It's not a secret that I love spiders, so why not read an actual book about them for once? Plus some other arachnids and bugs as a bonus.
In this book we delve into various species of spiders, scorpions, bugs, and mollusks. We're shown what they look like and given some basic information about each species. Per species there's also a few photos, fun facts and more.
A great book if you want to learn more about these animals, but also with a few catches. First of all, with how many different species of arachnids and bugs there are, there's no way that even remotely most of them were tackled here. It was really just a few distinct species with of course many being left untouched. I'm of course not expecting them to tackle all of them within a somewhat short book, but let's just say that this book doesn't begin to cover how vast the world of arachnids, bugs and mollusks is.
The other catch and the one that annoys me more: the book is kind of fear-monger-y. And I get it, spiders can bite; scorpions and some bugs can sting, etc. But I really wish the book wasn't constantly just going on and on about how dangerous each species is to humans/other animals. Tell us a little bit more about them that isn't dedicated to their poisonous bites or whatever. Usually facts about how they live/reproduce/their behavior/etc. is just kept to very brief fun facts and the larger sections are dedicated to how they hunt and use their natural weapons.
Which is cool, and I'm not denying in the slightest that some creepy crawlies are dangerous even to humans. But it doesn't need the whole fearmongering aspect. Bugs and arachnids already have a bad enough reputation as is with a lot of people thinking they're disgusting, useless and/or scary. I don't think we need to add to that. Why not instead explain what important role each species plays in the ecosystem? Right now each sub-chapter mostly comes across as "look at this cool deadly bug" and I feel like it could be more nuanced. Show the dangers they pose but also that they're just animals that are often misunderstood and are important to nature. Show us more about their lives outside of hunting/defending themselves.
Another brief flaw I noticed: each of the sub-chapters starts with a large (and admittedly very cool and good looking) illustration of the spider/scorpion/bug/mollusk in question. It has some important distinguishing features of each species labeled and they are given a short description on how they stand out for each species (e.g. some spiders having distinct hairs, claws on the ends of their legs or unusually shaped pedipalps).
And this is definitely cool, a good way to show each species in detail...but there were also quite a few instances (I think I spotted at least three) where they mislabeled one of the creature's anatomical parts. Like the right labels and descriptions were there, but they were connected to the wrong part of the body of the critter. Stuff like labeling the fangs as pedipalps, for example. I'm not 100% positive that this is also present in the original English version as I own a copy of the Dutch translation and they may just have mixed up the labels during the translation process, but it was definitely an issue that occurred multiple times in mine.
So overall this is a pretty cool book if you like spiders, scorpions, bugs and mollusks, but also know that the things it teaches is usually rather surface-level and mostly dedicated to how deadly each species is and how it predates. A bit more nuance in the portrayal of each species would've been nice. Still, it was pretty educative and the illustrations and photos are pretty!
Rating: 3.5/5
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