Yeah, THIS is what I hate in children’s books about animals. This cat is the fastest runner? That bird has the sharpest vision? The dinosaur is the tallest one ever? Who even cares? It’s not like they compete with other animals we judge / have recorded to be almost as fast etc. We never get to hear about the silvers, much less the bronzes.
Annnd… This cat “can’t maintain the speed for long”? Who even cares? It’s not like we ever read anything about the variability of the cat’s speed, the bird’s sharpness of vision...and these aren’t even extinct… nobody measures it. Nobody measures it, but lots of people compare their freaking favorite species like there’s some kind of Platonic Zoology we’re all supposed to agree on.
(At least the invertebrates are simply weird, each one in its own dimension.)
Yeah, THIS is what I hate in children’s books about animals. This cat is the fastest runner? That bird has the sharpest vision? The dinosaur is the tallest one ever? Who even cares? It’s not like they compete with other animals we judge / have recorded to be almost as fast etc. We never get to hear about the silvers, much less the bronzes.
Annnd… This cat “can’t maintain the speed for long”? Who even cares? It’s not like we ever read anything about the variability of the cat’s speed, the bird’s sharpness of vision...and these aren’t even extinct… nobody measures it. Nobody measures it, but lots of people compare their freaking favorite species like there’s some kind of Platonic Zoology we’re all supposed to agree on.
(At least the invertebrates are simply weird, each one in its own dimension.)