Review by Choice Review
Anthropologist Forth (Univ. of Alberta, Canada) has devoted a career to chronicling the zoological knowledge of the Nage people of the island of Flores, Indonesia. The island is east of Wallace's Line and thus impoverished in terms of mammals, but several have gotten there, often with human help. Reptiles and birds travel more easily and are well represented. The Nage know them all, disregarding only the tiniest insects. The Nage also recognize an enormous wealth of detail about the lives, environments, and human uses of animals, including nearly extinct ones, such as the Komodo dragon. Less easy to explain are several beliefs that are demonstrably wrong: skinks (lizards) can impregnate sows, earthworms croak and chirp, bats can turn into civets. Forth shows how these beliefs can be reasonable, given observed reality. Nage classification is broadly similar to other traditional zoologies (including Aristotle's--the Nage are quite naturalistic, even scientific, in their system) but has a number of distinctive features, not least being a word for animals in general and at least a concept of mammals as opposed to other animals. Forth goes into detail, with thorough explanation, on these distinctive features. Valuable for specialists in Indonesia and in folk classification systems. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, specialists. --Eugene N. Anderson, University of California, Riverside
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
