Animals

How big business pushed up vet bills

31 August 2024 9:00 am

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

28 October 2023 9:00 am

Pony rides were once a staple of every village, church and primary-school fête. A brusque, horsey mother would swing you…

How an animal psychic helped find a missing dog

23 September 2023 9:00 am

The missing dog and the animal psychic

Is your pet killing the planet?

9 September 2023 9:00 am

Having a pet is worse for the planet than flying

I won't ever look at cows the same way again: Andrea Arnold's Cow reviewed

15 January 2022 9:00 am

The latest film from Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank, American Honey) is a feature-length documentary about a cow, starring…

The West’s moralising over climate change will cost India

31 July 2021 9:00 am

On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia,…

My battle to be top dog

10 July 2021 9:00 am

Even a small dog can be quite high maintenance. No, I’m not talking about Mali, our one-year-old cavapoochon, but Bertie,…

Animal sentience law has finally caught up with Plutarch’s thinking

22 May 2021 9:00 am

Almost no ancients cared whether animals felt pain or not. The classical Stoic belief that man’s reasoning capacity elevated him…

How not to walk a dog

3 April 2021 9:00 am

Watching a woman driving a dog past my house like a carthorse is just another ‘new normal’ of lockdown. This…

The ethics of eating octopus

16 January 2021 9:00 am

The questionable ethics of eating octopus

Why whales sing: it’s a question of culture

6 June 2020 9:00 am

Of course animals have culture

Meet Congo, the Leonardo of chimps, whose paintings sell for £14,500

21 December 2019 9:00 am

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?

11 May 2019 9:00 am

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]

How to live in a world without light: Life in the Dark at the Natural History Museum reviewed

18 August 2018 9:00 am

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

28 July 2018 9:00 am

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

2 June 2018 9:00 am

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

2 December 2017 9:00 am

Whatever the government decides about post-EU regulations on animal sentience, the Greek biographer and essayist Plutarch (died c. ad 120)…

Monkey business: Jane Goodall

An exceptional new film about Jane Goodall unearths a remarkable love story

2 December 2017 9:00 am

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

4 November 2017 9:00 am

Anybody who wants to maintain a strong and untroubled stance against mass migration to Europe should probably avoid BBC2’s Exodus:…

Voting in? You have the blood of Spanish bulls on your hands

4 June 2016 9:00 am

Britain’s animals would be solidly for Leave. Here’s why

What do we gain by burning ivory?

4 June 2016 9:00 am

Burning stockpiles of ivory was meant to wipe out poaching. After nearly 30 years, is it working?

The Spectator, 1916: To win the war, lose the dogs

28 May 2016 9:00 am

From ‘Food dictatorship’, The Spectator, 27 May 1916: Nobody would like to see the whole race of dogs exterminated, but…

David Attenborough used to steal the animals he found in the jungle and take them home

21 May 2016 9:00 am

Let me start this week with an admittedly hard quiz question: in 1954, how did the sudden illness of Jack…

Meet London’s senior mayor (no, it’s not Sadiq)

7 May 2016 9:00 am

London’s other mayor How many people could name the capital’s other mayor, the Lord Mayor of London? The office, officially…