Stephanie Owen Reeder (text) and Cher Hart (illustrator), Sensational Australian animals, CSIRO Publishing, February 2024, 32 pp., RRP $29.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781486316892
This attractive information book from CSIRO Publishing is arranged in a different way to most books about animals. It starts by giving an introduction to the five basic senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch – and then proceeds to group many intriguing Australian animals into chapters based on their attributes in these areas.
For example, the first section on sight has a double-page spread on marsupials, one on birds, one on insects and spiders, one on marine creatures and one on reptiles. It includes blind marsupial moles, the binocular vision of owls, the compound lenses of dragonflies and the 200 eyes of scallops.
Subsequent chapters follow the senses listed above and cover the noises creatures make and how they detect sound, how they smell and also produce chemicals and other substances, how they detect food and catch it and how they sense the presence of prey and then bite, sting or poison the victim.
Each section begins with a description of how the relevant human sense works, including a diagram of the sensory organs involved. There is a comprehensive glossary and index at the end of the book but unfortunately no conclusion, only an abrupt end with the final page of the Touch section.
Designer and illustrator Cher Hart has a degree in biology and experience in scientific illustration. Her colourful pictures for this book are accurate and attractive, even the venomous creatures like the funnel-web spider, blue-ringed octopus and red-bellied black snake. She has also designed the cover, text and layout.
The only minor quibble is that the wedge-tailed eagle is not listed in the Sight section, despite its vision being probably one of the world’s best for birds, but rather is listed in the Taste section. Overall though, this is an appealing and interesting book about Australian animals using a different and intriguing approach.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage
