Book Review: Crocodiles of the World - A Complete Guide to Alligators, Caimans, Crocodiles, and Gharials

In my mind, I differentiate between two kinds of animal books.  There are the fun reads, the narrative nonfiction, which use storytelling to teach the reader about the animals.  There are also the technical books, with charts and graphs, which strive to convey the hard science and facts about the animals.   The later are books I tend not to buy that often, because the knowledge pool is expanding so frequently that they often seem to be out of date shortly after being published, leading me to rely more heavily on online sources.  Still, of these categories of books, I often find that the most valuable additions to my library are the ones that do the best job of blending the two.

Crocodiles of the World: A Complete Guide to Alligators, Caimans, Crocodiles, and Gharials, by Colin Stevens, is such a book.  It leans more heavily towards the technical side than a casual reader might be interested.  This isn't a book to settle in on the couch with after a long day.  It does, however, do an excellent job of condensing a considerable amount of the fascinating biology about crocodiles and their kin into a relatively short (about 270 page) work, beautifully illustrated with many excellent photos and sketches.  There were parts that went into very heavy detail, while other areas of biology and lore were skimmed over more lightly.  Still, it provides a fascinating overview of these incredible animals.

The book is roughly divided into two halves.  The first is a general primer of crocodilian biology.  It starts with their fossil origins (despite how these animals are often portrayed as ancient and timeless, they really are highly evolved animals) to their specialized anatomy to the ways that they move, feed, and breed.  Included, of course, is a few pages of spread dedicated to the question of "What's the difference anyway?" which so many visitors to our zoos ask  us.  This section also provides an overview of how crocodilians are coping in an increasingly human-dominated world.  Spoiler alert: for many species, the answer is "poorly."

The second half consists of profiles of 26 species of crocodilian.  Not surprisingly, treatment here is uneven.  Some species are very well known to science and are given several pages of description and detail.  Others get considerably less attention devoted to them for the very fair reason that so little is known about them, and most of that based on zoo specimens.  Some species Stevens acknowledges, but is forced to lump together; crocodile taxonomy has been in flux in recent years with several new species being carved out of existing ones, and rather than pretending that he's going to write separate entries for two species of African dwarf crocodile, for instance, he places them together, while acknowledging that recent split.  Some of the proposed splits seem to have come after the book was published, or not to be recognized by the author at this time, which again is a challenge that textbooks face - they only capture reality as it is known at the time of their publication.

Books such as this won't be for everyone, and if crocodiles aren't your particular passion, you'd be excused from wanting to burden your shelf with a copy, no matter how great the photos are.  For a reptile keeper, however, who has a particular interest in these animals, it provides an excellent springboard for diving into the world of these incredible animals and building a solid foundation of knowledge of their natural history and conservation/

Crocodiles of the World: A Complete Guide to Alligators, Caimans, Crocodiles, and Gharials at Amazon.com