Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us

Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary, University Of Chicago Press, 2013.

www.barelyimaginedbeings.com/

From medieval bestiaries to Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings, we’ve long been enchanted by extraordinary animals, be they terrifying three-headed dogs or asps impervious to a snake charmer’s song. But bestiaries are more than just zany zoology—they are artful attempts to convey broader beliefs about human beings and the natural order. Today, we no longer fear sea monsters or banshees. But from the infamous honey badger to the giant squid, animals continue to captivate us with the things they can do and the things they cannot, what we know about them and what we don’t.

With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature’s “extreme survivors,” able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value—or fail to value—and what we might change.

 Inspired by medieval bestiaries, Henderson describes amazing but real creatures, from the axolotl (a salamander with “gills branching like soft coral from its neck”) to the zebra fish (whose genetic manipulability and transparent embryos make it a good model for biology research). Each entry marries history and philosophy with science, and fantastical illustrations, photographs and diagrams enrich the book's pages. - Marissa Fessenden

It was when I realised I had spent half an hour reading about sponges that I realised Caspar Henderson's modern bestiary was more than just a collection of loosely related essays. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings has the elements of a classic miscellany: an A to Z listing of 27 creatures (the letter X gets two species) with gold panels and lettering on the cover, line drawings of fantastical animals and plants on the chapter title pages and burgundy notes in the margins. Along with the narrow columns of text laid out on cream pages, it brings to mind a book that seems older, more canon, than any brand new book has a right to be.
Henderson has taken notes from Jorge Luis Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, a collection of fictional animals published in 1967. In his introduction, Henderson talks of being riveted by the "bravura display of human imagination" at work describing the Strong Toad of Chilean folklore, Humbaba the guardian of the cedar forest in the epic poem "Gilgamesh" and the kangaroo-like creature imagined by Franz Kafka. Bizarre as they were, these invented animals were hardly stranger than many real ones, he thought. He set about to create a 21st-century bestiary of real creatures but he would choose those animals about whom so little was known that they were "barely imagined".
We start with the axolotl, a "disconcertingly human" salamander with a large head, fixed smile and which has the handy ability to re-grow any limbs that get severed. Given the form of the book, you might expect a natural history essay about the habitats and behaviour of the animal. That does happen, to a limited extent. Instead, Henderson gives us a meandering cultural history of how the axolotl has been become known to zoologists, from ancient Greece to medieval England and many stops besides. One moment we're reading about early, wild theories of the evolution of the "aquatic homunculus" as an explanation for how water-dwelling creatures might have ended up on land; a few pages later Henderson is describing the ravaging effects of smallpox on the native populations of the New World during the Spanish conquest.
The chapter on barrel sponges is a discussion of symmetry, some of the oldest living creatures on Earth and, crucially, what it actually means to be an animal. "We may know that, strictly speaking, they are animals but their lack of eyes, mouths, organs and the power of movement means that they don't really feel like animals," Henderson writes about the barrel sponges, a bunch of tube-like creatures that are often big enough to surround a person should they want to swim inside. Like the previous chapter, we start with a brief description of a fantastical animal and we quickly jump to another place entirely – a gripping story of evolution that leaves us to ponder on the concept of "deep time", the billions of years that life on Earth has evolved and of which humans are the merest fraction of a part. As Henderson puts it: "Human history with respect to life on Earth is as deep as the displacement of the smallest seabird floating on top of a wave over the deepest part of the ocean."
The rest of this modern bestiary continues this pattern of natural history that segues into cultural and philosophical reflection. Henderson jumps smoothly from scientific information to history to fiction to anecdote and uses each creature as a window into the human mission to understand and interpret the world. Chapters on flatworms, leatherback turtles, yeti crabs, starfish and the honey badger all move in unexpected directions.
There is something lovely about a book that takes on so many disciplines and tackles them with confidence. This could have been a list of incomplete and unrelated facts, picked up and dipped into during a bored moment, for animal aficionados only and without an overarching theme. It's to Henderson's credit that he avoids all those things and presents us with something that stays in the memory long after the book is put back on the shelf, a whole that is greater than its parts. - Alok Jha

Expect a mix of philosophy and homily as Caspar Henderson introduces you to the stars of his modern survivors' bestiary - from shrimps that smash their prey horribly to jumping spiders.

Where do you go when you've watched every David Attenborough documentary, or read all of Gerald Durrell's wildlife diaries? Until recently there was a big gap in nature writing; just when we craved more detail and beauty about the world, the books go specialist - veering between microscopic information about cells or big picture eco disaster.

Which is why, once you start reading The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, it becomes hard to stop. It's a unique concept, a 21st century bestiary mixing facts in an A-Z format (from limb-regenerating Axolotols to Zebrafish embryos), pulled together by superbrain journalist Caspar Henderson. And when I say superbrain, just check out the index...

But what is a bestiary? Expect 27 essays each inspired by a particular letter of the alphabet (lucky X gets two) which twist through science, beauty and literature.
You can dip from Quetzalcoatlus to Waterbear and back again, or start at the beginning and on your reading journey be presented with unforgettable peeks into the natural world. For example, did you know the mantis shrimp Gonodactylus "has the fastest genitals in the West and will use them to smash your head with massive force"?

It's a book you will want to reread but may be hard to share. Just using the Gonodactylus as an example as Henderson meditates on powerful little critters, he introduces us to super-sight above and below water, then takes us on a philosophical journey about optics via a teenage hiking trip in Norway which led him to a patch of wildflowers. Suddenly nature can't exist without philosophy.

Expect to be glued to this 400+ page tome as much by the facts as for the honest humour - and know the intellectual burden will be lightened by gorgeous illustrations.
I also loved the fat margin peppered with quotes and homilies, such as these lines from a Chinese poem claiming: "the true measure of a mountain's greatness is not its height but whether it is charming enough to attract dragons". Who else had forgotten that on their bid to reach the top of Scafell Pike before the weather turns?

With the natural world in such a precarious state, and the oceans simultaneously raped for their wealth and a dumping ground for modern rubbish, it is easy for those who care for the planet to be close to despair.

Step forward The Book of Barely Imagined Beings - essential Earth-affirming reading, and a superb celebration of biodiversity. Be warned: budget to buy more than one copy because how else are your friends and family going to benefit from the wit and wisdom of a modern bestiary? - Nicola Baird