Beauty of the Beasts, rethinking nature’s least loved animals by Jo Wimpenny, Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2026.
The author has an easy, down to earth style which makes this fascinating and thought-provoking book a real pleasure. She is right in her preface I think to say that many of us who care about wildlife live in something of an echo chamber, forgetting that not everyone feels the same way – I am often guilty of this – how could anyone not care? I just mean regular people, not the psychopathic hunters who enjoy cruelty.
A good distinction made early on is the contrast between the Abrahamic religions which teach human superiority and those which are animist, such as Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Shintoism. We are only ever superior by our own standards. We are unlikely, for example, to surpass the 500-million-year lineage of jellyfish.
I agree that the popular media have a great deal to answer for when it comes to the villainisation of certain animals, which is what this book is largely about. Animal lovers are often accused of being influenced too much by Disney cartoons but media demonisations have the opposite effect to that alleged to be the product of cartoon movies.
We read of ecophilosopher Amy Plumwood who is one of very few people to have survived a crocodile death roll. She wrote later, “I was the intruder.” Some years ago a student was killed by a Polar Bear and I remember a friend being particularly appalled by it. I asked him what on earth he had been doing in the bear’s territory.
Crocodile expert Colin Stevenson says that most species aren’t big enough to harm us in a serious way and that he has been bitten a number of times but always because of errors on his part: “Animals … don’t lash out because they’re malicious, but because they feel threatened.”
I was reminded of yet another conversation about the supposed viciousness of swans, who are actually a very gentle species as I never tire of saying. “Not when it attacked my canoe”, said my friend. What happened? He or she stole his sandwich. I wondered too if he had unwittingly been between parent and cygnet.
“American alligators place sticks on their snouts to apparently lure bird prey during nest-building season, which was the first report of tool use in a reptile.” Amazing.
The notion of the fight or flight response was introduced by American psychologist Walter Bradford Cannon in 1915 we learn from a footnote. Additional later suggestions are freeze, fawn and flop.
The dangers of sharks are hugely overestimated by humans. The odds of death by shark are 1 in 4,332,817. Jaws and the press have had a massive influence.
I now know that elasmobranchs are certain cartilaginous fish such as sharks, rays, sawfish and skates. And sharks over hundreds of millions of years have made it through five mass extinction events during each of which the vast majority of species were wiped out. They deserve our awe and respect.
The term ‘keystone species’ was coined by ecologist Robert Paine in the 1960s deriving from his research of starfish and marine molluscs. Without the predatory starfish, mollusc populations did not boom, they crashed. He also coined ‘trophic cascade’, which happens when, for example, you remove wolves from a landscape allowing deer to browse unimpeded.
The installation of shark nets in America as a knee-jerk response not only killed a great deal of other marine wildlife, but proved to be ineffective anyway – sharks showed themselves perfectly capable of swimming over or around them.
Rajan in Nepal lost his brother to a tiger attack. But he belongs to the Tharu tribe who feel connected to the forest and see it as both a resource and protector. Their religion “combines Hinduism with animism and nature worship; it is built around maintaining a harmonious relationship with the forest, including the tiger.”
I had forgotten or never knew that the Platypus administers its venom via spurs on its hind legs. The chapter is mostly about snakes however. They only bite in defence (we are not really their or any animal’s natural prey) but it does happen a lot, mostly in Asia, to the tune of 5.4 million times a year. Between 81,000 and 138,000 people die per year and their are up to 400,000 amputations or permanent disabilities.
Venom chemistry is highly complex and can even change between juvenile and adult forms of the same species. But they can also lead to new medicinal drugs, sometimes with the venom coming from snails or lizards. And snakes are very useful for controlling rodent populations.
This is from Animal Wild:
Adders are portrayed as highly dangerous and aggressive, with sensationalist media reports appearing year after year. At a 2020 seminar held by the Amphibian and Reptile Groups of the UK, among the many threats listed were climate change, habitat destruction and mismanagement, disturbance, photographers, dog walkers, game birds, inbreeding and … the media. “Each of these factors on their own would pose a serious threat but they have combined to sound the death knell of the adder across much of Britain.” An urgent message from one of our children’s schools warned of adders in the long grass on the playing fields in alarmist tones, insisting that students avoid the areas. I was pleased that my e-mail in reply suggesting an alternative version was to some extent taken up: “We are delighted to celebrate with you an increase in the number of alleged adder sightings in the area, possibly due to fewer than the usual 50 or 60 million battery farmed birds being released, for killing for sport, which predate on them. We encourage your children to enjoy the few areas around the school which are not denatured for ball games. In the incredibly unlikely event that your child is bitten by an adder, which is not a life-threatening event, then you should seek medical treatment. To avoid this happening at all, please teach your children basic respect for wildlife.” At another school, parents complained to the head about the unease caused them by Red Kites overhead whilst their children were out in the playground. Real problems arise with invasive species of snake. One example is the accidental introduction of Brown Tree Snakes to the Isle of Guam in 1940. There seems little to done with any effect and now they number in their millions with a devastating effect on endemic wildlife.
