Why We Should Love the Beasties with Dr. Jo Wimpenny
Zazie and Kristi learn more about wasps, mosquitoes, vultures, sharks, and other unloved animals from Dr. Jo Wimpenny, author of Beauty of the Beasts.
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Listen to episode 57 of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation wherever you get your podcasts (Apple, Spotify) or below, watch on Youtube or below, or scroll down to read a transcript.
Why we should love the beasties
In our conversation with Dr. Jo Wimpenny, we talk about:-
- why Jo wanted to write about the beasties
- how everything is connected
- the value of wasps and mosquitoes to the ecosystem
- how sharks are not necessarily out to get people (even if sometimes they are)
- whether some animals are over-rated
- which animal Jo most loved writing about
- and finally Jo told us which book she's been reading.
Beauty of the Beasts: Rethinking Nature's Least Loved Animals is available wherever books are sold.
The book Jo recommended to us is The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay.
Previous episodes of The Pawsitive Post with Jo Wimpenny:
Also mentioned in this episode: Kristi's blog post on making a living in the world.
Jo Wimpenny is a zoologist and writer, with a research background in animal behaviour and the history of science. She studied Zoology at the University of Bristol, and went on to research problem-solving in crows for her DPhil at Oxford University. After postdoctoral research on the history of ornithology at Sheffield, she co-authored the book Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology Since Darwin with Tim Birkhead and Bob Montgomerie, which won the 2015 PROSE award for History of Science, Medicine and Technology. She’s the author of Aesop’s Animals and her new book is Beauty of the Beasts: Rethinking Nature’s Least Loved Animals.
Jo's website: https://jowimpenny.com/
Follow Jo Wimpenny on Instagram.
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Highlights of the conversation with Dr. Jo Wimpenny about Beauty of the Beasts
Z: Please, will you just hold up the beautiful cover of your book so that we can all see it? Because my copy is still on its way to me and hasn't arrived yet and I think everyone should see that.
This is an absolutely gorgeous cover. It's purpley and it's got this giant, yellowy, orangey wasp on it. It's an absolutely beautiful cover.
Thank you. Thank you so much for coming to tell us about it. And we first heard about it in our Holiday episode when it was very exciting that you told us it was coming, and we loved hearing about it. So why did you decide to write about beasties?
J: Yes, the beasties. I mean, simply put, it's my call to action for people to appreciate a much broader diversity of animal life on this planet.
So in Aesop's Animals, I was looking. I was using Aesop's Fables as kind of the hook to tell stories about animal cognition research. But the more that I was looking into it, the more I was learning about the human animal relationship and how irrational this can sometimes be and how it's strongly based on cultural references, of course.
But in Beauty of the Beasts, I wanted to delve into this a bit more and to look at kind of the biology that shapes our emotional responses also to certain groups of animals, and to focus on the animals people don't like.
And the main reason for this is simply that we're living in this time where we're losing so many species at such an alarming rate, many of whom we understand we don't know enough about.
And just a really small proportion of animal life is deemed to be worthy by lots of people.
We support them based on perhaps their looks or, you know, their harmlessness or their resemblance to us in some way. But there's so much more in the animal kingdom that we're not supporting or that we're actively demonizing.
And so I really wanted to look into that and to find out why we have these responses to certain animals and then to shine a light on what these animals are actually like.
You know, there's great evidence coming from animal behavior and cognition research showing that some of these creatures are incredibly good at problem solving, or they. They experience emotional responses, they have complex inner lives, and they're much more sentient than we think. And.
And also ecologically, some of them are absolute superstars, and the world just wouldn't function without them. And so my aim was really to bring all of this to life and hopefully create a little bit of friction among people that read it.
So they're a little bit less likely to reach for the bug spray or, you know, the rat poison next time they see one of these creatures in what they think is their space.
K: I think it's interesting hearing, you know, I always love reading about animals and animal, you know, like when they have like cultural responses to things and they're passing on information. I find it all very fascinating and it really helps to inform my work.
I do a lot of work. I think I mentioned this before in the species at risk sort of zone and some of the conversations that we've been having in the species at risk area is about protecting habitats and sort of protecting ecologies rather than singling out a specific animal.
And I think that that's a really interesting way to look at it and because I come from working for an indigenous government, you know, and there's definitely a more holistic sort of approach to thinking about animals and about conservation in Indigenous communities here in Canada. Anyway.
So do you think it's fair to say, you know, based on the theme of the book, is that everything is connected, there is all of these connections?
