Guinness World Records: Wild Things ed. by Craig Glenday

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Guinness World Records, 2018. ISBN 9781912286485
(Age: 8+) Recommended. Subjects: Animals, Records, Zoology, Mammals, Reptiles, Insects. Wild Things is jam-packed with an array of amazing animal facts, records, achievements, oddities and dangerous creatures. Split into 9 chapters, the book includes information about Odd Bods, The Cute Factor, Creepy Crawlies and Zootopia. Catchy titles, fun facts and figures, close-up photos, bold visually appealing double page spreads make this a fun book to share with animal lovers from eight to eighty!
Beginning with Booty and the Beast, it is filled with fun facts and photos. Discover the female mandrill who displays her rainbow-coloured butt as a sign of status, the trapdoor spider's manhole butt and the manatees that use their digestive gas as a flotation device! Compare mammal statistics, while the blue whale weighs in around 190 tonnes, the tiny bumblebee bat from Burma and Myanmar weighs up to two grams. In Little and Large a life-size Indian rusty-potted cat leaps out, growling with pointed teeth. A new wild cat species, the southern Brazilian oncilla, was only recognised in 2013.
Australasia is On the Map; test your knowledge with thirty-three unusual animals to identify and fun facts to discover. Did you know the New Zealand tuatara is the fastest-evolving animal in the world? Conservationists, including Dr Jane Goodall, Bindi and Rob Irwin and Nisha Owen, provide interesting insights into their passions, work and environmental messages.
Trading cards filled with animal facts, charts for animal height and weight and short quiz questions across the bottom of some pages capture interest and make for interesting conversations. An augmented reality app in Creepy Crawlies adds an animated insect screen to a phone. Guinness World Records: Wild Things is an excellent resource for STEM classes, a fabulous addition to a classroom or school library and for a scientifically minded reader from eight to eighty.
Rhyllis Bignell

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