Exotic Animal Field Guide

Book excerpt: Exotic animals range in appearance from truly striking to seemingly ordinary, and they live in wildlife preserves, on farms, in parks, and even in the wilderness across the United States. In this book, Elizabeth Cary Mungall provides ample information for anyone, from park visitor and zoo goer to rancher and wildlife biologist, who wants to identify and learn more about exotic wildlife in the United States. Richard D. Estes, author of The Safari Companion, says that "for everyone interested in exotic hoofed stock, Exotic Animal Field Guide is a well-written and beautifully illustrated book that fills a vacant niche." Indeed, the main portion of the book contains fully illustrated species accounts of eighty different kinds of hoofed animals, with native range maps and information about food habits, habitat, temperament, breeding and birth seasons, and fencing needs. A list of exotics-related organizations and a reference section round out the text. Photographs of each species make the book both attractive and useful as a field tool. In a chapter on photographing exotics, Christian Mungall shows readers how to take their own great pictures of these animals. Clearly, as James G. Teer, of the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at Texas A&M University states, this is "much more than a field guide. Elizabeth Cary Mungall's book is a long awaited repository and data source on the ecology, technology, and management of more than 80 species of non-native hoofed animals. . . . Anyone with exotics on his or her property will require Exotic Animal Field Guide."