Calling all animal lovers. EDWARD BROOKE-HITCHING is a former QI elf and What’s the Weirdest Thing About Animals? is his first book in a new series for younger readers.
From turtles to toucans, jaguars to jellyfish, this book is perfect for children who love fun and funny facts. Read on for a Q&A.
MEET EDWARD BROOKE-HITCHING
What inspired you to explore the weirdest things about animals?
Animals are all amazing. Sometimes I can’t believe just how lucky we are to share a planet with so many different species of curious creature – imagine how boring a place the world would be without them! What’s so interesting to me is how every single species has its own unique feature, or behaviour, or ability. Look at parrotfish for example. They make their own pyjamas by burping out mucus to cover their bodies, and then in the morning eat it for breakfast. This is the same fish that also makes most of the white sand of the beaches in the Caribbean and Hawaii, because they eat coral and poop out white sand. How amazing is that?! And there are so many animals yet to be discovered. Scientists think there are about 8.7 million different species of animal on Earth, but so far we’ve only discovered at most about 1.5 million.
What’s one of your favourite facts in the book?
I think ape facts are always my favourite – did you know that there’s a monkey the size of a cricket ball? The “pygmy marmoset” is the smallest monkey in the world. Also I love that orangutans blow raspberries at each other as they fall asleep (I’m pretty sure I used to do that with my brothers).
Did you come across anything so bizarre you had to double-check it was real?
This is the best kind of fact to find, the one that is so unexpected that it completely changes the way you think about the world. The book is full of them but the best one I know is this: Sharks are older than trees. What?! How can that be? But it’s true. Sharks were swimming in the ocean at least 400 million years ago – the first kind of tree, Archaeopteris (now extinct), began growing on land about 50 million years later.
What do you hope kids will start noticing about animals after reading this book?
I think it’s very important to know just how strange and interesting animals are, and there are still so many animals and their weirdnesses still to be found. Hopefully this book will change the way you look at the animals around you, and see them for just how wonderful and quirky they are. Animals have so many different kinds of superpowers, but they also need our help to protect them.
How did you go about researching such a wide range of unusual animal behaviours?
I’ve been collecting the best facts for years while working as a writer and fact-finder for the BBC TV show QI, scooping up bits of information from books, newspapers, and scientific papers announcing the latest discoveries. Hopefully, if you turn to any page in the book you’ll find lots of things you didn’t know before.
If readers take away one thing from this book, what would you want it to be?
Maybe it’s that slugs have four noses, or that houseflies buzz in the musical key of F major, or that if you put a sheep in a maze they mostly turn left. Overall, though, the best thing this book can give you is to show you how the world is a more wonderful place than you can possibly imagine. Nature is full of surprises, and those surprises happen every day. I hope the book makes you excited to get out there and make your own discoveries.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Brooke-Hitching is the author of the acclaimed bestselling Simon and Schuster titles The Devil’s Atlas (2021), The Madman’s Library (2020), The Sky Atlas (2019), and Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports (2015). A writer for the hit BBC television programme QI and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he has appeared on TV and radio programmes. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an incurable cartophile, he lives surrounded by dusty heaps of old maps and books in Berkshire.
Visit Edward Brooke-Hitching’s website here
Follow Edward Brooke-Hitching on Instagram here.
See the book on the Bloomsbury website here.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Jez Tuya is an illustrator based in Wellington City, New Zealand’s windy capital. He’s been honing his craft and working as an illustrator for many years, and over this time he’s worked for many clients in children’s book publishing, while occasionally dabbling in design work for animation.
Follow Jez Tuya on Instagram here
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