J: Yes, absolutely. And I think conservation has shifted, hasn't it? From this kind of species first approach, which would have been epitomized by something like the giant panda being the icon for the World Wildlife Foundation. But yeah, definitely moved to more of an ecological approach where it's not just the animal, but it's the entire habitat.
And nature has spun this phenomenally tangled web of connection.
Everything is built on kind of overlapping and interconnectedness.
And so it's kind of baffling to think that we have this idea that we can just remove a species and everything will be fine and we can knock out these links in this web and there won't be any consequences.
And we're seeing more and more evidence, I think now of, of the consequences. You know, what happens when we remove the apex predators from a landscape?
Well, **** happens because all of these other animals are not being controlled anymore and we've really like destabilized the balance of the system. You know, look to India and the vulture crisis they have gone through.
They've lost tens of millions of vultures.
And I go into that more in the book. And the cause of that being quite well, a very simple cause. The use of a cheap anti inflammatory drug in cattle without those vultures which did the job of scavenging and removing carrion for free.
And extremely effectively, we're now seeing the knock on effects of actual loss of human life. An increase in about 100,000 extra deaths per year because of poor hygiene and water contamination because of lots of these birds.
And we're seeing more and more of it. So yeah, absolute everything is connected.
And I think we have this idea of a species value based on what does for us and we're not seeing what it does and how it functions within that ecological system because, you know, we can't help but come at it from a very human centric way of thinking.
And I think that's changing. But historically that's always been the way that we think about other animals.
Z: So I think we're going to talk about some of the specific animals that you mentioned in the book.
And I already said that I don't like mosquitoes. So let's start with mosquitoes. And a long time ago when I lived in Thailand, I remember going to a mosquito museum in Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand and it was basically the house of some people who have been scientists who'd studied mosquitoes.
And inside they had lots and lots, thousands of dead mosquitoes pinned to boards and they have butterflies and things as well. But I was amazed to learn how many different types of mosquito there are.
And so it did slightly change my thinking about mosquitoes. So tell us, tell us about mosquitoes.
J: Yes, they're always the hardest one to advocate for.
Like you Zazie, I have a problematic relationship with mosquitoes because they adore me.
So from this time of year now, we're seeing spring and we're seeing insects returning and it's wonderful. But on the flip side,
I'm seeing those little mozzies and the other bloodsuckers flying around and I know that I'm just going to get them. Fortunately, we don't need to worry here in the UK about disease spread.
But of course, in other parts of the world, mosquitoes are a massive factor in loss of life. So I think the latest WHO report had about over 600,000 deaths in 2024, which were caused by mosquito spread diseases. And malaria is the big one.
And so it's, you know, in some ways very reasonable that mosquitoes come up as the animal that most people really hate and the animal that prompts the question, you know, what's the point of it? And wouldn't the world be a better place if we are educated mosquitoes?
And what I want to do is just to add a little bit more nuance into it. And it's precisely for the reason that you've already said that there are lots of different species of mosquito.
There's about three and a half thousand and only, I think it's 2.5% of those are known to be vectors for diseases that impact humans.
I think it's, you know, There could be up to 10% which are implicated, but at the moment it's only a fraction that we know are really, really causal factors in spreading human disease.
And that's not to sort of downplay that because this is a catastrophic loss of life, but to say that we can't just wipe out mosquitoes and expect for there not to be any consequences because they are also insects and the planet is losing insects at an alarming rate of all of the animals, you know, insect loss is one that we should all be really, really concerned about.
Insects function as food for lots of other creatures.
So if we want to keep seeing things like swift. So in the UK, the return of swifts and swallows and other fly catching insects back in spring is, is a huge thing. People love to see these birds, but they need flying insects and mosquitoes will form a part of their diet.
And it's the same with things like bats, lots of species of insect and water animals because mosquitoes develop as larvae in water.
So things like dragonflies will be eating mosquitoes and fish as well.
So they're kind of at the base of a lot of food webs. For that reason alone they're really important.
But there's evidence that they might also have a pollinator function.
It's not quite there like in terms of how much we know about it, but one of the researchers that I spoke to creates these incredible high res photos in macro, the mosquito species that he studies and he's seen pollen grains attached to them, like even attached to their eyes, which is quite incredible.
And so, you know, there's a suggestion that maybe they also play a role in pollination and we need to investigate that more. There's so much about them that we don't know.
So while we need to control the species that are problematic because they spread serious diseases, we don't want to be throwing all the babies out with the bathwater by thinking that we should be eradicating them all.
And the other thing to say on malaria is that we also kind of need to be thinking about our role in this disease.
