About Truth or Poop? Amazing Animals
Truth or Poop? Amazing Animals aka Truth or Poop? Amazing Animals: The True or False Quiz Book for Kids and Families – Funny Animal Facts for Ages 7–10 (Truth or Poop: true or false quiz book 1) is a children’s book written and illustrated by the multi-talented James Warwood. This “interactive” and fast-paced quiz book is designed to test the knowledge of its readers, challenging families and friends to sort fact from fiction by evaluating 50 bizarre animal statements, such as whether a chicken is really the closest living relative to a T-Rex or if an armadillo’s armour trully is bulletproof.
It seems perfect for fans of the Weird but True series (although all of it is not Truth of course). By encouraging readers to think critically about whether a claim is the absolute “truth” or total “poop”, Warwood cleverly delivers engaging educational content wrapped in a mostly accessible format. The book can be so socially and otherwise engaging with its comical illustrations, that you might not realise it is indeed 113-page long. This book could serve as an ideal tool to keep young, inquisitive minds thoroughly entertained while effortlessly expanding their zoological knowledge.
I am going to speak about what works and what does not and why, sincerely striving to keep the part of the book that is not available as a free sample as mysterious as possible.
Truth or Poop? Amazing Animals – what I liked
The Entertainment factor
What I did like about Truth or Poop? Amazing Animals is that you can read it on your own or make it a more social moment. It is great for those who love facts, those who love quizzes, those who are into puzzles or just a great collateral for facillitating a nice social time with friends and/or family. It will also be attractive to those who don’t particularly like to read because it only takes one line reading to start the discussion and guesses and you would want to know more about the answer once it is given, which generally takes about half a page of arguably large font writing.
The Educational factor
There is enough in there to entertain for a good amount of time with truth or poop for 50 different animal facts, additional explanations to quench the curious minds. It therefore could be a great educational tool, kindling the imagination, quenching inquisitive minds, titling the curious and delivering answers as well as facts surrounding the answers.
Most of the book is definitely entertaining, with some facts just making its readers smile (that would be the dad jokes), some surprising them, some just straight out funny, and some just silly myths with some interesting facts to back up the demystification. This gives it the ability to engage but also to facilitate some information retention since it does create a kind of expansion on the fact.
The Series factor
The book is also part of a series which means that those who liked the book will be happy to know that there are other entries in James Warwood’s Truth or Poop? series, including “Truth or Poop? Spectacular Space”, “Truth or Poop? Gloriously Gross Facts”, “Truth or Poop? Incredible Insects”, “Truth or Poop? Dangerous Dinosaurs”, “Truth or Poop? Puzzling Predators”. I do like the aliteration in the “subtitles” e.g., Amazing Animals, “Dangerous Dinosaurs”, etc.
The book almost has it all but…
Truth or Poop? Amazing Animals – Some of the additional Facts are Poop
I used the words in the book title to underline some of the untruths and borderline dangerous parts of the book.
Experimentation on cats?!
I was a little taken aback by the idea of experimentation on cats being spoken about so lightly in a children’s book even if they are 7 and over, and how these experimentations affect the animals mentally. While I am all for a solution for curing AIDS, I am not sure that talking about one of the means to this glorious end in such a casual way and even suggesting a glowing pet would be a fun pet for a child to have: not considering the ethics or the mental state of an animal undertaking such an experiment or the subsequent safety of a child given a pet after such an experimentation is of concern.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that it is done and I am not talking here about what I may feel about the practice. But to present that on a young mind as a fun, entertaining thing to be done and to see and completely bypassing the animal’s wellbeing is akin to teaching children that it matters not or is not worth mentioning, only their entertainment is!
While arguably a lesser issue, the dog hypnosis bit could do with some caveats. Power over animals is not a subject for unadulterated fun.
Homo sapiens americanus!
Talking about truth or poop, the mention of “Homo sapiens americanus” in the buffalos section is incorrect on two fronts: Firstly, the Latin name for humans is “Homo sapiens” (which translates to “wise man” or “knowing man.” ) not “Homo sapiens americanus.” Secondly, the term “Homo sapiens americanus” was established long ago along 3 others to subcategorise “homo sapiens” based on their geographical location and associated stereotypes! These have long been considered obsolete and recognised as a scientifically invalid subclassification as it reflected 18th-century biases rather than modern biological reality. The concept is entirely rejected by modern anthropology and genetics as is the associated concept of human “races” as biological sub-species since it does not hold up to scientific scrutiny. Modern genetic studies reveal that human populations are incredibly interconnected, and there are no distinct genetic boundaries that divide Homo sapiens into separate sub-species. All living humans belong solely to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. I think that beyond the use of a scientifically refuted name, what got me the most was the insistence on using an additional word on the very much standard “homo sapiens” and the immediate equating of the American “race” to it.
