WILD LIONS of Tanzania HUNT GIANTS | Full Wildlife Documentary
Do giraffes grieve? Yes, with not a scintilla of doubt in my mind having watched this beautiful if sometimes harrowing documentary – nature red in tooth and claw. We see lionesses hunting and killing a giraffe – almost nothing goes to waste, other predators and scavengers (hyenas, jackals, vultures) consume what the lions leave behind. Giraffes return in procession to what little remains, share the scent from the bones with each other, as if sharing a memory. This is a ritual and a last goodbye. I took the photo above in Kenya in 2019.
Whether animals mourn their dead is one of many questions addressed in this thought provoking book, The Inner Life of Animals; Surprising Observations in a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben, translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst, Vintage, 2018. Wohlleben is a kind and very knowledgeable guide to what can be controversial and difficult issues which often lead to accusations of anthropomorphism (but so what I would counter, that charge has lost its weight these days?) The book is also full of endearing and sometimes very funny anecdotes. Sometimes I think that he seems hasty to jump to conclusions or lapses into logical fallacy, but largely I am in happy agreement with what he has to say.
Unusually for me I read this book entirely on Kindle – I have to say it is very useful for highlighting and copying and pasting.
“Peter Wohlleben spent over twenty years working for the forestry commission in Germany before leaving to put his ideas of ecology into practice. He now runs an environmentally-friendly woodland in Germany, where he is working towards the return of primeval forests, as well as caring for both wild and domestic animals. Wohlleben has been celebrated for his distinctive approach to writing about nature; he brings to life groundbreaking scientific research through his observations of nature and the animals he lives amongst. He is also the author of the international bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees.”
The author quickly knocks on the head that we are the only animals capable of emotion and self-awareness. We are not, of course, the product of some special biological design. We have evolved. Why should other animals’ grief, pain, love, comfort be different from ours? It would be astonishing if they were.
There follow summaries of some of the parts I found of particular interest.
Many people have decided or been bamboozled into thinking that they shouldn’t like Grey Squirrels, but love cute and fluffy Red Squirrels. As Wohlleben points out, the favourite food of both is … baby birds.
We learn that it was Victoria Braithwaite, a professor at Penn State, who discovered that there more than twenty pain receptors around the mouths of fish, right where they are impaled on anglers’ hooks, but it was said that fish don’t feel pain for many, many years, simply because they don’t express their reaction to it in the same way that we do.
And we know very much less than we sometimes like to think. We are not really sure what a fungus is, let alone slime mould, a unicellular organism which nevertheless seems to have some sort of spatial memory. It can find its way out of a maze (eventually) and one was used to replicate a map of transportation routes in Tokyo which, by ‘choosing’ optimal, shortest routes it was able to do with remarkable accuracy.
Are animals capable of gratitude? I would say yes, but Wohlleben is right to be cautious – we may just be seeing a contented response to the provision of food, for example.
He uses the Peacock Butterfly as an instance of an animal which lies by virtue of the deceptive eye spots which deter predators, but I am not so sure about this one – that is ‘just’ an evolution surely? A better case applies I think to Great Tits who apparently deliberately issue false alarm calls so as to leave available food for themselves. That is clearly a deception. Grey Squirrels have been observed digging fake, empty caches – when they thought they were being watched!
Deer hunters in the author’s home district of Ahrweiler show their intelligent and caring natures by feeding Red Deer in winter, as they do in Scotland, so that there will be enough of them to hunt, they think, in season. Rather contradicting their claims to be noble controllers of excessive populations. They are not even understanding the effect. What they do leads to more starvation. Deer mostly live off their fat reserves in winter and are another survival strategy is to ‘hibernate’ for a few hours several times a day. The stress of digesting the hay and sugar beet they are given contributes to their deaths.
In addition to all the other extraordinary things we now know about bees, it turns out that they can recognise people, attacking those who have annoyed them in the past.
Do animals have individual names? It would seem so or, at least, they have naming calls. Ravens can master over eighty calls and not only announce themselves to other Ravens but address each other using those personal identification calls.
Also under consideration is that captive animals may develop something like Stockholm syndrome – they are prisoners, after all, and would run away if they could. “Rare cases” where an animal adopts a person are moving. I am not sure they are as rare as all that, having been adopted by my very special tabby cat (I still miss him every day).
Peppered Moths evolved white wings with black spots to perfectly match the Silver Birch trees on which they like to rest. The Industrial Revolution produced so much pollution that a “grimy black layer built up on the bark”. The moths were now exposed and birds took advantage. The outliers, the moths which happened to have dark wings became the survivors. As pollution was controlled, the situation reversed again and by 1970 the majority of the moths’ wings were white once more. Evolution on fast forward.
Male and female Peppered Moths are the two black-and-white ones above with the caterpillar the upper of the two in this plate from: Humphreys (H.N.) and Westwood (J.O.) British Butterflies and their Transformations; British Moths and their Transformations. Three volumes. William Smith, 1841-1845.
Visual camouflage is of help to moths against hunting bats. Which is why they tend to be fuzzy, muddying the echoes upon which bats rely.
I now begin to understand how it is that moths are so confused by artificial light and why they end up flying in circles: “If the moth keeps flying in a straight line, the ‘moon’ appears behind it, and it seems to the moth that it must have flown in a circle. And so the insect pilot corrects its course to the left in order to, as it thinks, continue flying straight ahead. This makes the ‘moon’ appear on the correct side, but what’s really happening is that the moth is flying in circles around the light. The spiralling flight takes the moth ever closer to the light until it finally ends up at the centre. If the artificial moon is a candle, there’s a brief ‘puff’ and the moth’s life is snuffed out.”
