Innocent Killers

Innocent Killers is that rare thing, a piece of original and highly important scientific research that reads with the pace and vividness of a best-selling thriller. The authors have lived with their subjects for four years, observing them with an intensity and limitless patience that can rarely have been equaled. They do not merely follow the behavior of an animal as a member of a species, but as an individual with personal characteristics, habits, and social status. When Cinda, the wild dog pup, is ripped from its mother by a bateleur eagle, the reader feels not merely that disaster has struck a small woolly animal but that a member of a family which he has grown to know is in mortal danger. The observations the authors have made enrich our knowledge and upset a host of popular misconceptions. The hyena, we all know, is a cowardly scavenger: yet here we see him pull down his own wildebeest and, when a lion approaches to share the kill, bite it smartly in the paw and force it to retreat. Innocent Killers opens up a new world for the reader which, once visited, will never be forgotten.