Wild things

Published on Wednesday 19 November 2008 18:08

The mysteries of the animal kingdom are unravelled in a lavishly illustrated new book

IT FEATURES orchid, honey and bumble bees. However, the beautifully photographed reference book, Animal Life, by primate expert and presenter, Charlotte Uhlenbroek, doesn't give the "killer" version of this insect family a mention. Perhaps that's just a coincidence. But, as the author, who's been tipped by Sir David Attenborough as his future successor, was nearly wiped off the face of the planet by a buzzing swarm of killer bees, a deliberate exclusion would be quite reasonable.

"Well, the bee incident occurred while I was studying chimps in Tanzania," explains 40-year-old Uhlenbroek. "Occasionally, these primates raid hives to get at the honey, which this lot did, before scarpering and leaving me with a thousand angry African bees. They're really dangerous and I had to run blind through the forest, until I suddenly realised that I was on the edge of a cliff. Luckily, I managed to stop just in time. However, even now, if I hear that familiar deep hum in the forest and a black cloud of those insects goes overhead I think, 'Oh. My. God.' "

Still, this Indiana Jones-style adventure is just a day in the life of Uhlenbroek, who's studied animals across all the continents – from rainforests to desert plains. Not that all of the world's creatures are grateful for the interest. In fact, some – like the bees, an occasional grumpy chimp (one "displaying" male dragged her down a hill when she was filming BBC 2 's Chimpanzee Diaries), not to mention a protective mother elephant who stampeded her in the Congo – haven't been that welcoming. However, these incidents make for a great yarn, and it's almost a shame that Animal Life isn't an autobiography in the style of Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, but is, instead, a book designed to create order from the chaos that is the natural world.

"There are a lot of fantastic books covering the physical characteristics of animals, but it's their behaviour that truly fascinates me," explains Uhlenbroek, who grew up in Ghana and Nepal. "When I was seven years old, my mum gave me a mammal encyclopaedia. It was so precious to me and is still on my shelf. I wanted to create something like that – a reference for everyone, from experts to children."

Flick through Animal Life and, aside from the weird and wonderful facts about springboks and their "pronking" (displays of fitness); exactly how black-spotted porcupine fish inflate (they fill their stretchy stomachs with water) and descriptions of how the lung-less frog absorbs oxygen through his skin, the book is most notable for its spectacular photographs. For example, there's a whole page devoted to a sweet-shop-like assortment of blue, yellow, red and almost radioactively green frogs; the S shape of a Peringuey's desert adder (perfectly camouflaged in the baking sand of the Namib); and, of course, the image on the cover – a male lion with his cub (the animal equivalent of the famous "man and baby" Athena shot).

"I knew this book would be a difficult one to illustrate, because we were looking for images of animals doing specific things to represent what the text says about their behaviour," says Uhlen- broek, who's currently on a London pitstop, before jetting off to observe Ugandan mountain gorillas. "However, my team did an amazing job sourcing the perfect photographs."

Also, for any red-blooded males who haven't yet seen the author (who is constantly being described as "sexy", "fragrant" or "gorgeous"), there is only a disappointing little flyleaf headshot. Just as well, as we're sure that someone like Sir David Attenborough doesn't have to put up with quite as many unnecessary comments about his outfits, hair or figure. Still, Uhlenbroek does see the attention as flattering – that is, as long as people pay attention to the main subject – animals, and conservation.

"It's nice to be paid a compliment, but I'd like people to think about what I'm saying," she explains. "Anyway, when you're out in the bush it's impossible to be glamorous. I've just been in Borneo, where it's incredibly humid and you get covered in leeches. There are certainly no hair or make-up people who're going to appear from out of the forest."

The emphasis placed on her looks does seem rather unnecessary, but Uhlenbroek emphasises that these irritations are balanced alongside the physiological advantages of being a female working in her profession. These, according to this naturalist, include the fact that animals (primates especially) tend to respond better to the smaller build of women, as well as their body language, which has been conditioned to be less confrontational, or direct. In fact, some of the larger primates that responded well to Uhlenbroek's approaches, on her recent trip to Borneo, were the orang-utans. She found studying these gentle animals extremely affecting – even more so when she saw what was happening to their habitat, and the simple lifestyle changes we could make to help.

"People should realise that they can have a direct impact on what's happening on the other side of the world," says Uhlenbroek. "For example, buying products that contain palm oil, which is an ingredient of some food and cosmetics, is directly contributing to the destruction of the rainforests in Borneo. I only recently saw just how little of the rainforest there is left and hoped that people would make a connection; put more pressure on the retailers, and we might be able to halt the destruction."

And, if there's anything to spur us into acts of conservation, it's a compendium like Animal Life, which really shows how many precious creatures there are. So, after a lifetime immersed in the world of animals, what else does this naturalist still have on her wish list of sights?

"Well, there are some creatures in the book that I haven't seen, because they're practically extinct or very hard to find," she says. "However, there are others that I'd really love to track down but haven't yet. For example, it would be incredible to see the monarch butterflies and their extraordinary transatlantic migration, or even the red crabs at Christmas Island. Now, that would be an amazing thing to see."

• Animal Life: The Definitive Visual Guide to Animals and Their Behaviour, by Charlotte Uhlenbroek, is published by DK Books, priced 30.

• www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/palm-oil