The Kingdon Pocket Guide to African Mammals (Princeton Pocket Guides, 4) Paperback – January 30, 2005

This compact little guide is a condensed version of  The Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals  by the same author. That book is easily the best overview of African mammals, with detailed info on each species/genus, but it is not really practical for use as a field guide (see my review of it).This book contains the same illustrations arranged in a format that makes them handier for actual identification in the field.It is very comprehensive, covering every single species of African mammals with the exception of bats, rodents, insectivores, elephant-shrews and hyrraxes, which are usually represented by one species for each genus. But every single genus is represented, and of rodents, every species of squirrel is dealt with separately.Maps and brief info on distribution and ecology of each taxon is now to be found on the pages facing the illustrutions.The latter are a mixed bag, as in the original work: while most are quite good, even excellent and life-like, others are quite awful, either showing animals with stiff, straight limbs/bodies as if drawn with a ruler (like the Crowned Monkey) or in highly unnatural positions (like the Potto with the limbs twisted out, or the Cheetah standing up like a circus horse).All things considered, this is easily the best field guide to mammals of Africa, though for more in-depth information on each taxon, you may still want to have the original book in addition to this one.

Unlike its parent volume, "The Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals," the pocket guide includes indexes to both scientific and English names, a distinct advantage in addition to its more compact size that facilitates use in the field while saving space in packing. Illustrations are sized to serve as well as those of the larger work, although descriptions are necessarily far more concise. A number of the range maps entail a frustrating compromise wherein the area of Africa included to effectively illustrate species distributions is so small as to require a more intimate knowledge of the continent's geography than many likely users will possess. This caveat notwithstanding, the pocket guide is the finest reference of its size.

Bought this to use on a field course through Kenya. It was easy to use and the pictures and descriptions were very helpful. Because it's a guide to ALL African mammals (rather than a regional book), it was sometimes overwhelming to the students- but there are maps that can be used. I would argue that it doesn't really fit very well in a pocket, but I don't think I'd carry it in my pocket anyway. Would definitely recommend to anyone going on safari!

The books does cover a lot of non-huntable species in addition to the huntable ones, and is written mainly for nature lovers. Has good color drawings and maps of species distribution throughout Africa, but has nothing about bullet placement, recommended calibers, etc. The distribution maps could be useful if you are looking to add a rare species to your collection, as many varieties of plains game are not found in popular countries like South Africa and Namibia. Whether they can be safely hunted in their native range is a separate question that the book does not discuss.Overall, a book on shot placement would probably more relevant to hunters. You can always look up individual animals on the internet if you need more info.

Recommended by one of my favorite safari guides, James Hendry! Cannot wait to use it on safari one day!

Excellent guide. Pictures and descriptions are very helpful in identifying the animals you see in the wild. Interesting, but a bit overwhelming before you actually go to Africa. Information on social behavior, eating habits, geographic locations, etc. is also interesting and educational. This is an older edition, but I found the pictures to be superior to the newer "expanded" edition.

This book has good illustrations, brief but adequate text, and maps of ranges. 272 pages, 13.5 ounces -- good for traveling. Kingdon (or his publisher) calls it a "pocket guide," but that's true only if you have big pockets. It will easily fit into pocket of day packs, though, and most users will probably have such a pack in the field anyway.

I wish I had purchased this book before I went to Africa. I would have been much better prepared for seeing the animals. I bought it to help me put captions with my pictures, and find my notes do not have accurate information. Either I did not understand my guide very well, or he did not know the information this book contains.

I spent a week in Zambia in September 2018. The Kingdon Pocket Guide to African Mammals was in my field bag all the time. I also had the much heavier SASOL Birds of Southern Africa (Fourth Edition) by Sinclair et al in my bag together with the small and lightweight ‘Pocket Guide: Trees of Southern Africa’ by Piet Van Wyk, plus a digital SLR camera with a 100-400mm lens and a 16-35mm lens. With so much gear and books, the small size and weight of the ‘Pocket Kingdon’ was helpful as it allowed me to keep it in the bag with everything else. I kept all of this packed in irrespective of whether I was walking about or on a safari boat or in a safari vehicle.The coverage was very good with the illustrations and text being just about right to provide sufficient detail but concise enough to keep the book compact. For compactness, the introductory text is slim, but nevertheless useful drawing attention to the Afrotheria which are special to Africa and pointing out some surprises like many of the ungulates having an Asian origin. Many small mammals are unlikely to be seen other than by researchers who are setting traps at night. For people on a safari holiday the coverage in this book would be more than adequate. Although concise, the text is densely packed with information. The illustrations by the author writer are also excellent.For pre-trip background reading, I also read the introductory chapter of the author’s Island Africa.The one thing I would have found helpful was to have a full page map of Africa showing the different countries. This would have been helpful when reading the text on distribution to get my head around the many countries on the continent and their locations relative to each other. This was easily fixed on my return. With future trips in mind I printed off a map from the net and cellotaped it into the book.

We bought this as an addition to our 20 year old photographic guide  A Photographic Guide to Mammals of Southern Central and East Africa (Photographic Guides)  as we wanted to be able to identify some of the smaller species and local subspecies we've seen on safari. This book is not easy to use, and for a first time safari I suspect it would be too confusing. Many of the pictures are inconsistent - some bearing little relation to life while some are very good. Rarely is there any mention of alternative (or previously used) names and subspecies divisions and colour variations are not always clearly listed. The maps are difficult to follow, especially when several species are shown on the same map and are not always on the same page as the description. I also don't understand why, in a field guide, you would want 'supposed former range' or similar markings on the map.To cap it all, there is a description and picture of a Quagga - an extinct animal. Please let me know if you see one in the field!! A Photographic Guide to Mammals of Southern Central and East Africa (Photographic Guides)

I bought this book for a safari holiday in Tanzania. It did the job asked of it, providing helpful identity data on a range of mammals, while being physically nice and light. It was also comprehensive, covering smaller mammals properly, and not just the usual larger/more common ones. However its scope is all Africa, so it contained a lot of data on species and sub-species that we weren't going to see - while details on the ones we did see was just a bit too sketchy. The maps helped a lot, but there were just too many. Some of the variants we came across (Roosevelt sable, Nyasa wildebeest) weren't mentioned at all. In the case of mammals I think photos are also very helpful - I would like to have seen some of these for the larger animals at least.

Pocket sized and easy to follow. Covers all the smaller critters that miss out due to lions getting all the tv time. If you're going on safari take this book with you.

Good quality