Worms and humans shedding limbs?!
I was a little confused at some point with the way the author casually equated a worm shedding/leaving its tail behind to a human shedding/leaving their limb. My first reaction was how could those two be equated? While both actions share the ultimate goal of survival, the biological cost, safety, and mechanics are completely different. For the worm, this is an innate, controlled defensive survival reflex, built-in a modular body, so much so that autotomy instantly causes localised muscles to tightly constrict the broken blood vessels and instantly seal the wound, away from vital organs. On top of it, they can regrow their tails.
On the other hand, humans have no natural built-in mechanism (or will) to detach a limb; moreover, the severing of a limb ruptures major arteries which, if not immediately attented to, will result in massive blood loss and eventually death in minutes; with a severed limb, humans permanently lose complex nerves, major muscle groups, and unique skeletal structures and human limbs do not regenerate so it is a permanent disability. As a result, for a human, losing a limb is not just a potential lethal physical injury, it is a fundamental disruption oftheir body image, identity and reality. as they experience complex psychological layers of trauma such as severe psychological shock, and phantom limb syndrome.
One better equivalent would be apoptosis or the ultimate cellular sacrifice. Imagine that a virus (predator) attacks a cell and tries to hijack it. Instead of letting the virus use its machinery to multiply and kill the whole body, the cell activates a built-in self-destruct sequence. It deliberately breaks itself down from the inside, dying to trap and destroy the attacker before it can spread to neighbouring cells. Because this is innate, there is no thinking as it is automatic, and no trauma since the body is meant to work like that and is used to it.
Brain size matters I mean Brain size determines level of intelligence?!
While giving some great facts about ostriches, the author notes “their tiny brains mean they are not particularly intelligent,” or calling them “the dumbest animal in the world!” After the homo sapiens americanus comment, I really wonder what century this was written. I understand that the author might have been carried away by his series of facts but I really think that affirmations about thinks that are not scientifically proven should be avoided. I also understand that the science might have not been there then, but advancing facts without substantial proof is dangerous, and more so in a book about facts!
The “bird brain” myth is a dated pejorative assuming that small, simple avian brains equate to low intelligence. In reality, neurobiology research proves birds are among the most intelligent animals on Earth. While ostriches’ brains are walnut-sized, they utilise highly efficient, densely packed neural structures. The size of its brain is due to its enormous eyes, a highly successful evolutionary trade-off for survival, giving the ostrich extraordinary visual processing power to spot threats from kilometres away.
Science does not know enough about ostriches to state with complete certainty that they lack intelligence. Ostriches’ intelligence is highly specialised for their environment. Their brain and cognitive abilities are perfectly geared toward survival in their terrain, including high-speed navigation, advanced and rapid visual reflexes, complex group dynamics (such as intricate social hierarchies within their flocks, performing sophisticated communal egg-rearing strategies and being able to recognise specific individual ostriches), predator evasion, and calculating terrain steps while running at sustained fast speed rather than human-defined logic tests. This is not about spearing the ostriches’ feelings, this is about facts.
The general bias of the human centredness and other biases
The way some of the facts are presented in general shows a very high degree of human bias. From elephants being referred to as “poor” because they can’t do something that humans enjoy (as if humans’ entertainment was ever to be the model for judging what entertains an elephant, besides the asumption that all humans enjoy it), to ostriches being “stupid” because they can’t do some of what humans can (as if humans’ personal and environmental needs could be a reference for a completely different species and its survival and living requirements), this book has a way of teaching children to judge by comparison to a norm established by a subset of humans. That is extremely dangerous, highly judgemental without scientific (or should I say factual) foundations.
The case of the tickled tiger
A truth or false set of statements is not only supposed to be proven, it is also supposed to be proven as either true or false so that there is only one response. So when you get to the statement about tigers laughing when they are tickled, the answer only start getting confusing when you read the explanation. It reads like the case of the tiger is not proven either way and while he has plenty of proven of examples for other animals, the author choses to put an irrevocable answer to what he presents as an unproven theory joking about the reason it is not proven: no one would dare.
Claiming a statement is false simply because it cannot be proven is confusing truth with proof, and committing the logical fallacy of argument from ignorance (or ad ignorantiam), and oversimplifying how reality and logic work.This error relies on a few key misunderstandings:
- A lack of proof only means we do not currently know if a claim is true. It does not automatically mean the claim is false
- Whether a statement is true depends on whether it matches reality. Proof is a human method of gathering enough evidence or logical deduction to convince others. A statement can be true even if nobody has invented a way to prove it yet.
