Book description
Over ten feet long, it weighs in at nearly a quarter of a ton. Covering
its back are armoured plates made of bone. Five hundred stiletto-sharp
teeth line its long crocodilian jaws. It's a prehistoric beast of
staggering proportions; a fearsome creature from the time of the dinosaurs.
But the Alligator Gar, an air-breathing survivor from the Cretaceous
period is still with us today, patrolling inland rivers, hunting in
murky waters shared by human communities.
And for Jeremy Wade, described as the 'greatest angling explorer of his
generation', the Gar and other outlandish freshwater predators have been
an obsession for all his adult life. With names like Arapaima,
Snakehead, Goonch, Goliath Tigerfish and Electric Eel, many of them have
acquired an almost mythical status.
In a quest that has taken him from the Amazon to the Congo, and from
North America to the mountains of India, Wade has pursued the truth
about these little known, often misunderstood animals. Along the way
he's survived a plane crash, malaria and a fish-inflicted blow to the
chest that, according to a later scan, caused permanent scarring to his heart.
In RIVER MONSTERS, Wade delivers a sometimes jaw-dropping blend of
adventure, natural history, legend and detective work. It reads like a
hunt for the Loch Ness Monster. But it's all true.
These are fisherman's tales like you've never heard before. The stories
of the ones that didn't get away... Jeremy Wade has a BSc in zoology
from Bristol University and a Postgraduate Cetificate in Education
(PGCE) from the University of Kent. He has worked as a secondary science
teacher, a newspaper reporter, and a senior copywriter at an advertising
agency. He has written for publications including The Times, Guardian,
Sunday Telegraph and BBC Wildlife magazine,