I drew on this book: Milton (Nicholas). The Secret Life of the Adder; the Vanishing Viper. White Owl, 2022.
There’s an interesting section in Beauty of the Beasts about whether our fear of snakes comes from nature or nurture and it seems to be largely the latter. Snakes have the Jacobson’s organ to process scents – equines (and many other animals) have it too as I first learnt many years ago.
A lovely new word is ‘squamate’ from the Latin word meaning scaly, the order Squamata includes snakes and lizards.
There’s a whole chapter about disgust (which may often have evolved for reasons of pathogen avoidance). Personally I struggle to repress it when it comes to the mentioned mole rats, Sphynx cats and some other animals. I have not enjoyed my encounters with cockroaches and the Hairy Frog also cited by Wimpenny is pretty repugnant. I almost climbed the walls when I entered the shower in a hotel room in India and three cockroaches noisily zoomed around me. But they are detritivores, vital to our ecosystem, and there are many species in an astonishing range of sizes, some 30 of which are synanthropic, i.e. they exploit human waste.
Hagfish too are hard to love (search online if you dare). They ooze slime but serve an important function consuming carcases which have drifted down to the seabed.
I don’t think anyone is terribly keen on mosquitoes but the author points out that they are pollinators, that not all of the many species carry malaria anđ some species prey on the ones which do. The genus Sabathes is, as she says, very much worth looking up. They are indeed beautifully iridescent.
Before moving on to the chapter about Vultures (“Keep Calm and Carrion”) another avian group, the Corvids, not mentioned in the book, are, I know, hated by many (although not by me).
I have never seen a Raven in the wild. They are thought of by some as honorary raptors.
This lithograph is from Meyer (Henry Leonard). Illustrations of British Birds, c.1835-1844. There are nine species. It is believed that the name derives from the birds harsh calls (which seems a bit of a stretch to me). Etymologically there is no connection to the word ‘ravenous’. They are the largest members of the crow family, indeed they are the largest passerines, bigger than Buzzards, and they figure widely in folklore, often as harbingers of death.
This documentary made by Vance Crofoot (did he change his name by Deed Poll?) about Ravens in California will surely dispel any fear and loathing.
The birds pair for life and the film shows the extraordinary tender and gentle familial relations between the parents, parents and offspring and often playful siblings. The commentary is similarly gentle and thoughtful. When I first fed Crows by hand at a wildlife rescue I was delighted by how delicately and carefully they took the pieces of meat, in spite of their rather fearsome appearance.
Also outside the scope of Beauty of the Beasts are Ring-necked Parakeets but I did watch Chris Packham’s programme about them last night. They have a relevance here since they are mostly perceived as rather ‘cute’. They shouldn’t really be here but they are, in huge numbers, possibly tens of thousands, thriving especially in our cities. Some find them annoying because they are noisy, make a mess of their cars and, they believe, are a danger to our ‘native’ wildlife. Packham is dispassionate quite rightly but the science to date shows that they are not a threat and do not outcompete the birds we have known here for longer. He suggests that there may be an element of xenophobia at work in those who hate them just as I and others have argued may sometimes be the case with Grey Squirrels. And indeed one individual in the programme is filmed shooting one of each species. There’s a brilliant twist around twenty minutes in when our presenter draws a comparison with pheasants, introduced not by accident like Parakeets but deliberately each year in their tens of millions, which cause so many problems not least for our adder populations. But even if we decided we did not want Parakeets here I don’t think there is much we could do about it.
I have long since overcome any negative feelings I may have had towards Vultures (although I continue to find Hyenas less than endearing). Their devastation by poisoning in Africa on a horrific scale, including by poachers whose presence the birds may reveal to anti-poaching patrols, has had dreadful consequences. They are also taken for their body parts to be used in traditional Nigerian medicine. In Asia the problem is even worse. Diclofenac, a more potent form of ibuprofen, is widely used to relieve pain and sickness in livestock. Vultures can cope with anthrax, but not this. Although it has been banned it is still used illegally as are similarly harmful permitted alternatives. It’s an issue in Europe too.
