Zoology: Inside the Secret World of Animals (Dk Smithsonian)

I received this book today. It is a beautiful book with great illustrations and information. The only problem is that the cover is backwards! When you open the book from the cover it is backwards and upside down. This is very disappointing since you would love to display it on a coffee table. But if you display it and someone picks it up they will laugh. If this is what DK puts out it is very sad. I would think that they should be embarrassed at the quality. I don't think I will order another one of their books based on the shoddy presentation.

I bought this book for my 11-year old daughter who has an exceptional interest in the natural world. It is kind of pricey, but because I know she will practically memorize each page and it would keep her busy for many hours and days over a long period of time, I felt it was worth it! The illustrations and photography are of high quality and it contains rich content. At first, I was looking for another animal encyclopedia to add to the ones she has devoured already but ended up preferring this book which highlights different mechanisms and functionalities of the natural world. I also look forward to reading it.

Beautiful book for any coffee table or budding animal lover. My 9 yr old is thrilled with it. We have lots of animal books but this seems to be a favorite already. This arrived quickly.

The book is a hard cover which is great, it is big. 12 inches long by 10 inches wide and it has some weight to it. My son loves the vivid colors and pictures in the book along with the detail info on the animals on the page. I will purchase another book like this in the near future.

Beautiful book! Lots of pictures and information. It's heavy and the binding is a little fragile.

I am so disappointed. The book itself is beautiful but arrived with so many problems. There is a tear in the spine on the top of the book and the bottom spine looks like it got dropped. The pages are a bit warped and there are also a few big dents on the front. The book was packed well in the box and the box itself is fine so these problems were there before they packaged it. This was supposed to be a gift but I can’t give it away like that.

Excellent series from the Smithsonian. We first came across it with their dinosaur book, and we've been buying the others by them since then. Excellent photo quality (!) and information. Our kids (6 & 8) love these.

Our 11 year old grandson has always wanted to grow up caring for animals. In the last year, he has been volunteering at a zoo and wants to be a Zoologist. He was VERY pleased with this book!

We bought this for a holiday gift. It was perfect.

I paid less than half the cost of a new book and my book looks brand-new I'm pretty impressed

I received this book today. It is a beautiful book with great illustrations and information. The only problem is that the cover is backwards! When you open the book from the cover it is backwards and upside down. This is very disappointing since you would love to display it on a coffee table. But if you display it and someone picks it up they will laugh. If this is what DK puts out it is very sad. I would think that they should be embarrassed at the quality. I don't think I will order another one of their books based on the shoddy presentation.

I bought this book for my 11-year old daughter who has an exceptional interest in the natural world. It is kind of pricey, but because I know she will practically memorize each page and it would keep her busy for many hours and days over a long period of time, I felt it was worth it! The illustrations and photography are of high quality and it contains rich content. At first, I was looking for another animal encyclopedia to add to the ones she has devoured already but ended up preferring this book which highlights different mechanisms and functionalities of the natural world. I also look forward to reading it.

Beautiful book for any coffee table or budding animal lover. My 9 yr old is thrilled with it. We have lots of animal books but this seems to be a favorite already. This arrived quickly.

The book is a hard cover which is great, it is big. 12 inches long by 10 inches wide and it has some weight to it. My son loves the vivid colors and pictures in the book along with the detail info on the animals on the page. I will purchase another book like this in the near future.

Beautiful book! Lots of pictures and information. It's heavy and the binding is a little fragile.

I am so disappointed. The book itself is beautiful but arrived with so many problems. There is a tear in the spine on the top of the book and the bottom spine looks like it got dropped. The pages are a bit warped and there are also a few big dents on the front. The book was packed well in the box and the box itself is fine so these problems were there before they packaged it. This was supposed to be a gift but I can’t give it away like that.

Excellent series from the Smithsonian. We first came across it with their dinosaur book, and we've been buying the others by them since then. Excellent photo quality (!) and information. Our kids (6 & 8) love these.

