Every creature has a story – Janaki Lenin – Review

When someone gets hitched to an eccentric herpetologist which essentially means a person who specializes in the study of reptiles and amphibians, it’s hard not be in love with animals and birds. Having devoured a range of articles on wire and other magazines focussed on reptiles, animals and birds for over a decade, it’s natural for Janaki Lenin, a passionate zoophile, to pick their unique traits and present them through a book.

Every creature has a story is a collection of 50 articles that elucidates unimaginable traits exhibited by birds, fishes, insects, reptiles, primates and mammals. There isn’t any structure to the book and hence a bibliophile can pick any of the fifty articles in random order and read through them. Each story has it’s own essence and would take anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes to finish a single storyline. I would strongly suggest the readers to check out relevant youtube videos as a follow-up to each respective article which is bound to enhance their understanding.

An interesting foreword captured my attention on the relevance of the book to every patron. “At the heart of the natural world is evolution. Thousands of millenniums ago life took a few forms or maybe just one, at a fundamental level it means all life forms share a chemistry linked through the thread called DNA.” I can’t agree more, the narrative can be crudely associated with Adam and Eve story but in the actual case we were an insignificant bacterium evolving into exceptionally capable humans, animals or even insects. Though my third para deviates from the core essence of the book, it’s emphasizes the fundamental drive of evolution in every life form.

Let me bring out the crux of a couple of stories and the first one that picked by attention was the case of mother’s love exhibited by female primates, it's a core emotion which is largely associated with the human life form. But when the same is exhibited by a family of monkeys ranging from bonnet macaques to gorillas, it pulls the audience out of their chair. It shocks when we realize that they refrain to discard their dead infant for over a week and carry them until hard decomposition takes place. The desire to stay longer with their dead infant outweighs the risk of infection the female primate may pick up, so much to let go of their offspring which never really blossomed. 

The symbiotic relationship between the Egyptian plover bird and crocodile is a mind-blowing association, the tiny bird sits pretty inside the crocodile’s mouth and eats bits of food stuck in it’s teeth. The bird gets an easy lunch and the crocodile has it’s teeth cleaned up, the association brings out a couple of attributes that calls for appreciation. The audacity of the bird to sit inside crocodile’s mouth and the strategic trade-off practiced by crocodile to let go of a tiny meal in return of much needed clean up.

There are 48 more interesting stories that can be termed as brave, emotional or perplexing and is bound to keep the reader engaged. I was certainly impressed by Palm Cockatoos which showed an inclination towards drums and the bravado shown by firehawks that escalates fire through dry savanna in northern Australia.

But why does a raptor carry smouldering sticks and ignite fire in dry savanna? Aren't birds supposed to be scared of fire? I will let the readers explore that part by themselves.