Linda Lombardi - Animals Behaving Badly: Boozing Bees, Cheating Chimps, Dogs with Guns, and Other Beastly True Tales

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Table of Contents

This book is educational, hilarious, and it makes me wish it was legal to participate in cage fighting with an endangered species.

MATTHEW INMAN,
CREATOR OF THEOATMEAL.COM AND
AUTHOR OF 5 VERY GOOD REASONS TO PUNCH A DOLPHIN IN THE MOUTH

A veritable cavalcade of badly behaved beasts. I couldnt keep my paws off it!

DANNY BECK,
AKA SIR PILKINGTON SMYTHE ESQ., EVERSOSTRANGE.COM

Lombardi may be the anti-cute-and-fuzzy. Her book rightfully reminds us of animals true, often cantankerous, horny, and self-serving natures.

JENNIFER HOLLAND,
AUTHOR OF UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIPS

INTRODUCTION

Not As Cute As They Want You to Think

ANIMALS. WHY DO WE THINK THEYRE SO CUTE, SO NOBLE, SO admirable? They eat poop, for Petes sake. Some of them will bite your head off as soon as they look at you. Yet somehow we believe that animals are actually better than us. How did they figure out how to get such good press?

Sure, you can try to make excuses for some of these creatures. Maybe the bear that mugged a New Jersey man for his Italian sandwich in his own driveway was starving. Maybe the turkeys who were attacking people in a Philadelphia suburbat the end of Novemberhad a point. Maybe all those innocent wild things are defending an increasingly precarious existence. But dig a little deeper, and youll discover behavior that seems less excusable as well as oddly familiar:

Bees love alcohol, even, says one researcher, more than college students do.

A rabbit who lives in a pub in England is addicted to gambling with a slot machine.

African elephants raised by teenage mothers form violent youth gangs.

Theres a lot that animals dont want you to know. In fact, the better their public image, the darker their secrets: lazy, infanticidal lions; hummingbird rapists; and of course, our own dogs, who eat our money, set our houses on fire, andin more than one caseactually shoot their owners with guns. Think of almost any human vice or crime, and youll find that animals do it too. Lets look at a few examples:

Stealing: Theft is one animal crime that can sometimes seem justifiable. At least when a bunch of elephants in Thailand gang up to stop a truck full of sugarcane and rob it, what theyre stealing is edible. But how do you make excuses for a foxalready born with a fur coatwho stole a sweater on a ninety-degree August day in Virginia?

Assault: While some animal attacks seem like plain hooliganism, others feel personal, perhaps even editorial. You almost cant blame the groundhog who bit the mayor of New York City on a Groundhog Day just after hed made massive cuts in funding for the citys zoos. But even if it were a political statement, isnt the cow who toppled the blind, elderly British MPon the mans birthday, no lessgoing a little too far?

Perversion: Humans assume were the sole species that has sex purely for enjoyment. But if animals mate only to pass on their genes, some of them sure are doing it wrong. Some male frogs pile up on a female till she drowns, and a rooster in England was in the news when his mate died of exhaustion from his enthusiasmnot great approaches if the point really is to produce offspring. Well also see in Chapter 3 that it really is true that everyone masturbates.

Infidelity and domestic violence: If youve ever felt bad about your own dysfunctional family, dontyouve got plenty of company. People may have trouble with monogamy, but they probably do better than the bird species where 95 percent of the paired-up females commit avian adultery. And its not just birds; all over the animal kingdom we find lousy parents. Human dads may be reluctant to help with the kids, but at least they dont kill a females babies so they can sire their own young. The much-vaunted maternal instinct isnt all its cracked up to be either. Some animals abandon their young as a matter of course, but dont feel too bad for the many babies who are left to fend for themselves; at least their mothers didnt eat them.

Substance abuse: You might assume that drinking and drug use require a certain advanced level of civilization, but humans didnt invent fermentation. Alcohol occurs in nature, and drunk animals behave just as badly as their human counterparts ; in fact, their reactions are often quite familiar. Bees, for instance, have been observed throughout history getting drunk on fermented nectar. They stop doing their jobs, stumble around, have flying accidents, pass out, and may even be ejected from the hive by disgusted relatives.

Animals also use many other natural intoxicants. Once you read Chapter 3, youll never look at that apparently innocent catnip mouse in the same way again. And if youre hooked on candy and chips, youve got creature company: Neuroscientists have discovered that rats can develop a Ho Hos habit.

Lying: Okay, so animals steal, do drugs, are perverts, and have lousy family lives. But surely there are still some kinds of bad behavior that are sophisticated enough to separate us from the beasts? Surely, only we have the smarts to lie, right?

In reality, nature came up with deception long before the first human told his mate that she looked great in that goatskin dress. Some animals trick other species into raising their young, and others literally cry wolf to fool their buddies into running away from some tasty food. Of course, when it comes to lies, smarts dont hurt. As youll see in Chapter 6, our closest relatives can plan ahead and even construct tools to help them lie, like the orangutans in Borneo that use leaves, held up to their mouths, to make their calls sound deeper. The low tones fool predators into thinking the apes are much bigger than they really are becauselike on an Internet dating siteinteractions in the rain forest often arent face to face.

ANIMAL IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS

The mere existence of bad behavior in animals is just the start. It would be one thing if people understood what were up against. But the real problem? We humans are completely deluded about the true nature of our fellow creatures.

Take dolphins for instance. What animal is more mystical and profound than the dolphin, swimming through the ocean surrounded by serene new-age music and wind chimes? The ugly truth behind that charming smile, however, is that they are gang rapists who kill babies for fun (see Chapter 7).

And we sure dont know how to choose a best friend. The misdeeds of canines are extensive enough to get a whole chapter to themselves (see Chapter 8).

Now, you might ask, whats the harm in having beautiful illusions about our fellow creatures? Maybe we shouldnt throw stones. Maybe every species deserves its own secrets about whether it really, say, mates for life. And who gets hurt if you think that those big brown puppy dog eyes mean I love you rather than Give me a cookie, now? The dog gets a cookie either way, right?

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