Our 11 year old grandson has always wanted to grow up caring for animals. In the last year, he has been volunteering at a zoo and wants to be a Zoologist. He was VERY pleased with this book!

We bought this for a holiday gift. It was perfect.

I paid less than half the cost of a new book and my book looks brand-new I'm pretty impressed

What a beautiful book with tons of info for my girls who love all types of animals.

I sent this to my Cousin in Colorado who volunteers and teaches at Zoos. She said it’s wonderful.

Arrived in very good condition and is very informational. Great book for anyone wanting to learn about the animal kingdom.

Bought this for a gift for the vet student.

Grandkids love this book. Ages 7 to 20.

Awesome book! Great quality of course. Hard cover, high resolution images, great book for the kids and adults! Get your own!

Amazing book at an amazing price. Love the the photography, especially some of the close ups. Rendered beautifully and some interesting information. A must have for any collection.

This is a wonderful book which explains animal adaptations and more. It is written informally and easy to digest. Great images and layout. I've never written a review before but this book deserves it.. If you want to learn about the cool features of different animals the mechanisms of animals without anything too technical, this is the book for you!

Gift for grandson

My adult son asked for a nature book to share with his young daughter. He is very happy with this book and its beautiful photographs.

This was a gift for my husband. He loves animals and he loved this book. It has great pictures and it's not boring. The setup of it keeps you interested

This book is so interesting! The close up photography is really lovely and the size of the book is impressive. An excellent coffee-table book for kids and adults alike.

Great photos. Great info.

Love it!! Super informational.

Beautiful pictures and great information.

Some of the most beautiful illustrations Vivid color and detail. Very informative great for my daughter and her curiosity about animals.

Bought for a relative for Christmas and she really likes it

my daughter loves animals so we bought her this book she absolutely loved it and we learned a lot of new facts. great buy. 👍👌✔

This beautiful book is the best thing I have given myself in years!

Beautiful book. Must cheaper than the brick & mortar store.

This book will be a great guide to helping you conduct further research. As a budding creature designer, this book I think will be my go to source for a while when doing animal studies.

My daughter loves this book

Amazing quality, beautiful illustrations. My future zoologist loves its

Stunning photos of exquisite quality. Artistically surprising and beautiful detail.

AWESOME INFO AND BEAUTIFUL DRAWINGS

Best animal book i have seen

Thanks

My teen daughter loves it. Illustrations, description are amazing

My 15 year old granddaughter loves this!

This is a beautifully illustrated book full of facts and learnings for the whole family. I highly recommend it for any families that want to learn more about the animal kingdom. It presents facts at a middle school biology level, so it is accessible to nearly everyone. We enjoyed learning about all of the gorgeous animals and the roles they play in their biomes. We even set up family reading and discussion time around this book. For the adults, it re-instills the sense of wonder and possibility we lost as we grow older, and that is priceless. It is important to keep in mind that science is an evolving process, and many of the facts presented are still unproven theory. Evolutionary biologists will be disappointed that new theories such as punctuated equilibrium and host directed evolution are not discussed. Aside from that nitpick, this reference book should be on the bookshelves of all animal loving adults.

There is no doubt that this book is stunning. It would make a very attractive coffee table book. The photography is top-notch and provides views of animal body parts that you may never have seen (or even thought about!) before. It discusses animals based on their characteristics: shape and size; skin, coats, and armor; legs, arms, tentacles, and tails; fins, flippers, and paddles; wings and parachutes; and eggs and offspring. There is also a section on classification and a glossary. In addition, sprinkled throughout the book are sections on animals in art featuring illustrations of animals from various time periods. I was hoping to use this book as part of a science program in our homeschool. From an educational standpoint, I feel it is lacking because the information is not provided with any sort of organization. The way the animals are presented feels very random. There is a whole lot of information in this book but it is definitely intended more for browsing than for study. This is a lovely book to pick up and learn some random information about animals. It will probably help you have a new appreciation for some members of the animal kingdom. But if you are looking for an educational resource for the classroom or homeschool, you would be better served looking elsewhere.

