Beastly Britain by Karen R Jones review – how animals shaped British identity
This kind of anthropomorphising often strikes naturalists as unscientific or even downright distasteful. But Jones is an environmental historian and her methodology allows, indeed impels, her to start from the principle that Britain's human and animal populations are culturally entwined. Consequently, we cannot 'see' a fox, hedgehog or newt without bringing to it a rich stew of presumptions and fantasy, drawn from childhood picturebooks, out-of-date encyclopedias and, in my case, the 1970s TV classic Tales of the Riverbank, in which small critters say funny things in the West Country burr of .
This pre-knowing can have a radical impact on the chances of a particular species flourishing or going under. Take hedgehogs, which, Jones tells us in this beautifully written book, have been in Britain for the last 15m years. They witnessed the extinction of the woolly mammoth and saw the first humans arrive in Europe. It was at this point that they started to pick up a reputation for general malevolence. Bandit-like, hedgehogs were reputed to sneak into human settlements at night and steal poultry eggs (true) and suck the udders of sleeping cows (almost certainly false). Their ability to munch on toxic toads without getting sick (true) and willingness to ferry any witch who had lost her broomstick (surely very uncomfortable) confirmed that hedgehogs had gone over to the dark side. No wonder that killing them counted as a public service: the records of one Cheshire village show 8,585 hedgehogs destroyed over a 35-year period in the late 1600s.
How different from today, when the hedgehog routinely tops those 'Britain's favourite animal' polls. Now we build shelters for them in our gardens and worry about how they will fare when crossing the road. This radical shift of opinion, says Jones, can be traced back to one hugely popular book, Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. Mrs Tiggy-Winkle is an industrious washerwoman who keeps her neighbours, including Peter Rabbit and his signature blue coat, spick and span. The influence of Potter's 1905 classic has been so enduring that, when a charity was set up in 1983 to care for injured hedgehogs, it was obvious what its name should be. These days, Tiggywinkles is the largest wildlife hospital in the world.
Beastly Britain is full of stories like this, which take an everyday animal – newt, hedgehog, pigeon, sheep, flea – and map out both its physical life (a matter of burrows, breeding cycles and flight paths) as well as its cultural traces, which concern legend, loathing and desire. Often these two kinds of knowing collide in startling ways. Take sheep, which are mostly seen as 'white noise in the countryside', bland and bleating and only good for counting yourself to sleep. In fact, Jones reveals, they are crackingly clever, able to recognise the faces of up to 50 of their sheep-friends, not to mention their human guardians.
The revelations keep on coming. For instance, that we are still living among dinosaurs. The next time a pigeon swoops down to steal a chip, take a close look at its scaly, reptilian feet. They are the legacy of the Archaeopteryx, a winged dinosaur the size of a raven, with a bony tail, flight feathers and an ability to glide over short distances. Less persuasive, though even more intriguing, is the possibility that a pod of plesiosaurs still bobs off the Devon and Cornwall coast. How else to account for the string of sightings of a giant grey sea snake, with a long neck, snakey head and vicious tusks? The rational part of us knows that this sea monster is likely to be a basking shark or a giant piece of flotsam. Our dreaming part longs for it to be a remnant from ancient times, what Jones calls a 'proximate peculiar', that refuses to quite come into view.
