Riches of the Wild: Land Mammals of South-East Asia

by Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, A.M. Hughes (Illustrator)

The author surveys the astonishing diversity of South-East Asian wildlife, a fauna that includes 660 distinct species, representing over one-seventh of the world's wild mammals. Among them are many mammals which cannot be found elsewhere: the gymnures and tree-shews, flying bats, tarsiers and orangutans, aboreal fruit eaters, anteaters, and numerous rodents. The text is enlivened by descriptions of scientific discoveries and personal anecdotes based on the author's long experience as a naturalist in the regions he describes.

96 pages, Paperback

First published June 4, 1987

About the author

5th Earl of Cranbrook, born in 1933 and a noted British conservationist.


Librarian note: In the database there is an ancestor of this author with the same name. So, for the British conservative politician go to Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be sure, there are more detailed and technical guide books out there that neatly describe every species, from physical dimensions to diet, habitat, behavior etc. But then the author dispensed with such normalcy and just wrote about the generic characteristics or more interesting highlights of each family group. Since he is an expert with regard to the region, with decades of experience, pretty much whatever nuggets of information or anecdotes he shared would be of interest to the naturalist. However the true distinguishing value of this slim book is the extensive checklist of mammal species in the appendix, over a dozen pages listing each animal and it's distribution in the greater southeast Asian region. It is a very handy shorthand list/guide, since the authoritative reference text in this subject (Corbet and Hill) is a heavy tome. Given the very enigmatic and complex zoogeographical distribution of animals in this part of the world, such a list is undoubtedly useful and fascinating in and of itself.