VISITORS to the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, would be forgiven for fearing that their breakfast had been spiked. They may well be treated to the sight of a black-caped figure wearing a horror-movie mask running round the campus after a large flightless bird, while a colleague manoeuvres a stuffed jaguar on a wheelbarrow.
These earnest researchers are trying, reader Lauro Venancio Zier assures us, to teach captive-born rheas to run away from their natural predators. An admirable aim when the birds are about to be released into the wild, and if you don’t believe us there are…