In India their loss has led to 12 million tonnes of carrion per year not being dealt with resulting in half a million human deaths between 2000 and 2005. Feral dogs feeding on it has increased the incidence of rabies and pathogens enter the drinking water. Incineration as an option has all sorts of environmental and other costs.
Vultures are highly intelligent with interesting social lives and they use tools, throwing rocks at Ostrich eggs to break them open. We have known about this behaviour since the nineteenth century but it was only scientifically described in the 1960s. Is this an example, I wonder, of the suppression of information which might lead to the undermining of those abilities which were supposed to distinguish humans from other animals?
The title of an art installation described in the sixth chapter, “Survival of the Cutest” says it all. The Worldwide Fund for Nature’s choice of the Panda as its logo was for very obvious reasons. Chris Packham provocatively but of course knowingly said that too much was spent on their conservation which could more usefully diverted elsewhere (on habitat conservation perhaps). The conservation of Giant Pandas, conversely, means that a huge area has been protected benefiting other species as well.
I have noticed how often Hollywood villains have facial hair or English accents but it’s also true that only the baddies tend to have facial disfigurements and blemishes.
Slow Lorises are undeniably cute but a video from 2009 which went viral purported to show one individual enjoying being tickled. In fact his or her raised arms were a threat signal – they are the only venomous mammals and the venom glands are located on the inside of their elbows. The poor creature was also severely obese, suffered from alopecia and, being nocturnal, would have hated the brightly lit surroundings. The video generated a demand for the animals as pets which proved disastrous to their wild populations. Even now they are caught and shipped, illegally, in horrendous conditions, have their teeth ripped out and live short, unhappy lives. Prospects for the species remain grim.
When I was at HART Wildlife Rescue we volunteers were asked to comment on the design for a flyer. It included an image of baby Hedgehogs which I suggested some might find less than appealing aesthetically and in the end a different image was used. The desire to raise funds with pictures of animals which have a broader appeal is completely understandable. But the ‘beauty bias’ is highly problematic. We cannot simply ignore ‘unattractive’ species and try to save only the most charismatic. Wimpenny lists the African ‘Ugly Five’ as opposed to the famous Big Five: Spotted Hyena, Wildebeest, Warthog, Maribou Stork and Lappet-faced Vulture.
The tale of the ugly duckling is in this sense rather awful. The bird is only redeemed when it matures and becomes conventionally beautiful.
Chris Packham long ago announced that he was going to stop using the words ‘pest’ and ‘vermin’ altogether and I have followed suit. Again the media have much to answer for. People generally like ladybirds (as long as they are not present in ‘too many’ numbers’) but not wasps, but the latter are ‘pest’ controllers as are ladybirds (who specialise in aphids). Without wasps there would be a need for even more chemical control and apparently they are able to distinguish between different human faces.
I am still racked with guilt about rats but I do see that they are nigh on impossible for humans to live too closely with in numbers. They just do too much damage. See: Rattus norvegicus, George Monbiot and a few more garden birds – Animal Wild. Jo Wimpenny acknowledges this. But they still deserve legislative protection and freedom from pain rather than being thought of as not really animals at all.
I find the notion of our perception of beauty being defined by symmetry and the Golden Mean / Golden Ratio / Fibonacci sequence fascinating, as is the ‘domestication syndrome’ whereby animals evolve, often pretty quickly, with the development of such features as floppy ears in tandem with behavioural changes.
As is pointed out, nature already had the solution to ‘pest’ control – we have messed around with the natural balance and therefore need profoundly harmful chemical and other solutions to ‘nuisance’ animals. Pavol Prokop, a pioneering biologist, writes to Wimpenny: “Every animal on this planet has the right to exist here, regardless of whether the species is deemed useful to humans. Unfortunately, this philosophy is still unfamiliar to many people.”
The final chapter of the book I found the hardest to read since it concerns animal behaviours we cannot and should not ignore but would probably prefer not to know about. Dolphins, like ducks, commit rape, and kill Porpoises seemingly for fun. Penguins are guilty of necrophilia and chick abuse whilst some otters and seals rape other species. The extreme violence of which Chimpanzees are capable is well-known but I did not know that they have been witnessed killing baby Gorillas, which seems pointlessly cruel. Infanticide is very common in mammals (the selfish gene at work), as is cannibalism “by species in every major animal group”. Even much-loved Hedgehogs can be a conservationist’s nightmare being partial as they are to birds’ eggs and chicks.
This seems to be both a counter to the message of the book and a reinforcement of it – our notions of what is beautiful are just too narrow: we need “to start to appreciate the beauty in all the beasts. Before it is too late.”
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