Animals
The lunacy of emotional support animals
Naturally, the start of the new school year is often stressful for pupils. Perhaps those anxious children returning to their…
Orcas, dolphins and the ancient question of animal sentience
Killer whales have been seen offering titbits to divers – but as a gift or a lure? Plutarch (c. AD…
The cat that tamed Dom
I don’t like cats. I don’t like their reptilian stealth, or the way their heads are set low and poke…
Why I’m obsessed with Farming Today
Farming Today airs at an undignified hour each morning on Radio 4. On the few occasions I’ve caught it live…
How big business pushed up vet bills
I was on my way to a Pilates class when I spotted Paul waving at me urgently from across the…
The sad death of the pony ride
Pony rides were once a staple of every village, church and primary-school fête. A brusque, horsey mother would swing you…
Where’s Lark?
The missing dog and the animal psychic
Carbon pawprint
Having a pet is worse for the planet than flying
There’s something about dairy
The latest film from Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank, American Honey) is a feature-length documentary about a cow, starring…
The Spectator’s Notes
On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia,…
My life as a dogsbody
Even a small dog can be quite high maintenance. No, I’m not talking about Mali, our one-year-old cavapoochon, but Bertie,…
Fur and feeling
Almost no ancients cared whether animals felt pain or not. The classical Stoic belief that man’s reasoning capacity elevated him…
Real life
Watching a woman driving a dog past my house like a carthorse is just another ‘new normal’ of lockdown. This…
Brain food
The questionable ethics of eating octopus
Human league
Of course animals have culture
Meet Congo, the Leonardo of chimps, whose paintings sell for £14,500
Three million years ago one of our ancestors, Australopithecus africanus, picked up a pebble and took it home to its…
How long before Baby Sussex slips down the line of succession?
Endangered species The UN claimed a million species of plants and animals could become extinct. If they all died out,…
![Let there be light: the Atlantic footballfish dwells 3,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. [Paulo Oliveira / Alamy Stock Photo]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/18augartslead.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
How to live in a world without light: Life in the Dark at the Natural History Museum reviewed
Like most of our ape ancestors, we have really had only one response to the fall of night. We have…
Why the scream of the elephant is much more chilling than the roar of a lion
Raw, earthy, ear-piercing. It’s hard to decide which was more terrifying and unsettling: the roar of the elephants in Living…
When will the Tories learn: murdering animals isn’t a vote-winner
Buoyed by its huge popularity in the opinion polls and the fact that it is managing Brexit so well, the…
Do animals really have feelings? Plutarch thought so
Whatever the government decides about post-EU regulations on animal sentience, the Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch (died c. ad 120)…
An exceptional new film about Jane Goodall unearths a remarkable love story
There are times when our national passion for cutting people down to size is a little tiring. I left Brett…
It’s hard to preserve the primacy of head over heart while watching this doc about refugees
Anybody who wants to maintain a strong and untroubled stance against mass migration to Europe should probably avoid BBC2’s Exodus:…
If only they could vote…
Britain’s animals would be solidly for Leave. Here’s why
