Deadly!: The Truth about the Most Dangerous Creatures on Earth by Nicola Davies (review)

“Stabbing and strangling, poisoning and crowning, electrocuting, exploding, dive-bombing, and even death by gluing!” Thus does biologist and author Davies open this irresistible and informative chronicle of the ways in which animals mow one another—and us—down. She writes with mischievous relish of chomping predators such as big cats (“Big cats have a mouth full of butchery tools to deal with their unlucky dinner”), canids (“If you want a really efficient killer, you need a dog”), sharks, and crocodiles, and then dives into a variety of critters and a variety of killing mechanisms in land, sea, and air. Yet she remains balanced about the value of these species, the normality of their behavior, and humankind’s depredations and contributions to our own downfall (“Sometimes we get hurt, not because we meant to threaten an animal, but because we were just plain stupid”). The book’s lavish enjoyment of carnage will draw readers whose idea of biology is Shark Week, and there’s plenty of genuine and interesting information amid the casualties. Layton’s always irreverent scribbly digital illustrations rise to their most comedic here, with hunting scenes goofily diagrammed and humorous speech balloons coming from animals as they chase and/or succumb (“You could’ve waited till I was dead!” complains an antelope being savaged by wild dogs in a panel sequence). Reluctant readers in particular will have a field day with this, and you can easily bring a booktalk crowd to rapt silence by sharing a juicy snippet. An index and a glossary are included.