Innocent Killers

This book takes three social carnivores many people hate--African wild dogs, jackals and spotted hyenas--and tells their stories. Such a book is especially needed in the present day, when African wild dogs are endangered and spotted hyenas near threatened. van Lawick-Goodall and van Lawick-Goodall are world-class animal behavior scientists, and yes, they are Jane Goodall, the famous chimpanzee researcher, and her husband Hugo van Lawick, the wildlife photographer who captured the chimps on film. As in their general-audience works on chimpanzees, the text is lucid, entertaining and informative. The photographs, although black and white, are excellent.The authors skillfully present these animals as individuals, with fascinating individual temperaments, and I found myself caring about them as they engaged in the drama of their lives. I also learned a lot about these three species, and wished I could have learned even more. As van Lawick-Goodall and van Lawick-Goodall focused their research more on chimpanzees, this book represents relatively few years of research and does not contain the most up to date information about these animals. The authors are much more familiar with their chimpanzees, having spent more than thirty years with the apes in contrast to the two or three years of research this book represents. Correspondingly, Goodall and van Lawick's chimpanzee books are better. However, this book is still excellent. I particularly liked the hyena section, because the social system of hyenas is unique, complete with female dominance, and extremely complicated. And no, hyenas and jackals are not really scavengers, but kill most of what they eat themselves.Although wolves and lions have received much publicity as social carnivores, the three species featured in this book are perhaps even more interesting. There is a dearth of popular books about them, and _Innocent Killers_ is probably the best on the market. It is disappointing this book has not become more popular, because it is a gripping tale with unique protagonists.

Just so you know, Jane van Lawick-Goodall is more commonly known as Jane Goodall - yes, the one that works with chimpazees. Hugo van Lawick-Goodall was the photographer as well as her husband during the chimpazee studies.This book manages to make 3 animals that most folks do not have a lot of love for and make them interesting reading. I don't particularly like hyenas and the description of how they eat their prey alive is unnerving but it is also fascinating. Hyenas (as well as jackals and wild dogs) kill their prey with a method known as rapid disembowelment. The prey dies very quickly as opposed to the methods lions (as well as cheetahs and leopards) use which is suffocation. Suffocation can take at least ten minutes if not longer to kill the prey. I won't presume to know which is the most painful way, but rapid disembowelment would seem more efficent from the predator's point of view.They spend over two years studying spotted hyenas, golden jackals and wild dogs. The information about the social structure the animals participate in as well as their hunting methods are described in great detail. You don't have to be a zoologist or have specialized training to appreciate this book, but I think being an animal lover would be a great help.One of the more interesting parts to me was when M's van Lawick-Goodall talks about taking her baby son along on this expedition. She details how she tried to make it as safe as possible for Grublin and how he grew up with the animals.The black and white photographs are excellent. The bat eared foxes are quite photogenic, as well as the cheetah cubs at play.The pictures of the books subjects are equally good. M's van Lawick-Goodall does an excellent great job giving the reader a different viewpoint of these much maligned animals. Read the book and learn all about these "innocent killers".