Learned some interesting animal facts and reinforced my belief that often wild animal behavior is 'better' than human.

DNF.

After spending six weeks in South Africa, I was keen to start this book. However, I am woefully disappointed. This is a very self-congratulatory book which gets a bit hard to take. The writing is also dry and repetitive.

The part that did my nut, however, was the promotion and glorification of "elephant back safaris". I did a lot of research into ethical elephant ecotourism while in Africa and I think it's appalling that a "vet" is condoning this wildly unethical treatment of elephants. To "rescue" elephants and then sell them to unethical tourist traps is cruel. For example, it would have been kinder to let like Jabu die in the mud then subject him to a having his spirit broken, abuse and the many health complications that "elephant back safari" elephants are subjected to by having humans "ride" on their necks.

There are so many organizations that do wonderful work for elephant conservation like The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Thula Thula, Save the Elephants and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants. If you're interested in conservation and the preservation of the elephant population in the natural world, please research ethical ecotourism and support organizations that don't exploit elephants. Ecotourism should always put animals first and never endanger or abuse animals for a profit.

I wholeheartedly do not recommend this book and I think I finally understand why it wasn't available in South African book shops.

Most of the chapters in this book could, with very little revision, probably stand alone -- there's no real storyline, and information is periodically repeated. But hey -- at least it's interesting information.

I fold down corners when I read -- it's a terrible habit, I suppose, but it works. Bottom corners if I want to copy something down, and top corners if I want to look something up or come back to a concept. This one was full of top corners:

-Rhinoceros horns are made solely of keratin, with no bone (page 27).
-Elephant ears act as cooling devices; as elephants flap their ears, the blood inside is cooled down and then transported throughout the rest of the body (page 92).
-Snakes have ribcages (page 158). I probably should have figured this out on my own, though in my defense it's not something I'd ever given any thought to.
-"Crocodiles have lairs underwater in submerged caves and are thought to store their prey there, allowing the flesh to rot before consuming the meat" (page 179). WHAT.
-Crocodile sex depends on the temperature at which the eggs are incubated (page 184).

I am really not an animal person -- blasphemy, I know -- but I love getting a glimpse into another world. Aronson is smart about the stories he tells; at a guess, most of his practice involves smaller, more common animals, but he mixes those stories with the most-of-us-will-only-ever-read-about-them stories of treating Big Five animals.

He also raises the question of ethics -- when should vets, or more generally people, interfere with wild animals? Aronson's answer is effectively that when humans are the cause of the problem, it's right to try to fix it (page 143). Or, as he says, 'In principle, the less one interferes with wildlife, the better' (page 77). I do wish he'd gone into more depth, in part because I'm not sure he actually walks the walk in that respect (the line on 77 follows a description of surgery to fix the congenital eye defect of a lion), but he comes across as realistic about what one can and cannot (and should and should not) do.

I adore reading books about game rangers and their adventures - reading Roy’s book was both informative in the information he shared and exciting in the way he shares his tales. Anyone with a love of wildlife, should add this to their must-read list.

This was... not my favorite of the biographies I've read. Like a lot of veterinary media content the author is willing to show the good AND the bad, but a fair amount seems to be either bad or boring. There are a lot of facts interspersed with story. At least two of the chapters are hearsay (one of them he creates an entire story that literally nobody witnessed, so I'm not sure how he got the information other than educated guess, which is fine but in a book comprised of mostly fact or second-hand information it just seemed odd). I did enjoy learning a bit about the game reserves that he experienced, like the Cheetah Project. I'd give it a 2.5, rounded up to 3 because there really aren't that many books like this around.