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41 " The people of New Zealand are generally terribly nice. Everybody we had met so far had been terribly nice to us. Terribly nice and eager to please. I realised now that all this relentless niceness and geniality to which we had been subjected had got to me rather badly. New Zealand niceness is not merely disarming, it’s decapitating as well, and I had come to feel that if Just one more person was pleasant and genial at me I’d hit him. "
― Douglas Adams , Last Chance to See
42 " We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphising animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn't fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, becuase it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behavior was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human. We each make our own accommodation with the world and learn to survive in it in different ways. What works as successful behaviour for us does not work for lizards, and vice versa. "
43 " the great thing about being the only species that makes a distiction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along. "
44 " Madagascar had been a monkey-free refuge for the lemurs off the coast of mainland Africa, and now Nosy Mangabé had to be a monkey-free refuge off the coast of mainland Madagascar. The refuges were getting smaller and smaller, and the monkeys were already here on this one, sitting making notes about it. “The difference,” said Mark, “is that the first monkey-free refuge was set up by chance. The second was actually set up by the monkeys. "
45 " She worked out once and for all where the Land Rover had to be, and worked it out with such ruthless determination that the Land Rover would hardly dare not to be there, "
46 " As zoologists and botanists explore new areas, scrabbling to record the mere existence of species before they become extinct, it is like someone hurrying through a burning library desperately trying to jot down some of the titles of books that will now never be read. "
47 " I’ve never understood all this fuss people make about the dawn. I’ve seen a few and they’re never as good as the photographs, which have the additional advantage of being things you can look at when you’re in the right frame of mind, which is usually about lunchtime. After "
48 " So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly, then?” I asked. He blinked at me as if I were stupid. “Well, what do you think you do?” he said. “You die of course. That’s what deadly means. "
49 " Foreigners are not allowed to drive in China, and you can see why. The Chinese drive, or cycle, according to laws that are simply not apparent to an uninitiated observer, and I'm thinking not merely of the laws of the Highway Code, I'm thinking of the laws of physics. "
50 " In fact, vertigo is explained by some not as the fear of falling, but as the temptation to jump! "
51 " So it can come as a shock to realise that the world we hear described by travellers of previous centuries (or even previous decades) and biologists of today really did exist. The state it's in now is only the result of what we've done to it, and the mildness of the disappointment we feel when we arrive somewhere and find that it's a bit tatty is only a measure of how far our own expectations have been degraded and how little we understand what we've lost. The people who do understand what we've lost are the ones who are rushing around in a frenzy trying to save the bits that are left. "
52 " The females are bigger and more belligerent and often beat the males up. So when that happens, we collect semen from Pink, and—” “How do you do that?” asked Mark. “In a hat.” “I thought you said in a hat.” “That’s right. Carl puts on this special hat, which is a bit like a rather strange bowler hat with a rubber brim, Pink goes mad with desire for Carl, flies down and fucks the hell out of his hat.” “What?” “He ejaculates into the brim. We collect the drop of semen and use it to inseminate a female. "
53 " Richard had trained in the Philippines, working to save the Philippines’ monkey-eating eagle, a wildly improbable-looking piece of flying hardware that you would more readily expect to see coming into land on an aircraft "
54 " We find our images of what we call evil in things outside ourselves, in creatures that know nothing of such matters, so that we can feel revolted by them, and, by contrast, good about ourselves. "
55 " That done, we could finally relax about the baggage and start seriously to worry about the state of the plane, which was terrifying. The door to the cockpit remained open for the duration of the flight and might actually have been missing entirely. Mark told me that Air Merpati bought their planes second-hand from Air Uganda, but I think he was joking. I have a cheerfully reckless view of this kind of air travel. It rarely bothers me at all. I don’t think this is bravery, because I am frequently scared stiff in cars, particularly if I’m driving. But once you’re in an airplane, everything is completely out of your hands, so you may as well just sit back and grin manically about the grinding and rattling noises the old wreck of a plane makes as the turbulence throws it around the sky. There’s nothing you can do. "
56 " The first people to pour in were the missionaries: Catholics who arrived to teach the native populace that the Protestants were wrong and Protestants who came to teach that the Catholics were wrong. The only thing the Protestants and Catholics agreed about was that the natives had been wrong for two thousand years. "
57 " For a great many animals, however, smell is the chief of the senses. It tells them what is good to eat and what is not (we go by what the packet tells us and the sell-by date). It guides them towards food that isn't within line of sight (we already know where the shops are). It works at night (we turn on the light). It tells them of the presence and state of mind of other animals (we use language). It also tells them what other animals have been in the vicinity and doing what in the last day or two (we simply don't know, unless they've left a note).Rhinoceroses declare their movements and their territory to other animals by stamping in their faeces, and then leaving smell traces ofthemselves wherever they walk, which is the sort of note we would not appreciate being left. "
58 " Bill Black is said to be one of the most experienced helicopter pilots in the world, and he needs to be. He sits like a cuddly old curmudgeon hunched over his joystick and chews gum slowly and continuously as he flies his helicopter directly at sheer cliff faces to see if you'll scream. "
59 " I've heard a tape of collected kakapo noises, and it's almost impossible to believe that it all just comes from a bird, or indeed any kind of animal. Pink Floyd studio out-takes perhaps, but not a parrot. "
60 " I wasn't disturbed so much by the "O Lord, we thank Thee for the blessing of Thy day," but "We commend our lives into Thy hands. O lord" is frankly not the sort of thing you want to hear from a pilot as his hand is reaching for the throttle. "