I did not know that pigeons can see “the polarised pattern of light in the sky – that is to say, the geometrical orientation of oscillating light waves – and this polarisation is directed north. This means that by day pigeons see a compass everywhere they look. No wonder carrier pigeons orient themselves well over long distances and always find their way home.”
In his conclusion, the author asks, “Why is there still so much resistance to the idea that our fellow creatures have the capacity to feel joy and to suffer? This resistance comes from some scientists, but above all from politicians who answer to farmers. Mostly they are protecting the cheap methods used by factory farms to house and handle animals, such as castrating piglets without anaesthetic, as I mentioned earlier. And then there’s hunting, which claims the lives of hundreds of thousands of large mammals and many birds every year, and which in its current form is simply no longer appropriate.” That’s telling it like it is.
And he answers another question. What will it bring us if we show more respect for our fellow creatures and reduce our consumption of them, sacrifice a few comforts? It will, Wohlleben suggest, bring us … happiness.
I have only given a smattering of the many riches this book offers, which include discussions of such matters as empathy, the existence of animal souls, grief, altruism, shame and regret and many more.
The same levels of thoughtfulness and care do not seem to enter into the world of Alick Simmons, author of Treated Like Animals; Improving the Lives of the Creatures We Own and Use, Pelagic Publishing, 2023. This is not the first book from that publishing house which I have not cared for (even though this one is endorsed by Chris Packham on the upper cover). Simmons was for eight years the UK’s Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer specialising in livestock epidemics, later becoming involved in conservation and animal welfare. This may be a deeply unfair review because I have got as far as page 80 and cannot go on. His heart may very well be in the right place but if so he hides it well. I recall not one single instance where he considers animals as individuals or exhibits concern for their suffering. I find his style clunky in the extreme, especially in his constant promises to return to subjects in more detail in later chapters. That is a bugbear of mine and could be avoided by organising the book much better. There is too much ‘thinking aloud’ too for my taste.
Simmons is good on the hypocrisy of the inconsistency with which we treat different species. But does he really believe that the rules on exporting horses for slaughter from the UK were ever terribly effective? Or used to believe that hunted foxes die quick deaths as some friends and I were once told by a terrierman? In most cases they are literally ripped apart, as he came to learn.
His assertion that dogs are considered dirty and disease-ridden in “most of Asia” and are farmed for meat elsewhere reminded me of my Malaysian friend Willmie who would often come home reporting that he had been chased by a dog. No doubt the dogs were reacting to his fear and revulsion.
Simmons seems to think that the legislation in place to protect animals in laboratories is in some way adequate, “the most comprehensive animal welfare legislation ever enacted”. It may be, but that doesn’t mean it works. He does bemoan the lack of regulation and enforcement in the farming industry but again seems naïve when it comes to the safeguards supposed to be in place in slaughterhouses. There is no point having CCTV if no one ever watches it for example.
He seems happy to justify some, although not all, of the routine mutilations carried out on farms. Again he says that the legislation is “comprehensive”. Debeaking of chickens, the dehorning of cattle and the removal of pigs’ tails and clipping or grinding of their teeth are, he argues, needed to prevent certain behaviours, but those surely only arise because of they way in which we keep the animals. Do these abhorrent practices cause the animals pain, he wonders – “…it would be a reasonable assumption to conclude ‘yes, they do’.” In some European countries tail docking is very rare, so it can be done with good husbandry and decent conditions for the pigs. In the UK what legislation there is has been routinely ignored with 82% of pigs put through that torture in 1999. They also have often have their noses ringed, not only cruel in itself but also preventing the natural behaviour of rooting. Does this really only “suggest” that nose ringing affects welfare? That is the point when I decided to read no more. Perhaps this book might be a good starting point for someone who has never considered any of these issues, but there are many other more compassionate alternatives.
His ethical position in terms of what he will and will not now consume is considered however and I sympathise with his moral quandaries. It is very, very difficult, although not impossible, to avoid consuming or using any animal products. But then in his table he writes, “Evidence that fish are sentient is disputed but it is probably better to give them the benefit of the doubt.” He wrote that in 2023? I tried giving him the benefit of the doubt and dipped into the book beyond the first 80 pages but continually came up against similar difficulties.
I am grateful though for being led to Ruth Harrison the animal welfare activist. In 1964 she published Animal Machines exposing the conditions suffered in intensive livestock farming. This led to the government’s Brambell Report and subsequently the Five Freedoms model of animal welfare. I have always argued with a friend that whilst we may be complicit now, we were never given a choice and the horrors of factory farming were kept a dirty secret. Animal Machines opened many eyes.
Grey Seal, Northumberland
Alix Morris has written A Year with the Seals; Unlocking the Secrets of the Sea’s Most Charismatic and Controversial Creatures, Ithaka, 2025. I have only read the Sunday Times review by Adam Weymouth (author of Lone Wolf: Walking the Fault Lines of Europe, Hutchinson Heinemann) but it sounds an estimable assessment of how we cope when species which were almost eradicated bounce back. Some are arguing that we now have too many seals – fishermen mostly. There is also the possibility that the abundance of seals has lured Great White Sharks further towards the coast endangering human lives. After the death of a surfer off the coast of Massachusetts a local resident said, “No sharks or seals are worth a young man’s life.” I wonder where he draws the line there. Weymouth adds that “it is a brave biologist who would argue otherwise.” Well, I argue otherwise.
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