by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
222 pages, William Heinemann Ltd., 1990

Few people like to be preached at—especially when they have already taken it upon themselves to read a book about a heavy subject, like endangered species, for example. We already know the facts: Since our appearance on this planet, humans have polluted and poached their way through all corners of the world, destroying and eliminating thousands of different species of animals, birds, insects and plants. In short, we suck. We know this. But our simple little brains don’t want to feel guilty, they want to be entertained. So why not take a man famous for writing funny books that include aliens, the existence of which has yet to be proven, and let him tell the story of creatures who may not exist much longer?

Enter Douglas Adams, most famous for his “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series. In 1985, Observer Colour Magazine commissioned Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine to travel to Madagascar and try to glimpse a rare nocturnal lemur called an aye-aye, and then write an article about their trip. Over a three-year period, their adventure transformed into several journeys in search of endangered species, which was subsequently documented for BBC radio and was later chronicled in the book “Last Chance to See.”

With great intelligence and humor, Adams illustrates the plights of a few of the planet’s rapidly disappearing creatures, along with his misadventures in travel. It is his ability to discuss such dire circumstances with brevity and wit that makes “Last Chance to See” such a magnificent book. Adams never stoops to make the reader feel guilty for what has happened to these animals. Instead, he slyly educates us under the guise of a wacky travel memoir, featuring a rotating cast of crazy people and animals, alike.

Adams makes observations of the animals as if he is viewing creatures from outer space. Of the aye-aye, he writes: “It is a very strange-looking creature that seems to have been assembled from bits of other animals. It looks like a large cat with a bat’s ears, a beaver’s teeth, a tail like a large ostrich feather, a middle finger like a long, dead twig, and enormous eyes that seem to peer past you into a totally different world which exists just over your left shoulder.”

After the aye-aye trip to Madagascar, Adams and Carwardine travel to the tiny island of Komodo, in search of—guess what?—Komodo dragons. You know, the big lizard thing Matthew Broderick chases around the mall in “The Freshman.” But just because it’s endangered doesn’t mean Adams has to like it. He seems slightly put off by the creature, especially after watching a few of the dragons eat a goat. Adams seems more interested in a venomous snake expert he encounters, named Dr. Struan Sutherland. Sutherland rants about poisonous animals and warns the men that a bite from any of the snakes on Komodo can kill them. Adams asks Sutherland:

“‘Is there any venomous creature you’re particularly fond of?’
“He looked out the window for a moment.
“‘There was,’ he said, ‘but she left me.’”

After Komodo comes a trip to Africa to observe gorillas and rare white rhinoceroses, of which there were only about 22 left in the world. Then comes a helicopter ride into the mountains on the tip of New Zealand to look for kakapos, an extremely fat, flightless bird thought to be lost to wild cats and possums. They manage to locate one of the birds and even an egg in a nest—a hopeful sign, given that “the ways in which the kakapo goes about mating are wonderfully bizarre, extraordinarily long drawn out and almost totally ineffective.”

Next up is China, where Adams and Carwardine study the blind Yangtze River dolphins, whose numbers are down to almost nothing due to pollution, boat propellers and over-fishing. The crew members wish to record the noises of the river dolphins and are told by the sound man that the best way of doing so is to cover a microphone with a condom and drop it in the water. Adams’ recounting of the search for condoms in China is hysterical, as his attempts to explain what he is looking for to a native store clerk go comically awry.

The book is rounded out by another adventure with birds and bats. Only when you finish reading the book do you realize and appreciate that Adams has just told the story of these suffering animals in such a humorous, caring way that you feel compassion and hope, not resentment or futility, about their future.

However, you cannot help but feel a bit melancholy when picking up the book nowadays. Adams’ story was not heard soon enough—the last Yangtze River dolphin died in the fall of 2007. It did, however, outlive one of the other species in the book: the author himself. Douglas Adams died of heart failure in 2001.