Thank you for picking up this book. You’re about to learn all about some of Animalogic’s strangest creatures through this book, which is the result of years of research into our favorite animals.

Some of the animals you’ll read about are notorious weirdos like the coconut crab, the frogmouth, and the magical glow worm. They’re creatures that have developed incredibly unique adaptations to survive in their environments. But some of the most interesting animals are the ones that look normal at first glance, but once you dig a little bit deeper you discover a whole world of weird behaviors and adaptations.

Last summer we were filming butcherbirds in the grasslands between Saskatchewan and Montana. Throughout the shoot we kept running into prairie dog colonies. They were adorable. Their barks and chips were the constant soundtrack of the prairie, and in those calls they seemed to encode messages about each of our movements. We interviewed a couple of experts about them and were shocked to find out that these humble rodents were one of the most amazing animals we’d ever encountered. We learned that they not only have one of the most advanced animal languages in the world, but also live in vast underground cities larger than most human-built cities. They were right in front of us all along, and we just needed to dig a little deeper to learn how amazing they were.

That is the ethos of Animalogic. The world is full of wonders and every animal can be amazing if you appreciate it for the way it creatively adapts to environmental pressures.

The subjects of this book are chosen for two reasons. The first and main one is that they subvert our expectations of what animals like them should look or behave. We have a fish that walks on four “legs”, a scuba diving beetle, a spiky mammal that lays leathery snake-like eggs, snakes that come out yearly for one of the largest mating events on earth, and many more. The second criteria is that we have Danielle Dufault’s illustrations of all these animals. They’re all, of course, drawn in Animalogic’s iconic style.

Each chapter of the book introduces one of these animals and we learn about its biology, behavior, location (a range map), and a special emphasis on what makes them special.

These are just some of our favorite stories in evolutionary biology. We hope you join in loving these animals for all their weirdness and beauty, and in appreciating the grandeur of all the nature that surrounds us.