The quarter of a century since publication of the first edition of Reay Smithers’ Land Mammals of Southern Africa – A Field Guide has seen a steady expansion of knowledge about southern African mammals, and in the 12 years since its third edition there has been a radical change in our understanding of the evolutionary relationships among mammals. This fourth edition of the ‘Small Smithers’ incorporates both updated information on field biology and the new names of species and higher taxa that reflect recent changes in systematics and taxonomy.
The information in the Smithers’ field guides has always been drawn directly from the zoological research literature and other authoritative sources, but because most of the book’s readers will be lay people, and a good number of them will not be native English speakers, I have avoided technical terms when there is a close enough equivalent in ordinary language. Some specialists might feel that the precision of language to which they are accustomed has been sacrificed, but specialists in any field too often forget that their technical terms are bafflingly unfamiliar to lay readers, and even to specialists in other disciplines. Readers who encounter terms that are unfamiliar, in this book or in others, can refer to the glossary on p. 380.
Clare Abbott’s illustrations and Hazel Smithers’ spoor drawings from the first edition have proved themselves to be timeless and have been used here again, together with the colour illustrations and line drawings by Penny Meakin and Noel Ashton that first appeared in the third edition, and six new colour illustrations by Penny Meakin.
The enduring success of the ‘Small Smithers’, and especially its value to wildlife professionals, is a lasting tribute to Reay Smithers and to the researchers whose results it draws on, especially those local specialists (named on p. 6) who contributed to the enlarged third edition.
In addition to those acknowledged in the third edition, I would like to thank Dr Hanneline Smit for providing up-to-date information and reference photographs on western, Cape and Karoo rock elephant-shrews; Dr Mac van der Merwe for photographs of Angolan free-tailed bats; Fenton ‘Woody’ Cotterill for advice on bats; Hanlie Winterbach for data on lions; and the publishing team at Random House Struik, namely Pippa Parker, Helen de Villiers, Julia Casciola, Janice Evans and Tessa Fortuin.