 'environmental writer'. That's a good thing in some ways but does mean I didn't know if I might be wasting my time as I would reading some other contrarian and disingenuous individuals who purport to be environmental writers (I noted who was and who was not used for cover quotations). If that sounds snide, well, there's plenty of snide from Richard Girling, and I found it offputting. Not because, as he is proud to say, he is pro-GMO, pro-glyphosate, pro-nuclear and traps moles in his garden, but because he introduces those views without any explanation or evidence and generally it appears as a way to distinguish himself with those 'other' 'herd-like' writers on conservation.
The shape of the book swung about a good deal... I am well disposed to rambling but like it better when a structure reveals itself eventually... it did at times feel very much like something written by a journalist more used to producing shorter pieces, and the great quest rather manufactured. However, there is so much of interest here that outweighs the undoubted irritations. He looks at the history of zoology, the derring-do of early collectors. He visits a fascinating project in Kenya. He looks at the politics involved from top to bottom and the philosophical underpinnings of conservation. He makes taxonomy interesting.
And then in his final chapter he manages to convey the tingling totality of an experience with self-mocking.
April 22, 2021
I’ve owned this book for about a decade, it was a gift from my sister that I think I started and then dropped. But then picking it up this year I finally, belatedly, discovered that this is a really engaging and interesting book about rare and endangered animals. The book isn’t about the ‘golden mole’, it’s almost a Macguffin. It’s about humans relationship with animals and nature, ranging from the history of Victorian big game hunters to an evaluation of the politics of conservation and our various, often bungling, efforts to preserve and protect. It’s very interesting and at times deeply impassioned. There is some beautiful phrasing and fascinating tidbits, and the best parts are the introduction to some of the surprising and completely unheard of animals in the world. It’s sometimes a little unfocused, and a few chapters lost momentum, such as the author’s trip to Kenya, which felt indulgent or crowbarred in. Knowing a couple of journalists who have written books like this on their chosen topic it’s easy to see where content has been retrofitted to the theme, rather than the other way around. But overall I learned a lot and have spent a lot time since googling the koupray and the okapi.
April 14, 2024
Probably a 3.5. Some interesting examinations of species conservation but also very scattergun in its approach. The author allows his, not always well informed, prejudice to colour his arguments. I was particularly irritated with his irritation of scientific terminology; surely as a popular science writer its his job to explain concepts and language to the general reader whilst acknowledging that its necessary to use specialist sometimes complex language to deal with complex issues? However having said all that the book did examine some interesting issues and was entertaining. The final chapter, when he finally tracks down the remains of the rare creature in the title, he also spends time with the discoverer who sounded fascinating. It would have been good to hear more about him through the book.
June 27, 2018
I suspected that this would not be terribly scientific, and I was right. It was interesting, but felt repetitive at times. It took me a long time to finish this, partly because it just felt like pages upon pages of the same points, reiterated. The descriptions of Ol Pejeta were great, though, and it is obvious that the author cares a lot for wildlife and its conservation. That being said, this is much more a layman's book (though I hate that term) than an academic, science-y one.
March 26, 2025
It was an ok book but mostly consisted of the authors opinions on historic views of conservation and of conservation issues he’s seen on trips, but very little mention throughout the book of any golden mole (which is in reference to a singular jawbone in a museum anyway).
Like i say not a bad book with some interesting points here and there but I can’t recommend it to anyone looking to read a book about a search for a rare species.
Like i say not a bad book with some interesting points here and there but I can’t recommend it to anyone looking to read a book about a search for a rare species.
August 17, 2021
It's fine but very similar to the later book, The Longest Story, by the same author that I have just read. Waste of time for me to read them so close together.
June 9, 2015
Picked this up at the library without ever having heard of it. The novel concerns the author's search for the rare golden mole, which has never been observed, but parts of which had been previously found in an owl pellet. More than that however, the book concerns itself with the history of hunting, issues of biodiversity and humanity's challenging relationship with animals. I found the information interesting, and it did give me pause to think about the need to biodiversity in general. This book read very much like an extended magazine article, which makes sense because the author is a journalist.
April 10, 2016
Like a lot of books hung on a 'hook' - in this case the author's 'search' for a species of mole only known from a couple of bits of bone in an owl pellet - there is a vague sense here that the thing isn't quite a cohesive whole, nor a collection of linked essays. There are some splendid gems, like the beeswax eating bird whose stomach enzymes break down tuberculosis, but sadly what will linger is the 'howl of despair' against a world in which species are being wiped out by mankind's seething stupidity.
June 16, 2015
Girling’s description of his search for bones of the Somali golden mole, bones that were found only once in an owl pellet in 1964, makes for a powerful metaphor but his frequent, lengthy digressions about extinct and endangered species are far more interesting and compelling. A thoughtful and provocative elegy to living things.
March 31, 2015
I really liked this book. I loved Richard's historical look at how "naturalists" perceived the natural world around them and how they interacted with it. Ack! If anyone acted that way today they would be denounced at the minimum.
Didn't finish the book. Didn't seem like I needed to...
Didn't finish the book. Didn't seem like I needed to...
October 7, 2015
I really enjoyed the author's writing style, it felt like I was along for the ride down a rabbit hole. He provided a fascinating history of "collecting" specimens for research and taxonomy and managed to condense a pretty expansive way of thinking about endangered species (particularly mammals).
March 30, 2015
There needs to be a sixth star option. Excellent on so many counts. Review to follow.
March 20, 2015
Excellent book, though at times I got bogged down in details and had to reread pages at a time. But this is a great book about knowing our world and saving it.
July 4, 2017
It's interesting in pockets, but not as a whole. And not very often.
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