The other night, whilst reading through the introduction to the Britain’s Mammals; A Field Guide to the Mammals of Britain and Ireland by Messrs. Couzens, Swash, Still, & Dunn (more on that book soon…) I was struck by their explanation of just how much more it takes to make mammals mammals than simply the possession of mammary glands. However as their introduction was simply meant to be just that – an introduction – I began to contemplate the question in a larger frame of reference
Fortunately, Liam Drew not long ago published a book that takes this very question as it’s main subject. In his I, Mammal; the Story of What Makes Us Mammals, Dr. Drew, described by his publisher as “a writer, former neurobiologist, and mammal” (Oxford comma my own), took up the investigation of his, and our own, mammalian existence after “a misdirected football left [him] clutching a uniquely mammalian part of his anatomy, he decided to find out more.”
Quite honestly, contemplating my existence as a mammal is likely not the first thing I believe I would have thought to myself after taking an errant football straight to the Niagara falls, but I very much admire his scientifically enquiring mind for doing so, and I look forward to learning what other discoveries he has made about the subject.
