WHY DO CAMELS HAVE SUCH LONG EYELASHES?

A select set of desert flora and fauna pass in quick review.

“Each of these animals,” Beard opens over an illustration depicting only plants, “has special traits that help them to live and thrive in the desert.” Continuing in the same disconnected vein, he invites a search for shapes hiding in “shadows” that Gómez renders as silhouettes with nothing hiding behind them. The author muses on questions such as “Why do FENNEC FOXES have BIG ears?” (no, it’s not so they can eavesdrop on other animals) and “Why do LIZARDS feel cold to the touch?” In one scene, a rattler (native to North America) menaces a pair of meerkats (native to Africa), and when the narrative gets around to answering the titular question (“Is it because they’re wearing MAKEUP?” the author wonders), the lashes on display are all modeled by two-humped camels only. (Several pages later, the author also touches on one-humped camels.) Along with switching abruptly to stock photos floated over stylized backgrounds toward the end, the painted pictures—which alternate views of smiling tortoises marching on hind legs and other fanciful imagery with more naturalistic portraits—feature labels as sparse as they are unhelpful: “plant,” “rock,” “sky,” “sand.”

A patchy mishmash of assorted facts and misinformation.