DK publishes all kinds of classy books on nature, science, art...you name it. This one is about zoology. It combines bite-sized tidbits of science ("Role of Fins in Swimming" has three sentences and a diagram), photographs (but I wish so many weren't cropped; I'd prefer more context, i.e. background), art ("Nebamum's cat" from c.1350 BCE), quotes from people and literature ("Cave...he never move. No one can shift that cave, because it dream. It story, it law."), x-rays (I loved the one of the aerial frog!), and more. Rather than going alphabetically, from armadillos to zebras, the book is organized into sections: The animal kingdom Shape and size Skeletons Skin, coats, and armor Senses Mouths and jaws Legs, arms, tentacles and tails Fins, flippers, and paddles Wings and parachutes Eggs and offspring This is clearly a book you won't read cover to cover. It's something to open at random, or flip through until something attracts your attention (and something will!). It isn't a textbook, but is probably a bit more than a high school level. I think this would be great in a vet's office!

I got this book to read with my grandson, who loves animals and dinosaurs, and loves going through the Smithsonian books on these topics. The Smithsonian science series is for me the best done books that I have found because they are beautifully illustrated and photojournaled and the discussion is sophisticated yet understandable. This book is the most sophisticated of any I have read in their series and it is a bit too sophisticated in many parts for young readers. But with adult help, this book is great for any age over 6 years old. This book is detailed enough to be used in an undergraduate course, with topics that cover the full spectrum of animal biology, evolution and animal physiology discussion. Above all, the photographs are spectacular and make the book a joy to use. If there is an issue, it is that the book is big and heavy and hard for younger readers to explore for that reason. But for an adult, or an adult reading to a child, this book is the best one anyone could find on the topic of animal zoology. I have taught some of these topics when I was on the faculty at UConn, and can recommend this book for any individual interested in learning about this subject in more detail.

Zoology: Inside the Secret World of Animals arrived and I immediately began reading it and looking at the many beautiful pictures included on each page. Zoology is is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. I have watched enough of David Attenborough’s wonderful nature programs to know that the diversity we find in the animal kingdom is truly astounding and the fact is that new discoveries of animals are being made by professionals and amateurs even as I write this review. The great oceans of the world, still largely undiscovered, contain a diversity of life that is breathtaking. This colorful DK book will surprise and amaze us with the many extraordinary animals living on our planet. I own many DK books and am rarely disappointed with them. This publishing house knows how to make show and tell books and the Secret World of Animals is just that – show us and tell us about the pictures on the page. It is fair to say pictures get center stage on each page of this book with just enough text to inform us about what we are seeing. This is not a book that needs to be read cover to cover, but explored where our interest takes us at any given moment. This is a big, heavy, four hundred page book that will take up considerable space on our bookshelf. But I for one am glad to have it in my library to refer to whenever I want to remind myself that life on earth is truly extraordinary. Stopping for a few minutes, or even longer than that with this DK book, will help us appreciate the tremendous gift of life and its diversity. Highly recommended.

I got this for my kids who love Animals. It is maybe a little more detailed than they would want - it is also very appropriate for adults as well. The pictures and information is great. One thing to note is that it really is a "coffee table book" in that you don't want to lug it around (like in a kids room on and off the shelf all the time) because it is so heavy that it will wear and tear if you don't keep it on a nice flat table. It is not amazingly well made in terms of sturdiness. But overall good and a nice gift for the animal lover in your life.

