INTRODUCTION I've always described myself as a frustrated naturalist trapped in an illustrator's body I grew up wanting to be a mixture of TV presenter David Attenborough and fictional adventurer Indiana Jones and eventually settled on illustration as a way of bringing my childhood fantasies to life Now I explore the natural world through drawing and writing but it's not enough for me to produce a technically accurate picture of an animal I also need to understand what's happening beneath the fur and the feathers I spent my early years travelling back and forth between the United Kingdom and southern Africa I learned to swim in a mountain river and one of my earliest memories is of being driven across the endless red dunes of the Namib Desert on my sixth birthday As a child I was never without an encyclopedia When wasn't reading about animals or drawing them I was marvelling at anything I could find from chameleons to crickets and everything in between and trying to understand it all 6
This is the book I have wanted to read since that time and I hope it will awaken in you the same sense of wonder at nature that has accompanied me throughout my life This book is my love letter to Planet Earth It is a celebration of her hidden species from the bold and beautiful to the interesting but ugly It is the story of my favourite birds and animals some are endangered and others less so It isn't a complete list but it will I hope offer a glimpse of the outstanding diversity of nature as told from the perspective of a wildlife obsessed boy and the detail obsessed illustrator he became Ben Rothery Aged 6 and 33 7
Spotted eagle owl Bubo africanus 8
HIDDEN PLANET When we think of something as being hidden we normally imagine a creature that is out of sight or cleverly disguised as something else Perhaps it is cunning shy or sly Maybe it is small or comes out only under the cover of darkness It may live deep in a rainforest or in a cave bury itself in the sand or spend its life high in the treetops There are also hidden relationships between species that might seem otherwise unconnected For many years humans have invented fantastical stories to explain these connections One more secret of Planet Earth can be found in the unexpected abilities and behaviours of some of the creatures we think we already know The creatures in this book are hidden in some or all of these ways
