Animal Tragic
Popular Misconceptions of Wildlife through the Centuries
By Malcom Tait
December 2006
Think Books
ISBN: 184525015X 
160 pages
$29.50 Hardback
The history of natural history is absolutely littered with mistakes, some embarrassing,
some bizarre, some downright hilarious.
Animal Tragic, by wildlife writer Malcolm Tait, is
a bevy of bestial booboos, natural no-nos and artistic animal atrocities,
which also provides the truth itself behind each tall tale.
Highlights include:
- The belief that swallows hibernated under riverside mud, which explained their winter absence
- The theory that lemmings hurl themselves over cliffs, a myth encouraged by Walt Disney whose film about them faked their apparent suicide
- The fact that barnacle geese owe their name to a belief that they were the offspring of, well, barnacles
- The many writings in medieval bestiaries about fantastic creatures that could kill you with a glance, or a breath, or even their body odour
- The shocking representations of wildlife in art right up until the twentieth century, even though the artists had creatures right in front of them
- The misconceptions we use in everyday speech: bats aren’t really blind; owls are actually a bit thick; March hares are in reality just getting it on with each other
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