- Some true things cannot be proven. The statement “If you keep counting numbers forever (1, 2, 3, 4…), you will never run out of numbers” is true because numbers go on for infinity, this is how math works. However, one can’t prove it because one would have to sit there and count forever without ever stopping; since one cannot live forever, one can never reach the “end” to prove that it doesn’t exist.
- Some statements are unfalsifiable. They cannot be proven true or false, but this doesn’t make them lies or inherently incorrect. It is the way that the rule used in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, “Toy Story” and vague or generic predictions. An example of such statement would be “There is an invisible, silent dragon living under my bed, but he vanishes whenever anyone tries to look or reach for him.” If you look under the bed and see nothing, I can just say, “See? I told you he vanishes when you look!” No matter what experiment you try, the statement has a built-in excuse that makes it impossible to disprove. This is not the case in this book where the author states “it’s poop” and within a few seconds adds “or maybe it’s not” before concluding that a tiger does not laugh when tickled.
Truth or Poop? Amazing Animals – Lost opportunities
Mnemonic device
While the “truth or poop” reveals are highly engaging, the educational explanations that follow each answer are quite brief, sometimes leaving older or highly inquisitive children wanting more scientific context and deeper detail about why a fact is true or false. But more than the superficial explanations, opportunities were lost for more of a storytelling perspective that will turn the additional facts into a higher retention tool for the main fact. While a proven mnemonic device would involve the acoustic hooks and sequential triggers of rhyming, a well-written story on its own would create a relatable emotional context, a more meaningful mental imagery, a familiar framework on which to add new building blocks and that tells you where you are at, and logical links which will ensure that the questions and answers are not merely remembered but that the full contextual landscape and its logical links are understood in a way that responses are triggered automatically not from memorising but from naturally understanding.
I really liked the fact about squirrels until it expanded into a parallel fact without clarifying their relationship. The author mentions the fact that squirrels save more nuts than they need. Then mentions that more trees are planted. And I am left wondering what does one have to do with the other. In effect, squirrels are actually nature’s accidental tree planters. During autumn, they practice “scatter-hoarding,” burying thousands of nuts and seeds in shallow, individual caches to save for winter. Because they hide more food than they can ever eat, the buried seeds are left to germinate and grow into new trees. That is all the explanation I would have needed. Neat side effect indeed.
The art of formulating quiz questions
The truth or poop questions are at the heart of the book. But at some point quite easy on, it became easy to guess most of the answers to the truth or poop questions: while this is a (quiz) game, the formulation of the question needs to make the answer more elusive. It became apparent early on (only a few questions in) what the answer was going to be likely because of the formulation of the question. Basically, once you have seen one type of question, you know whether it is going to be true or false next time and most of the time for what reason e.g., I knew the owls one would be poop and it would be a number issue since the fact itself looked true enough so much it was specific. At their worst, the very rare (thank goodness) question and ensuing answer and facts have actually just made this reader uninterested in the fact, looking at you sloths, moths and algae.
A truth/poop question such “owls may live their partners” would have been different (It is also funny to call it “divorce” when there is no “marriage” in the human sense, unless there is a comparable ceremony that has not been mentioned). While the facts that comes with it are really interesting, it is the “will I get it right or not” that creates the dopamine that opens up the curiosity to know why not or why. Or did the author forget think otherwise? It seems each fact found was just put down with minimal attention to the art of asking challenging questions.
A good example is the question “A cat has 32 muscles in each ear: Truth or Poop?” If you have seen the previous questions and answers, you immediately know the answer to this one. It is so specific and so one dimensional that the previous patterns create, you know the answer. There is only one question which is how many muscles per ear does a cat have?. A better, slightly enough more challenging and even more educative would be: “A cat has twice as many muscles in each ear than a human being has” It presents them with a plausible sccenario that still leaves them wondering for a bit in relationship with humans, triggering more questions: “yes, I would think a cat has more muscles than a human right, with the things it does with its ears? But is it twice as many? How many muscles does a human even have in each ear? Is it more or less than a cat? And if more, is it twice as more, more, or less?… You get my point.
Beliefs beyond quiz questions
For some reason, the title’s formiulation had me expect, beyond simple questions, an educational exercise separating myths from facts, debunking myths and expanding on truths. But the questions all sound like someone who got a list of facts about animals and madea “fun” book out of it rather than someone who collected a set of beliefs to make sure the 7 to 10 years old can make the difference between those that are poop and those that are truth and understand the logical and fun context.
