'A rare and magical book. I didn't want it to end.' Bill Bryson 'Rundell is the real deal, a writer of boundless gifts and extraordinary imaginative power.' Observer 'Rundell's pen is gold-tipped.' Sunday Times The world is more astonishing, more miraculous and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this passionately persuasive and sharply funny book, Katherine Rundell tells us how and why. *** A swift flies two million kilometres in its lifetime. That's far enough to get to the moon and back twice over - and then once more to the moon. A pangolin keeps its tongue furled in a pouch by its hip, a Greenland shark can live five hundred years, a wombat once inspired a love poem.