The QI Pocket Book of Animals

by John Lloyd

Meet the water bears that can live in suspension for hundreds of years, the parasite carried by your cat that makes men grumpy and women promiscuous, and the woodlouse that drinks through its bottom. Marvel at elephants that walk on tiptoe, the pigs that shine in the dark, and the woodpeckers that have ears on the end of their tongues. From the team that brought ignorance to millions, a Christmas bestseller - full of illuminating illustrations, maps and diagrams - shrunk down to a pocket-friendly, easily-searchable, portability-considerate size.

Genres: Animals, Reference, Nonfiction, Science

224 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2009

About the author

John Hardress Wilfred Lloyd is an English television and radio comedy producer and writer. His television work includes Not the Nine O'Clock News, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Spitting Image, Blackadder and QI. He is currently the presenter of BBC Radio 4's The Museum of Curiosity.

Reviews

[Hamad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Review ✍️ Blog 📖 Twitter 🐦 Instagram 📷 Support me ☕

I can’t believe it took me so long to read a book about animals! I am a huge animal fan and I spent my childhood watching documentaries about animals on National geographic and other channels. I even dreamed about becoming a vet but pets are not really a thing here and the dream changed!

I stumbled upon this by chance where it was on sale on BD and had a very good price so I had to buy it and see if it is good. I have never seen The QI show and did not know there was one until a friend pointed it out when I updated my status of reading this book.

So this book is about 200 pages long discussing a 100 animals each taking 2 pages. The book mainly discusses their living habitats, what they eat and how they reproduce (may be inappropriate for younger readers) and some of the weird and unique facts about those animals like the fact that worms can get addicted to Nicotine and get withdrawal symptoms when they cut it off.

I think being an animal nerd many of the information provided was not new to me but despite that I still felt it was very enjoyable and thought-provoking. It took me almost a month to go through the animals despite the size of the book because it was informative and the data dump can be overwhelming! I really had fun reading this and will be reading more QI books in the future!

[Eimear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly I love this book so much. The only downside is that you're taking in so much information within the two pages set for each animal that you can't read too much in one go or you won't take it all in

[FARAH · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a very nice book for beginner to learn about animals. For a biodiversity student like me, this book really helpful as additional reading because the terms used was simple (even for someone who aren't from biology background). Something i find a bit disturbing is that each animal sexual genital were described detailed as if the book is not really suitable for young readers.

[Harri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed that the book had lots of animal facts and that the chapters for each animal were spread across 2 pages each, as well as being presented in an easy to read format. My only issue was the font size, but I guess that's the price to pay for a "pocket edition"!

[Redmond Gurney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure there’s much to say here to be honest. It’s a book about animals with some interesting facts about them. I don’t really know why I read this, nor where it came from to be honest, but it kept me from mindlessly scrolling TikTok for a few hours which is always nice.

[Berita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of things to learn about animals and weird, funny details. Which, of course is, why I bought and read this book. To find strange facts to amaze others with.

It scored on those points.

[Deborah Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the list of animals featured in the book, I didn't think it would be too interesting, but they came up with some great facts that I'll enjoy using at dinner table conversations.
(The one about termites...who knew?)

[Angela Soe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very informative and I love the weird facts they add as conclusions for the animals.
It’s great for people who are totally new to zoology and just want to know the small random fun facts.

[Tea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quite interesting book about animals. This book really live up to its title. A great book to read while in the doctor or the vet waiting room.