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Oddball animal behaviour to amuse and disgust

By Jonathan Christison

9 June 2010

CHOOSING the two most eye-catching stories to grace the cover page of this book must have been a daunting task. There is a surfeit of bizarre animal tales to choose from. The book might just as well have been called Remote-controlled Cockroaches and Flaming Pigs or Rambo Sheep and Farting Snakes.

As with Francesca Gould’s previous work, Self-harming Parrots and Exploding Toads is best dipped into rather than read from start to finish. The only cohesion to this selection of hilarious, and sometimes stomach-turning, vignettes lies in its eight alliterative chapter headings (“crafty creatures”, “vicious varmints”). From these,…

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