It's a preventable disease, it's also a treatable disease. So the fact that 600,000 people are still dying every year,
I mean, that's something that is also a socioeconomic problem.
And I don't think we can pin all of the blame on mosquitoes. We're living in an era where I just saw a headline today that said the number of billionaires on the planet is now going to rise to.
I can't remember the figure. But yet there are hundreds of millions of people living in poverty. And it's. Those are the people who are being disproportionately impacted by these diseases.
And so if we want to do something about that, then I think we also need to be looking at behavior.
K: Yeah,
I hear a lot of people in the north, where I work, in northern Canada, in the boreal forest in Canada, bringing up a lot like, they're just. They don't hear songbirds like they used to. When I was a kid, we used to hear so many more songbirds. And I. I know that there's, you know, I guess everything is connected.
And birds. Birds eat insects. And if insects are disappearing in these large numbers that they are, you know, there's. Birds are not going to have enough to eat.
So, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of problems.
Yeah, for sure. So I think because you have that beautiful cover that Zazie held up with the wasp on it, we should ask about wasps. What do you say about wasps?
J: Yeah, probably. I don't know if they're up there, if they're equal for mosquitoes, for being sort of the most hated animal wasps. I have a personal stake in encouraging people to value wasps more because both of my brothers are fully subscribed to the.
To the idea that there's no point to wasps, that they, you know, the world would be a better place without wasps.
They both kill them when they see them.
And so I really have this goal that I need to convince, starting with them, I need to convince them of the worth of wasps.
And again, it's this thing where if you say the word wasp to someone, then they're instantly going to think about the problematic species. They're going to think about the species that annoy them.
When they're having a picnic or when they're sitting in a beer garden. They're going to think about the stripy yellow and black, you know, waspy wasp that is the one that is portrayed in all of the kind of popular media articles.
You know, wasps are invading. And it's. Again, it's such a small fraction of the overall number of wasp species. There's like a hundred thousand wasp species in the world, and a minority of them are the social species, but it's the social species that are the ones that are, well, the ones that cause friction with people.
And that's simply for the reason that social species are living in a colony.
They have division of labor, and the workers are going out and they're finding food and they're bringing it back to the nest, and they will defend that nest.
So they kind of have a stake in making sure that nothing comes near that nest and they're equipped to defend themselves.
So, you know, we come along and we're sort of blundering around and getting too close to the nest and they're going to react to that. But most wasps are not social, they're solitary. And about half of all wasp species are parasitoid wasps. They're just super cool and they're really under the radar.
So what they're doing is they're. They're actually going out and hunting.
But things like cockroaches, some of them, or spiders or other insects, and they bring them back to their little nests and they use them as like a living larder for their.
For their eggs. They'll lay an egg on one of these poor prey animals. They don't kill it, they paralyze it.
So they inject an incredible form of venom. And venom is something that I also explore in the book in more detail in the wasps chapter, but also in the snakes chapter, of course, because each animal has this incredible sort of cocktail of chemicals which is so precisely targeted to achieve a particular ecological function.
And so in these wasps, they can, for example, just paralyze a cockroach species, leave it living, lay their egg on it, seal up the burrow and move on their air catches and basically sort of eats the cockroach alive, which is gruesome. Absolutely, but isn't something that we need to worry about.
You know, they're never going to do that to us.
And if you look at, like, the ecological impacts of wasps as a whole, they're incredibly important for things like pest control. If we got rid of wasps, we would really notice it. They do this incredible service for us.
Like I said, completely under the radar and for free.
You know, we've got the species in our gardens, which might be the social species, but they're going out and they're killing aphids or caterpillars of species that we might think are pests, like various sort of moth larvae and these sorts of things which we don't want on our plants either.
And the wasps are just removing them. And the economic benefits of wasps have been estimated to be. To be huge. I can't remember the number completely off my head, but it's like hundreds of millions of dollars.
So there are lots of reasons why we should be valuing them and sort of appreciating them for what they're doing.
I think people have this idea that the Wasps are out to get them, like, say, like they want to be annoying.
And wasp brains are pretty sophisticated, but they're not that sophisticated.
Like to, to have to harbor those kinds of intentions would require quite a lot of complex cognitive machinery. And there's no evidence that wasps can do that. And that sort of goes for the other animals as well.
Like spiders aren't lurking there trying to get you.
You know, they're not stalking around because they want to scare you.
Snakes even aren't doing that. So that's another kind of theme of the book is that I want to show that, you know, just because we come into contact with an animal doesn't mean that it's, it's out to get us.
Z: That probably leads very nicely to our next question though because we wanted to ask about sharks as well. And I think people often feel that sharks are definitely out to get people.
