Just this past fortnight an advance copy of Mr. Girling’s most recent work, “The Longest Story; How Humans Have Loved, Hated and Misunderstood Other Species” reached my desk for review. Delving far back into the history of the relationships between human and non-human animals, he examines – among other things – the glaring contradictions in how we understand and subsequently treat different species.
In 1964, while examining the remains of various small creatures collected from inside a long disused old wood-fired oven in an outbuilding that had been the home of a family of Barn Owls in Giohar, Somalia, Professor Alberto Simonetta of the University of Florence broke open an owl pellet that contained part of the lower […]