Beastly Britain by Karen R Jones is published by Yale (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Britain's AI strategy: the risk is that it is dependency dressed up in digital hype
There was a time when Britain aspired to be a leader in technology. These days, it seems content to be a willing supplicant – handing over its data, infrastructure and public services to US tech giants in exchange for the promise of a few percentage points of efficiency gains. Worryingly, the artificial intelligence strategy of Sir Keir Starmer's government appears long on rhetoric, short on sovereignty and built on techno-utopian assumptions. Last week Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, was promoting the use of AI-generated discharge letters in the NHS. The tech, he said, will process complex conversations between doctors and patients, slashing paperwork and streamlining services. Ministers say that by applying AI across the public sector, the government can save £45bn. But step back and a more familiar pattern emerges. As Cecilia Rikap, a researcher at University College London, told the Politics Theory Other podcast, Britain risks becoming a satellite of the US tech industry – a nation whose public infrastructure serves primarily as a testing ground and data source for American AI models hosted on US-owned cloud computing networks. She warned that the UK should not become a site of 'extractivism', in which value – whether in the form of knowledge, labour or electricity – is supplied by Britain but monetised in the US. It's not just that the UK lacks a domestic cloud ecosystem. It's that the government's strategy does nothing to build one. The concern is that public data, much of it drawn from the NHS and local authorities, will be shovelled into models built and trained abroad. The value captured from that data – whether in the form of model refinement or product development – will accrue not to the British public, but to US shareholders. Even the promise of job creation appears shaky. Datacentres, the physical backbone of AI, are capital-intensive, energy-hungry, and each one employs only about 50 people. Meanwhile, Daron Acemoglu, the MIT economist and Nobel laureate, offers a still more sobering view: far from ushering in a golden age of labour augmentation, today's AI rollout is geared almost entirely toward labour displacement. Prof Acemoglu sees a fork: AI can empower workers – or replace them. Right now, it is doing the latter. Ministerial pledges of productivity gains may just mean fewer jobs – not better services. The deeper problem is one of imagination. A government serious about digital sovereignty might build a public cloud, fund open-source AI models and create institutions capable of steering technological development toward social ends. Instead, we are offered efficiency-by-outsourcing – an AI strategy where Britain provides the inputs and America reaps the returns. In a 2024 paper, Prof Acemoglu challenged Goldman Sachs' 10-year forecast that AI would lead to global growth of 7% – about $7tn – and estimated instead under $1tn in gains. Much of this would be captured by US big tech. There's nothing wrong with harnessing new technologies. But their deployment must not be structured in a way that entrenches dependency and hollows out public capacity. The Online Safety Act shows digital sovereignty can enforce national rules on global platforms, notably on porn sites. But current turmoil at the Alan Turing Institute suggests a deeper truth: the UK government is dazzled by American AI and has no clear plan of its own. Britain risks becoming not a tech pioneer, but a well-governed client state in someone else's digital empire. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Man cured of deadly disease suffered by millions of Americans in first-of-its-kind procedure
A man with type 1 diabetes was cured of the condition after a first-of-its-kind procedure, experts have revealed. The 42-year-old from Sweden was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at just five years old, which caused his body to not produce enough insulin to control blood sugar. But today he no longer needs daily insulin shots and can finally enjoy sugar without stress, doctors wrote in a medical journal this month. Last year, the man underwent an islet cell transplant, which involves transplanting islet cells into the liver to help the pancreas produce insulin on its own. Islet cells are cells in the pancreas that produce hormones to help regular blood sugar levels. This was done with a series of injections in the man's forearm muscle. Over the next three months, his body responded to the transplanted cells and started to make its own insulin in response to glucose spikes, which usually happen after meals. While islet cell transplants have been performed in a handful of patients, the man was the first to have his islet cells genetically engineered so his body wouldn't reject them. This helped him avoid having to take immunosuppressant drugs, which weaken the body's defense system and leave it vulnerable to dangerous infections. About 1.6million Americans are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It's much less common than type 2 diabetes, which affects 32 million Americans and typically comes on later in life due to a confluence of lifestyle factors and genes. Without insulin, type 1 diabetics' bodies have no way to regulate blood sugar, which can build up in the bloodstream and skyrocket. The body starts breaking down fat for fuel, creating ketones, or acidic byproducts. A buildup of ketones in the blood can cause diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition that causes nausea, vomiting, rapid breathing, dehydration, and confusion. Without proper treatment with insulin and