The Eccentricities Of A Genus

Think of pointless creatures and a great many will probably spring to mind – the sloth, the meerkat, Paula Abdul. Of the innumerable possible candidates to review, (I can only choose a few) here are some who have made it to this worthy selection.



1. THE WOODPECKER

What can one say about a creature that devotes its life to head-butting trees? Come on, there’s plenty of food out there. Nature isn’t such a parsimonious provider that you have to hammer your way through hard wood to find ticks and bugs. Apart from this silly and annoying obsession, they’re also blighted with some of the most ridiculous plumage in the arboreal world. After nature does its worst, humans have to give it a name that consists of two words which are both slang for a man’s private parts.



2. THE ELEPHANT SEAL

Nature at its ridiculous best. If this is a result of evolution, I want to see what it ‘evolved’ from. Usually found in great herds, these giant pneumatic lumps actually deliver four tons of meat to anyone looking to stock up their larders. I can’t think of any creature in history that is easier to hunt. Their sole defense mechanism involves wriggling their proboscis and furiously paddling with their stumpy flippers. Look at it. Just look at it. Looks like a fallen motorcycle seat with a knob on it. Now you know how our primitive ancestors with the lemon-sized brains managed to survive the Ice Age with a pair of fur-pants and a rock tied to a stick.



3. THE DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS

You can always count on the Australian continent to provide the world with guffaws. Their inclination towards naming places ‘Coolawumba’ and ‘Joombatuffaburra’ and their laughable indigenous cuisine and accent notwithstanding, they have some biological freaks there that would make Ripley drop his jaw in disbelief. Animals that hop. Goggly-eyed tree-huggers. And the piece de resistance – a dog-like creature with flippers and a whopping great duck’s bill for a mouth. If I wasn’t better informed I’d credit a great Photoshop artist rather than God with creating this masterpiece of buffoonery. And get this, it is the only mammal in the world to lay eggs. To protect it from predators who overcome fits of laughter to attack it, it has been provided with a venomous right claw. Because, as everyone knows, in the Australian animal kingdom, rules forbid predators to attack from the left.