Elentarri's Book Blog

TITLE:  Call of Nature:  The Secret Life of Dung

AUTHOR:  Richard Jones

DATE PUBLISHED:  2017

FORMAT:  Hardcover

ISBN-13:  978-1-78427-105-3

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DESCRIPTION:

"Journey through the digestive systems of humans, farm and wild animals, and meet some of nature's ultimate recyclers as they eat, breed in and compete for dung. The fall of bodily waste onto the ground is the start of a race against the clock as a multitude of dung-feeders and scavengers consume this rich food source. From the enigmatic dung-rolling beetles to bat guano and giant elephant droppings, dung creates a miniature ecosystem to be explored by the aspiring dung watcher.

The author completes the book with an identification guide to dung itself, so that you can identify the animal that left it behind. Pellets or pats? Scats, spraints, frass, guano, spoor learn your way around different species droppings. There's also a dung-feeder s identification guide that includes the species you re most likely to encounter on an exploration of the dung heap."

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Call of Nature is an informative, interesting, thought-provoking, well-researched and nicely illustrated book full of interesting facts by an author who is passionate about his subject.  The author's British sense of humour  and personal, relevant (but not long-winded ) anecdotes was entertaining and lightened up a book that revolves around dung and dung beetles.  Such topics as the ecological value of dung, the animal communities that make use of dung, a fond focus on dung beetles, and what happens if dung just lay around and didn't degrade (as happened in Australia), are covered in this book.  A useful identification guide to various types of animal dung and a guide to some critters that inhabit dung is also provided.  Not to mention the rather amusing scatalogical dictionary at the end.