Illustrations and edition
A picture is worth a thousand words and when you are learning facts, this is even more true. But James Warwood only gives us one to three meager illustration(s) per fact, this is considering that each question and fact are spread over 4 pages and counting the recurring truth or poop emoticon as one graphic. The graphic themselves also seem to belong in a 0-5 children’s book not a 7 to 10 year old and not a factual book uncovering truths and myths. To be fair to the author, the quality of the graphics was announced from the outset on the cover. That being said, the missed opportunity here is more the lack of picture when expanding on the facts that takes so many paragraphs and the choice to put a picture against the one-liner of a question.
Edition, I believe, would have pointed that out (I do when relevant while I edit books so…). It would have also pointed out the odd misspelling (wierd?), some unreadable sentences, some changes of scope in the facts, a set of biased affirmations, attention to some of the less audience-appropriate choices, the odd punctuation error (if your phrase starts with “how”, it is a question that ends with “?” and how do you read “Gross, right!”? is it “Gross, right??” or “Gross bur right!/true!”), and the forgivable but impractical, occasional use of British slang (codswallop?). If the editor were a fact checker, they would have dealth with the few factual issues.
Truth or Poop? Amazing Animals – The gaps that create a set of unanswered questions
In too manycases, the expanded facts the book presents trigger more questions mainly because the author’s fact expansion is not providing closure to the immediate question:
- If the armadillo is not bulletproof, why give an example that shows it is?
- I love the little story of the rabbit (you see, this is the type of thing I was talking about in the lost opportunities!) but the question that lingers is what brought up the idea that rabbits could do what the statement announced? What was the foundation of the statement, because it sounded to specific to be random and in spite of the nice story, we are left unquenched.
- How were the scientists able to communicate to the pigeons that they wanted them to order the numbers or pair images with different number of objects? Can what scientists did and needed from pigeons mean something different to the pigeons than it means to the scientists, for what would be the point of ordering for a pigeon?
- Is it worth mentioning the fastest man on earth when mentioning the fastest animals on earth knowing that Usain Bolt is a sprinter, i.e., a type of runner who competes in short, high-intensity track and field events. I get why but doesn’t stamina eliminates humans in the first place, considering that in longer distances than those involved in sprinting, they would not be able to maintain the same speed, and in fact will slow down?
- Does the low amount of flies on zebras warrant the associated definitive fact and no further investigation before such a definitive conclusion? What proves that it is that and nothing else like the smell or a combination of things that acted in that way since the experiment does not have a 100% result?
- Quickly speaking of reindeers shedding their fur and moving on to another fact about reindeer rather than expanding on the question that is posed was not useful. My first question after the question was answered and the facts expanded was, “so HOW do they shed their fur?” Understanding that standard seasonal moulting process would have been a lot more relevant and given a sense of closure to the question at hand.
- Fun is ok but mentioning spreading hot bird poo on your bro’s sandwich? not sure children will get the joke. And I know they are 7 or older but… I am pretty sure they don’t need an adult’s permission or vindication to do such things.
- Sometimes the eagerness to tell the facts ends up presenting contradicting statements for the targeted age and even the grown up I was, I had to go and find the correct information to understand. (one example is somewhere above) but I don’t want to give too many as it might reveal too much
Truth or Poop? Amazing Animals – Verdict
I was going to give this a 4 out of 5 for its entertainment, ideas and facts factors from the outset but since the whole thing is based on the fact or myth principle (truth or poop if you’d prefer) and the quiz vehicle, there are too many cases ranging from barely mild to outrageous that put the foundations of this book on shaky grounds. On top of these paragraphs like the one on crazy worm feels unedited because of the way it reads / or barely does. The unecessary use of “Homo sapiens americanus” opens its own can of nasty worms that children of any age, looking or not for facts, should not be subject to.
It is an occurence I have come across more than once that a person stating facts gets lost not in the communication of that fact but in the expression of his knowledge of facts. This phenomenon recurs in the book, where the facts expanding a question end up seguiing from the question at hand rather than provide closure (at least within the immediate scope of the question) to the curious mind, overwhelming the reader with unanswered questions rather than satisfying them, and in a very few cases, leave them uninterested in the fact (looking at you, sloths, moths and algae).
Great idea, passable execution, messy finish whose obvious issues a good editor, a potential proof-reader, and a definite fact-checker would have fixed, challenging certain turns of phrases, replacing biased affirmations, and giving enhancement suggestions and a much needed final overhaul/touch. I also wish there were a couple more pictures per fact, just to showcase what was being described, with the pictures being a little bit more than just amateurish looking.