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A review by wanderingmole
The Unexpected Truth About Animals: A Menagerie of the Misunderstood by Lucy Cooke
4.0
An insightful and comic curation of fascinating facts and stories about animals, together with the alarming and ridiculous antics of the humans who study them.
“We have much to learn from our centuries of misunderstandings about animals… The magnetic urge to anthropomorphise is our major undoing. We are an insecure species, seeking reassurance about our behaviour from drunk moose and busy beavers, and quick to condemn those creatures that don’t conform to our moral code like indolent sloths, cruel hyenas and dirty vultures. Our discomfort with the truth about these animals reveals a great deal about our hopes as well as our fears…[P]ainting the animal kingdom with our artificial ethical brush denies us the astonishing diversity of life, in all of its blood-drinking, sibling-eating, corpse-shagging glory. We need not be afraid of these behaviours - they are not here to instruct us. Whether a penguin is gay, straight or having sex with a frozen head has no bearing on our own sexuality. Despite what we may think, we are not the centre of the animal universe”
“We have much to learn from our centuries of misunderstandings about animals… The magnetic urge to anthropomorphise is our major undoing. We are an insecure species, seeking reassurance about our behaviour from drunk moose and busy beavers, and quick to condemn those creatures that don’t conform to our moral code like indolent sloths, cruel hyenas and dirty vultures. Our discomfort with the truth about these animals reveals a great deal about our hopes as well as our fears…[P]ainting the animal kingdom with our artificial ethical brush denies us the astonishing diversity of life, in all of its blood-drinking, sibling-eating, corpse-shagging glory. We need not be afraid of these behaviours - they are not here to instruct us. Whether a penguin is gay, straight or having sex with a frozen head has no bearing on our own sexuality. Despite what we may think, we are not the centre of the animal universe”