Book Blog #2: The Search for The Last Undiscovered Animals by Karl P. N. Shuker

       The book that I did my second book blog on is The Search for The Last Undiscovered Animals by Karl P. N. Shuker. Throughout this book, the author explored numerous accounts of various kinds of undiscovered animals varying from wolves and worms to even sea monsters. There were many things that I liked about this book, one thing being the author's use of in-depth, scientific detail while explaining the reports and sightings recalled by people, as well as what he had uncovered in articles and books. Another thing that I enjoyed about this book was the enormous amount of research that clearly went into it. Countless sources of all kinds are used in order to create the most accurate depiction of the creature that is possible. There are many anecdotes and first-person stories about events that are said to have happened involving certain animals that are being researched in the book make the book itself more entertaining. One thing that I didn't like, however, was the lack of conclusions drawn by the author. The author leaves the reader to ponder the question of whether the creatures are real or not at the end of every description after putting forth all of the known evidence and witness reports. It can be frustrating; to say the least, when suspense has been built up over twenty pages (relatively) just to find out that there is no definitive, scientific conclusion. One thing that I found very surprising while reading this book was the variety of creatures that are believed to be seen by so many different people. The classics that everyone has heard about such as the "Loch Ness Monster" and "Bigfoot" are not the focus of this book. Other creatures such as mysterious, man-eating plants and miniature ink monkeys are some of the many things discussed in this book. This book has brought to light one important thing to me. When I was a child, I used to dream about being a cryptozoologist, and going out to discover all of these strange animals. However, upon reading this book, I realized that much of the work that cryptozoologists do is not in the field actually trying to find the creature. A large part of what they do is researching, studying, and interviewing people who have experienced things that they cannot explain. From this, they put all of their information together and try to come up with a reasonable explanationfor the phenomenon that they were researching. After all of this is done, they might or might not go out on the expeditions that we see on the History or Discovery channel in an attempt to discover the creature that they have been researching for so long. I would recommend this book to my peers if they are interested in science and folklore, but I would caution them not to get their hopes up about getting a definitive answer to the age-old question: "Does Bigfoot really exist?".