If Animals Could Talk

Five things I learned from this book:
When field sparrows are walking on the ground they actually have their legs crouched, bending their knees.
Certain whales have tongues that weigh as much as two horses.
The blue whale’s tongue wieghs as much as an elephant and its heart weighs as much as a horse!
Dragonflies beat their wings 30 times per second!
In 24 hours worms can produce 88 pounds of fertilizer.

The book: If Animals Could Talk by Werner Gitt and K.H. Vanheiden Fourth English Edition 2001

I didn’t know what to think when I picked up this book. The author is Werner Gitt and the book was originally written in German. I had met the author earlier last year and he was speaking with a heavy accent so my first impression wasn’t fantastic because I hadn’t gotten to reading any of his books yet. Werner Gitt is an information scientist and a very smart man. After reading this book that is co-authored by K.H. Vanheiden I am a total fan of Werner Gitt!

This book is a narration of animals to us. Telling us about them and the wonders of how they are made. The authors give God credit for making the animals and make it clear they don’t support evolution.

The bad marks I would give to this book is the book looks dull. Like if I was to flip through the book I would probably put it back on the shelf. Maybe it is just me and a lesson I need to learn but I judge a book by its cover-er, appearance. The cover was nice. The other bad mark isn’t really a bad mark just a difference of spelling. They use European spelling which utilizes the s instead of z in words like organization. They translators spell it organisation. Also they use the metric system but I know the standard system of measurement.
The narration by the animals in my opinion did not give a special appeal and they could have just wrote it in third person and it would have been fine.

The good marks? Well the information was very interesting. I have this thing for taking time to write a book or anything when no one would be interested, but this was a good and interesting read. I really like knowing useful information about animals. But more than that information about animals I will most likely see more than once in my life time. The writing was nice and easy to follow. Remember Wener Gitt is a renowned scientist and he does write technical books but he and Vanheiden wrote with a vocabulary that laymen can understand. And I appreciate that.

On a personal note I have been terrified of worms since I was five. The chapter this book had on worms helped me understand them and I can handle the thought of the creepy crawly a little better.

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