One of my most annoying traits, I have been told, is my tendency to puncture others’ casual enjoyment of nature with brutal and unsolicited pieces of trivia. Chalk it up to the influence of my hobbyist herpetologist father, who instilled in me not only a passion for less cuddly animals but also a rigorous attention to the facts.
If your favourite animals are sea otters, which mate for life and hold hands so they don’t drift apart? I will inform you that they also sometimes rape baby seals to death. Oh, you prefer chimps? Have you seen that David Attenborough footage of a group of them hunting a monkey that was apparently too disturbing to broadcast with close-up detail?