Growing up in the 1970s, I would often come home from school and pull out a volume of our World Book Encyclopedia and just learn about things. Fast-forwarding to today, my school-age kids would rather go to a website than open a book to learn as they are more likely to be drawn to the visual content than the text. The DK SMITHSONIAN ZOOLOGY volume is an example of how a well-designed format can merge stunning visual content and detailed text to provide a superior educational reference book. I have reviewed multiple DK volumes over the years and have found the Smithsonian line to be some of the best references available on the subjects they cover. While my kids have always enjoyed the graphic content of the DK books since they first started reading, they are now at an age where they have graduated to the adult-level volumes that provide more sophisticated, detailed and authoritative analysis of specific subjects. ZOOLOGY is a wonderful presentation the scientific breakdown of animals (physiology, structure, class, adaptations, distribution, etc.) that digs deeper than a simple book about animals. I also own the DK Smithsonian visual encyclopedia Animals, which is much broader and focuses on presenting a more list-like presentation of animals around the world (also a fantastic book). ZOOLOGY provides a much more thorough approach to the animal world by focusing on the details that allow them to adapt, survive and thrive. The entire animal spectrum is covered (mammals, birds, insects, etc.) and we are presented with a breathtaking array of photographic evidence that one should expect from any resource associated with the Smithsonian name. As an educational resource, ZOOLOGY is a one-stop-shop on the subject matter. This is not a book “just about animals”; it is a scientific breakdown that focuses on the complexities that make animals a major part of our world. Starting with the evolution of animals, we are provided with the science that shows how and why they exist in the first place. Subsequent chapters break the animal kingdom down by more physical criteria (skeletons, shapes/sizes, senses, limbs/fins/wings, mouths/jaws and eggs/offspring). Categorizing the chapters in this manner provides a better overall understanding of the unique traits/features that allow animals to survive … even in the harshest and most inhospitable environments. The merging of text insets, sidebars and more elaborate textual explanations with the stunning photographic evidence makes every page an invitation to learn. The information provided is meticulously thorough and easy to consume … never tedious/boring. I found ZOOLOGY a great book to own for two main reasons. First, it is a thick (410+ pages) and over-sized book … it provides so much information; a great educational resource to have on hand, for both kids and adults. Second, the photographs alone may be a reason itself to own this volume … they are simply magnificent to look at. I have constructed a home library with some 1,600 books and I have a special section dedicated to these DK Smithsonian volumes that I keep adding … ZOOLOGY is certainly a worthy addition to the set.

I have recently discovered the "DK Smithsonian" line of reference books, and I am now slowly collecting many of the series. I have purchased "The Human Body" and "elements" and "Rocks and Gems" and the book in this review on "Zoology" The reason why I am buying these is because they provide high-definition images and pictures of the the subject that is being explained. The Font is large for easy reading. It is based on the facts, and is direct to the point in the way that it describes the animal. Though it is not as through as an encyclopedia on a speices, it does provide an excellent overview on the animal, and its key physical attributes, so that you can gain a quick understanding of it. For the child, Teen, or adult who is naturally curious about the animals, this book is a delight to behold.

Wow. You can just tell tons of work went into this book. It's heavy and large and very well made. The pictures are incredible and the information abounds. It is more of a reference/coffee table book than something you can carry around. Anyone who is interested in animals will love this book. Notes - No Outer dust jacket. I don't like those anyway. - The corners on mine were a bit squished. Book floated free in shipping box. - Looks great inside and out. - Large and Heavy. More of a reference book - Anyone interested in Animals will love it

This book might be more beautiful than informative. Nearly every two page spread is a piece of art. The illustrations are very graphic images on a white background which keeps the pages clean and the images just pop. If you are used to DK, expect more tightly designed pages in their style. It is an absolute delight to page through the book. Perhaps though it is more form that inform as the topics and written content are not particularly deep. They do hit a lot of great zoology topics, but again, not in any profound way. But this book should be loved for what it is, which is a coffee table like book full of inspiring and beautiful images.

This is a REALLY nice book by DK. Definitely for older kids (upper elementary/middle school age), but beautifully illustrated. The book itself is sturdy and while the pages are paper, they are the nice thick paper. The illustrations are very bold and vivid and the information is written around it in a way that isn't too overwhelming (so kids don't feel like they're just reading a bunch of boring facts). Highly recommend.