fluids, diabetic ketoacidosis can cause a laundry list of potentially fatal effects, including brain swelling, kidney failure, cardiac arrest, and death. Islet cell transplantation involves taking islet cells, which live in the pancreas and produce insulin, from a healthy or deceased donor and injecting them into a person with type 1 diabetes. The unidentified man got his cells from a living donor. Currently, islet cell transplants are estimated to cost around $100,000. Patients normally have to take immunosuppressant drugs for weeks or months after the procedure because the body thinks transplanted cells are foreign and dangerous and will mount the immune system to kill them. The drugs help stop that response and prevent the immune system from attacking the new cells. However, in suppressing the immune system, these drugs leave patients vulnerable to severe infections from something as simple as a cold. To avoid this, the man's transplanted cells were modified with CRISPR, a type of gene editing usually used for cancer patients, to personalize the cells to the man's immune system. The technique had previously only been used in mice and monkeys. After three months, the man's transplanted islet cells began producing insulin without the need for immunosuppressant medications. He had a handful of minor complications like vein inflammation, an infected ulcer on his fingertip, excessive sweating and arm numbness, all of which have subsided. The man is one of a handful of patients to receive an islet cell transplant and essentially be cured of type 1 diabetes. Like the man in the case report, Illinois mother-of-one Marlaina Goedel, 30, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at five years old. Within four weeks of the procedure, she no longer had to take insulin. Goedel previously told 'The cure is out there.' Goedel was part of a recent clinical trial involving an islet cell transplant run out of the University of Chicago Medicine Transplant Institute. However, her cells were from a deceased donor, and she did require an immunosuppressant drug after the procedure. She told this website that for the first time in her life, she can ride her horse and spend time with her daughter without worrying about a blood sugar crash. She is also going back to school to become a horse massage therapist. She said: 'It took a while to get used to saying, "I am cured. I am diabetes free. It's been very freeing.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
‘Ozempic for dogs' may be the next big thing in pet health
With the runaway success of drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro effectively helping humans slim down, researchers and biotech firms are now sniffing out a new frontier: weight-loss drugs for dogs. With up to 60 per cent of dogs in the UK estimated to be overweight or obese, the market for such drugs could be considerable. Okava, a San Francisco-based bio-pharma company which specialises in pet health, is planning to run trials for a drug designed to mimic the effects of Ozempic, with the goal to produce an implant-version for dogs, which lasts six-months at a time. According to estimates on the company's website, the current market for such a product could be worth $10bn, and they hope to have a canine weight-loss drug available as early as 2028 or 2029. In human weight-loss drugs, the active ingredient in Mounjaro is called tirzepatide, and in Ozempic, it is semaglutide. Both work in similar ways, mimicking a natural hormone called GLP-1. This hormone regulates blood sugar and appetite, ultimately leading people to feel fuller longer and reducing food intake. The challenge for biotech firms is to reproduce that effect in dogs – a species well-known for practically limitless gorging. The hope is that an Ozempic-style drug may reduce dogs' begging behaviour, which many owners find it difficult to resist rewarding. Often, lack of appetite in dogs is associated with illness, meaning developing an effective drug that doesn't appear to make pets seem unwell is a fine balance. One such drug, named Slentrol, was launched in 2007, but did not sell well, partly due to how owners' perceived their pets behaviour when on the medication. Okava's planned implant, called OKV-119, contains a GLP-1 mimic called exenatide. Michael Klotsman, Okava's chief executive, said he hoped dogs' behavioural changes from OKV-119 would be quite different from illness-related appetite loss. 'What owners should expect to see is their pet eating appropriate portions without the previous food obsession – they'll still eat regularly and show interest in meals, just without the excessive begging, scavenging or gulping behaviour,' he told The Guardian. But not all tails are wagging. Vets have suggested that in most cases, dog owners would be better off avoiding obesity in their dogs through more exercise and by restricting their pets' diets. Caroline Allen, Chief Veterinary Officer at the RSPCA told The Independent: 'A healthy diet and exercise is the best way to keep our pets happy and well but we understand that owners can sometimes struggle to manage their pets' weight. There is currently little information about proposed weight-loss implants or vaccinations for animals, and owners shouldn't rely on them becoming available. 'Before resorting to these sorts of interventions, owners should seek help from their vet about how to reduce their pet's weight with a good diet and providing lots of opportunities to exercise and play in ways that their pet will enjoy." She added: 'It may be that weight loss jabs or implants may have a role to play in future in very limited circumstances where animals are clinically unwell, but the best thing we can do is set healthy habits from the start so our pets can live the best life possible.'