And actually at this time of year we've had a few media stories of sharks being spotted off the western coast of North America, the US and Canada. And apparently that's just part of their kind of normal migration at this time of year.
So tell us about sharks as well.
J: Yeah, yeah. And absolutely. And there is evidence off the west coast, I think it's off the Californian coast where sharks sort of have these nursery areas.
So there would be lots of young ones and was great whites, but was definitely a species that could be predatory on humans. And we do have to remember that they are predators and they are, you know, top of their food chain. I mean, although there are orcas who, I mean there have been some reports of orcas who also attacked.
But you know, they're the ones in the ocean that are, that are hunting everything and they can very easily hunt us. And obviously they do, people do lose life to sharks.
But what's kind of incredible is that researchers have looked, they've flown drones over I think to look at sort of potential coexistence of people and sharks in the same waters.
And that's specifically in these kind of nursery areas. And they found that sharks of sort of 2 meters in length, which isn't as big as they get, but that's still pretty big, were frequently coexisting with surfers and stand up paddle boarders and swimmers in these areas.
And so if they were out to get us, there would be, you know, so many attacks.
So this was kind of like during the summer months when people were enjoying the waters off the California coast. And in this one particular study, I think there was one incident where someone reported like an interaction with a shark, but they didn't see what it was, so it was hard to know what it actually was.
And it was not a serious one either. But so it's that kind of evidence that shows that like a lot of the time we're overlapping in space and time with these animals, but clearly they're not out to get us because they could very easily. 2 meter long shark could very easily cause a lot of damage.
Like I said, I don't want to downplay the fact that people do lose their lives to sharks because each one of those is, is also a tragedy.
Some of the theories about why sometimes I think a shark could be actually, you know, viewing us as prey and, and will attack.
There's also a theory that it's kind of a mistaken identity.
So like they see a shape at the surface and there's some evidence that the view that a shark would have of a person from underneath is pretty similar to the outline shape of like a seal or a sea lion.
And so they investigate it. And their way of investigating it is biting.
And so I don't want to say that sharks never have intention to attack people, but I do want to downplay that. Well, I want to refute that they are swimming around and out to get us at every opportunity.
K: One of the, I think one of the coolest sort of reframes, mental reframes that I've learned working with Indigenous people is this idea. And I know Zazie and I have talked about this before, I think I wrote a blog about it.
But it's just that animals are making a living in the world.
So when, when, you know, if I look at a wasp or something, that would be how it would be framed. Is it, oh, he's stung me. Well, he's just. And they also gender animals, which I find kind of interesting too. So it wouldn't be like it is just making a living.
It's like the wasp, he's just making a living in the world. I mean, that's an interesting way to look like sharks. Even if they do eat people, they're just making a living in the world.
They're not, you know, like you're saying they're not doing it out of something. They're not like, it's not warfare, it's not, you know, they're just, they're just doing what they need to do to, to stay alive.
So with, with that in mind, do you think that some animals, you know, just. I think earlier you're talking about pandas, but do you Think there's some animals that, that sort of are a little bit not overinflated, but are. Get some warm fuzzies that, you know, that maybe, you know, we should share that with other animals.
Other animals that maybe get, you know, a little bit of human attention that, that you feel maybe they don't deserve or that should be spread in other directions.
J: Yes, yes, but sure.
So one of the chapters, the final chapter in my book is looking at the animals that we love, the animals that we adore and that we support and champion and celebrate and doing the exact same exercise and looking at what they're actually like as well.
It's a little bit tongue in cheek, but my aim is to do exactly what you're saying. Like to think about animals not as good or bad, but as animals.
And they're out there and they're doing what they need to do to survive.
And that means things like dolphins, you know, bottlenose dolphins, which people I love, I loved as a child.
I had a big poster of one on my wall and it was, you know, it was leaping through the air and glistening and it had, you know, it has that sort of benevolent look on its face that all dolphins do.
But you know, dolphins aren't all cute and cuddly when, when they're swimming around, they're, they're, they can be very aggressive to each other. They, males will force, you know, themselves force copulation on females. They engage in infanticide, so they kill babies.
There are lots of things about dolphins that we, we wouldn't celebrate, but I think we, we overlook them or maybe we don't know that these animals also exhibit behaviors that, that we wouldn't deem to be acceptable.
Um, and it's the same for things. I mean otters, sea otters are one of the worst.
But they're cute and cuddly and people think they're adorable.
But they engage in all kinds of things. I don't know how, I mean, I don't know how much to go into things that make people go really like. That's not what I expected from these animals.
