The jackdaw, stript of her stolen colours, provokes our laughter.
I think I could be a perfectly decent cat. I've been around cats long enough to know what the rules of being a cat are. When all else fails, wash. And I think I could master the thing that cats do, where they stalk away pretending they meant to do whatever it was in the first place; showing their wounded dignity.
In the distance, the gestures of animals look human, the gestures of human beings bestial.
The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't take it too seriously.
The beast attempts a beautific look that could be mistaken for a bout of painful wind.
When you have to react to a lizard that's a tennis ball, it's a really, really difficult, tricky piece of craft.
The Gerat Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog Eater.
I think like the species I am studying, whatever it is. If I am watching a lizard, I become the lizard. Gazing ath the water at a pike, I become the pike.
If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee.
It was really weird when I heard my voice coming out of a fish.
Ah, come now. I look like an angel, but I'm not. The old rules of nature encompass many creatures like me. We're beautiful like the diamond-backed snake, or the striped tiger, yet we're merciless killers
All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don't catch horses going around looking like people, do you?
If I was a nightingale I would sing like a nightingale; if a swan, like a swan. But since I am a rational creature my role is to praise God.
I can do a really good animal impression! I'm great at ducks, cats, dogs, and occasionally dolphins.
I looked like a monkey trying to wrestle a football.
I copy the dress of an animal because I love to copy God. I think God is the most fantastic designer.
