The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?

Getting to places like Bangkok or Singapore was a hell of a sweat. But when you got there it was the back of beyond. It was just a series of small tin sheds.

Birds were flying from continent to continent long before we were. They reached the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica, long before we did. They can survive in the hottest of deserts. Some can remain on the wing for years at a time. They can girdle the globe. Now, we have taken over the earth and the sea and the sky, but with skill and care and knowledge, we can ensure that there is still a place on Earth for birds in all their beauty and variety - if we want to... And surely, we should.

I'm not an animal lover if that means you think things are nice if you can pat them, but I am intoxicated by animals.

The correct scientific response to something that is not understood must always be to look harder for the explanation, not give up and assume a supernatural cause.

I think the most alarming animals I have encountered are really poisonous snakes.

Very few species have survived unchanged. There's one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it's survived by being unobtrusive and doing nothing, and you can't accuse human beings of that.