| 1 | 1 | | Desmond Morris always wanted to be a sea otter. 'They just swim around all day and never |
| 2 | | come ashore. They have a quite marvellous playful existence,' he says. |
| 2 | 3 | | 'But some time ago I made a rather unhappy discovery. Sea otters suffer from dreadful |
| 4 | | chest conditions due to the way they feed themselves. They dive into the sea, pick up a shellfish |
| 5 | | and a pebble, then lie on their back, put the pebble on their chest and hammer the shell against |
| 6 | | it until it breaks. It is clever but it seems that after years of all this bashing, they get dreadful |
| 7 | | chest complaints.' |
| 3 | 8 | | The bad health of the sea otter is one of the sadder discoveries Morris made while he was |
| 9 | | working on his new book, Animalwatching. It's the result of twenty years' research. 'I felt I had |
| 10 | | to write this book to pay a debt,' he says. 'And I hope that when people know more about these |
| 11 | | marvellous animals they'll respect them more.' |
| 4 | 12 | | 'We don't care enough about animals. I'm very angry about the way they're treated. |
| 13 | | Factory farming, experimentation, trapping them for fur - I find all that totally disgusting. The |
| 14 | | problem is that immense commercial interests are involved and they're not going to change |
| 15 | | unless public opinion forces such a change.' |
| 5 | 16 | | As our conversation continues, mild-mannered Desmond starts to sound like one of those |
| 17 | | radical animal activists who plant bombs in cars and raid animal laboratories. And when he's |
| 18 | | asked what he thinks of them, he admits rather shockingly: 'I guess if I were 18 today, I'd |
| 19 | | probably be one of them. I don 't agree with all of their tactics but I'm basically on their side.' |
| 6 | 20 | | 'We still don't have enough respect for animals and it's extremely difficult to get a change |
| 21 | | of attitude. That only happens if some people become extremists and drag the rest of society |
| 22 | | along with them. They go too far sometimes and do silly things which damage their cause, but I |
| 23 | | understand entirely how they feel.' |
| 7 | 24 | | But what about medical research? Is the well-being of a rat more important than, for |
| 25 | | example, a cure for cancer? Desmond is having none of that. 'To start with,' he says, '80 per cent |
| 26 | | of all cruelty to animals could be removed without the slightest loss to society. It is totally |
| 27 | | unnatural to turn animals into food machines for factory farming. And cosmetic research is |
| 28 | | completely unnecessary. Surely we have enough shampoos in the world now to satisfy anybody, |
| 29 | | so why do we need any more?' |
| 8 | 30 | | 'If you take away that 80 per cent, you're left with medical research, and if |
| 31 | | experimentation was not so easily allowed, people would be forced to find other ways of doing |
| 32 | | the research. After all, animal experiments have been rather unsuccessful. They've been going |
| 33 | | on in cancer research for years and years now, so why haven't they worked?' |
| 9 | 34 | | Does he think things will improve? 'I suppose things are starting to change - but not |
| 35 | | quickly enough. That's why the animal activists get so angry and do mad things. My way is to |
| 36 | | write a book like Animalwatching and tell people how marvellous animals are. Once you |
| 37 | | understand animals, there's no way you can be horrible to them, because you can't be horrible |
| 38 | | to your friends.' |
| | | |
| | | from 'Woman', October 22, 1990 |