This is a big, beautiful, detailed book. It has amazing photos and artwork throughout. It goes through many aspects of animal physiology from beak style to wing design and explores it in depth. There is a lot of information and it's all quite interesting even if you're not that into nature or animals. We look at it with our little kids just to spark interest. There is a handy concordance at the end that groups and references many animals. Very well done.

This is a wonderful book full of bright beautiful photography of animals and such in great detail. The imagery shown is this book goes from a regular picture of an animal all the way to macro photography! With each and every photograph perfectly chosen to accompany the educational information which is quiet vast and in depth. The book is highly detailed, so much so that some of it is beyond my understanding with a college degree. Animal biology, physiology, evolution and theory. This book provides a great deal of fun along with information - some of the images shown and facts are not anything we would ever be able to see in real life.

Ever since I was a kid, I have been in love with DK books. They are always of the highest quality and filled with information that is presented in a way that will always keep you engaged. To me this is probably the biggest issue with kids these days is keeping them interested and engaged with reading material. The moment you lose their attention it's over, try again tomorrow. This book is no exception, it's full of information, some stuff I didn't even know, and I'm a self proclaimed honorary zoologist lol. This book will always have it's place on our bookshelf, or in a lap rather.

Wow what a great book for animal lovers and knowledge lovers and anyone wanting to know more of the animal kingdom!! Great Christmas gift for child or grandchild into animals! There is 399 pages of really beautiful photos and tidbits of information on animals and birdies! Each page has a notable feature of the animal and the photos vary from extensive spliced diagrams(how their fur and skin follicles work etc.) something like what you’d see in a college book to natural photographs of them. Highly recommend!!

I ordered this for my 13 year old son who loves this type of information packed book. This book is packed with information that isn't "dumbed" down and is appropriate for readers of all ages. My son loves to quote animal facts to me and this is perfect for him. There are tons of details pictures and facts that will provide hours of reading pleasure. It is also a great reference book for his projects and homework. It is a large and HEAVY book. I am very impressed with this book and the amount of content it contains.

You know of course that this would be an outstanding book since it was done by the Smithsonian. And you would be accurate about that. It is absolutely beautiful. The photography in this book is outstanding. I plan to make a cup of tea on a cold Sunday afternoon and enjoy this lovely book one page at a time. Don't hesitate to invest in this outstanding book. You'll be glad you did. This one is a keeper.

I saw this at Costco and, after leafing through it a bit, had to buy it. It's such a beautiful book, not only in the pictures, but in the layout and even the white spaces, as you can see in the sample pages above. It's not an encyclopedia where every animal of a certain group is presented, usually dense with text. Rather, it goes into different aspects of animal life and how specialized they can get.

This is a very large and heavy book. There is a lot of good information with many photos, but the print is very small and pale (like a dark gray rather than black) , making it very difficult to read. Also, the binding is a bit loose, but that may have been caused by poor packaging.

Very large and beautiful book. Mine had the top corner slightly smashed in, which I was a bit unhappy about since it was a gift, but otherwise good.

This is a coffee table book, not a textbook and it is gorgeous. The photography is superb and the illustrations are clear and precise. It is a joy just to sit down and peruse a few pages when I have time. There is enough information for middle-school children and adults but even the little kids enjoy just looking at the pictures and learning about animals.

This book is okay. The content is not very engaging, but the pictures are very interesting. The content is also not for younger children. It is very heavy, so it is hard to carry around.

This book was a gift for my granddaughter who is a junior in college and majoring in zoology. She loved the book and spent the evening going through it with her siblings ages 8-16. They all enjoyed the book and found the pictures amazing and beautiful and the book full of interesting information. The gift I was most pleased to give this year.

The DK & Smithsonian books are amazing, and this one follows in that trend. Beautiful pictures, glossy pages, just an incredibly well done book -- and my kids (8 and 10) make good use of this book often.

This book is amazing. For one, this weighs a ton. They spared no expense giving the reader a well bound book with shined pages filled with in-depth pictures. My son was lost in reading and looking at the pictures for hours. This is educational as well. There are fun facts keeping you entertained and interested.