And I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that these are mammals. We love mammals.
I think that's partly physical.
We like the animals that are a little bit like us, like front facing eyes, cute, especially in their offspring.
So, you know, we have this inbuilt cuteness kind of response to animals that have the baby schema, which Conrad Lorenz came up with that, you know, they've got round heads and big eyes and little Nose and little mouth.
So basically a kitten. You know, this sort of triggers this, this urge in us to want to nurture it because we. Well, because biologically it triggers the same kinds of responses as it would be for our own babies, is the idea.
So any animal that's got those kinds of features is already going to be prioritised.
And animals that don't have those features, sadly, it takes a lot more work to try and appreciate them.
And I guess, I mean, I don't know, a lot of your listeners will be dog lovers, of course, cat lovers, but dogs, I mean, and I'm a, I'm a huge dog lover, but they also are responsible for quite a lot of deaths.
I think the last the stats I saw was like 40,000 people lose their lives to, to dogs per year, which isn't something that I think feels very comfortable because we love them.
They're our best friends and they're our companions.
But I think there's like this, there's. There's this difference in the way that we view that in saying, oh, you know, there must have been something wrong with that dog.
It wasn't a normal dog, or didn't really mean it, or, you know, we sort of make excuses a little bit for their behavior. And then people were killed by sharks in the same year, for example, because it's that few, you know, very few people.
Sharks cause very few deaths, but those are the ones that are sort of sensationalized in our minds and feed into these fears.
So I guess, yeah, I'm rambling a little bit, but comes back to the message of the book, which is that I think we could just apply a little bit more consistency in the way that we're thinking about different animals.
K: It makes me think of koalas. Like, aren't they. I don't know if that's in your book or not, but they're presented to people who are not in the koala zone as being almost like teddy bears. But I understand that that's not the case necessarily.
J: Yeah, they're actually not in the book, but it is a good one. Now, I've heard that they're quite vicious.
They're just making a living in the world.
Yeah, they are.
But anything that's cute and cuddly, they're just ahead a few paces, like they're always going to be ahead.
And so what I want to do is just bring up the rest.
I don't want people to reduce what they're thinking.
Don't stop being a fan of penguins and dolphins and even otters. But try and appreciate the others a bit more.
Z: I feel like for the dog bites in some countries, rabies must play quite a big part in that as well, because especially I think in India, there are a lot of deaths from rabies, especially amongst children, which is very sad.
So, yeah, I feel like in researching this book you've learned lots of really good things about some animals which you might not have expected and you found other things about animals which are not so positive at all.
So which animal did you most enjoy writing about?
J: It's a hard one, but I'm gonna say vultures as a group.
I really, really enjoyed researching vultures and getting to meet some vultures up close because prior to that point I'd seen them.
Well, I'd seen them in California just wheeling like turkey vultures. They're the norm, just like wheeling above. And then I'd seen them in Africa sort of doing that vulture thing where they just sort of hunched over in a tree and they're silhouetted and all very vulturey or at a carcass.
So typical vulturing.
But I was very lucky to be able to go to a place in Wales, actually in the UK, where they breed vultures with the intention of releasing birds back into the wild.
So I said earlier, vulture populations have crashed.
So in Asia, the Indian subcontinent specifically, tens of millions of birds have been lost. And this actually relates to your point Zazie, about feral dogs and rabies, because the loss of vultures means feral dog populations have increased and there has been an increase in rabies cases as well as a result of that.
So that's a huge problem in India and other countries. But in Africa they're also being persecuted for different reasons.
So poisoning by livestock owners, some of it is belief based use as well. So using them in sort of traditional medicines, kind of like as a group, they're undergoing some really huge losses. And I want people to care more about this. You know, the fact that tens of millions of birds just died and nobody,
you know, it didn't sort of become a monumental story for a lot of people that lots of people aren't aware that this even happened kind of shows how little we value these birds.
But they're so important to the health of ecosystems. They're so specialized in what they do.
No other animal can clean up the environment like vultures do as a group.
And more than that, as I found when I met them, they're really charismatic, they're fascinating birds and they're curious and they're playful and they've got their individual personalities.
And so actually being able to see that made me become quite enamoured with these birds. And this was a couple of hooded vultures,
some Cape Griffin vultures and also some Andean condors that they had at the centre, which they're just phenomenal birds. It really changed me from being someone who thought, oh yeah, vultures are quite important because they eat carrion and that's important to being like a fully fledged vulture advocate.
Z: That sounds like a really cool experience. Thank you for coming to tell us about your book.
This transcript has been lightly edited for content and style.
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