In these forty brief essays, the perennially perturbed Will Cuppy turns his unflinching attention on those members of the animal kingdom whose habits are disagreeable, whose appearances are repellent, and whose continued existence is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. He is not ???????????????????????? decidedly not ???????????????????????? without reason. (The pike is pretty nasty as fish go, don't you agree?) And while Cuppy may frequently leave in his wake more questions than answers, we surely owe him a debt of gratitude for at least asking. After all, someone has to consider the distinctions between Stoats and Ermines, or why the Age of Reptiles simply had to come to an end. And if his take on the Giant Ground Sloth is less than flattering, who are we to quibble?

Will Cuppy was a literary critic and humorist, known for his funny and satirical articles and books about nature and history.  He wrote for The New Yorker and other magazines, and his articles have been collected into books that are both amusing and factual.