"If you would keep your soul From spotted sight or sound, Live like the velvet mole: Go burrow underground.And there hold intercourse With roots of trees and stones, With rivers at their source, And disembodied bones."

"For like a mole I journey in the dark, A-travelling along the underground From my Pillar'd Halls and broad Suburbean Park, To come the daily dull official round; And home again at night with my pipe all alight, A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound."

"Where the quick dipper forages In elver-peopled crevices,"

"Slipper in sliding as is an eelës taile,"

"O ay, you're like the fisher-folk, the men who hunt for eels, Who when the mere is still and clear catch nothing for their creels, But when they rout the mud about and stir it up and down, 'Tis then they do; and so do you, when you perturb the town."

"Strange the Formation of the Eely Race, That know no Sex, yet love the close Embrace. Their folded Lengths they round each other twine, Twist am’rous Knots, and slimy Bodies joyn; Till the close Strife brings off a frothy Juice, The Seed that must the wriggling Kind produce. Regardless they their future Offspring leave, But porous Sands the spumy Drops receive. That genial Bed impregnates all the Heap, And little Eelets soon begin to creep. Half-Fish, Half-Slime they try their doubtful strength, And slowly trail along their wormy Length. What great Effects from slender Causes flow! Congers their Bulk to these Productions owe: The Forms which from the frothy Drop began, Stretch out immense, and eddy all the Main."

"A Lustie wench as nimble as an Eele, Would give a Gallant leave to kisse and feele,"

"My wit is also slipir as an eel."

"Hey Willie Winkie, the wean’s in a creel, Wamblin’ aff a bodie’s knee like a verra eel,"

"I have spent the last week as a nearly full-time reader of platypusology."

"I like the duck-billed platypus Because it is anomalous. I like the way it raises its family Partly birdly, partly mammaly. I like its independent attitude. Let no one call it a duck-billed platitude."

"During part of June and July I spent many hours daily in the water, hunting everywhere for the eggs of Ceratodus. Towards the end of July the blacks began to collect Echidna, and very soon I had segmenting ova from the uterus. In the second week of August I had similar stages in Ornithorhynchus, but it was not until the third week that I got the laid eggs from the pouch of Echidna. In the following week (August 24) I shot an Ornithorhynchus whose first egg had been laid; her second egg was in a partially dilated os uteri. This egg, of similar appearance to, though slightly larger than, that of Echidna, was at a stage equal to a 36-hour chick. (Caldwell 1888, p. 464)"

"Of all the Mammalia yet known it seems the most extra-ordinary in its conformation; exhibiting the perfect resemblance of the beak of a Duck engrafted on the head of a quadruped. So accurate is the similitude, that, at first view, it naturally excites the idea of some deceptive preparation by artificial means; the very epidermis, proportions, serratures, manner of opening, and other particulars is the beak of a shoveler, or other broad-billed species of duck, presenting themselves to the view; nor is it without the most minute and rigid examination that we can persuade ourselves of its being the real beak or snout of a quadruped."

"Although the settlement had now been established within a month of ten years, yet little had been added to the stock of natural history which had been acquired in the first year or two of its infancy. The Kangaroo, the Dog, the Opossum, the Flying Squirrel, the Kangaroo Rat, a spotted Rat, the common Rat, and the large Fox-bat (if entitled to a place in this society), made up the whole catalogue of animals that were known at this time, with the exception which must now be made of an amphibious animal, of the mole species, one of which had been lately found on the banks of a lake near the Hawkesbury. In size it was considerably larger than the land mole. The eyes were very small. The fore legs, which were shorter than the hind, were observed, at the feet, to be provided with four claws, and a membrane, or web, that spread considerably beyond them, while the feet of the hind legs were furnished, not only with this membrane or web, but with four long and sharp claws, that projected as much beyond the web, as the web projected beyond the claws of the fore feet. The tail of this animal was thick, short, and very fat; but the most extraordinary circumstance observed in its structure was, its having, instead of the mouth of an animal, the upper and lower mandibles of a duck. By these it was enabled to supply itself with food, like that bird, in muddy places, or on the banks of the lakes, in which its webbed feet enabled it to swim; while on shore its long and sharp claws were employed in burrowing; nature thus providing for it in its double or amphibious character. These little animals had been frequently noticed rising to the surface of the water, and blowing like the turtle."

"Close by the reserve flowed the River Yarra, in which the Platypus abounds, the “Water Mole,” as it is called here, or the “Duckbill” (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus). I offered the men three half-crowns for one recently shot. [...] It was all to no purpose. I was doomed not to see a living Platypus or even a Kangaroo in Australia. I saw only the footprints of the Platypus (like those of a duck), which the Black pointed out to me, in a regularly beaten track, made by the animals from one pond to another. The Black said that he was certain the Platypus did not lay eggs, and that he had several times seen the young ones, and his description of them agreed with what I knew from Dr. Bennett's researches on the subject."

"The Platypus burrows in the banks of rivers, choosing generally a spot where the water is deep and sluggish, and the bank precipitous and covered with reeds or overhung by trees. Considerably beneath the level of the stream's surface is the main entrance to a narrow passage which leads directly into the bank, bearing away from the river (at a right angle to it) and gradually rising above its highest watermark. At a distance of some few yards from the river's edge this passage branches into two others, which, describing each a circular course to the right and left, unite again in the nest itself, which is a roomy excavation, lined with leaves and moss, and situated seldom more than twelve yards from the water, or less than two feet beneath the surface of the earth. Several of their nests were, with considerable labour and difficulty, discovered."

"It is well known that the specimens of this extraordinary animal first brought to Europe were considered by many as impositions. They reached England by vessels which had navigated the Indian seas, a circumstance in itself sufficient to rouse the suspicions of the scientific naturalist, aware of the monstrous impostures which the artful Chinese had so frequently practised on European adventurers; in short, the scientific felt inclined to class this rare production of nature with eastern mermaids and other works of art; but these conjectures were immediately dispelled by an appeal to anatomy."

"The Dumbo octopus looks so much like a cartoon in real life that really didn't have to change a thing when I drew it."

"Individuals of some animal species have been taught simple versions of human language despite their natural communication systems failing to rise to the level of a simple language."

"The had already disappeared from English rivers by the , and the wolf had almost gone; one was killed in in 1212, and there are a few scattered mentions from the remainder of the century; a few may have continued on the until the end of the fourteenth century. The rabbit was first introduced into England at the beginning of the twelfth century, and by the 1160s was probably familiar over much of the country. The raucous cough of that bird beloved of poachers, the , seems to have part of the English woodlands' sound-scene from about the same time: the species was certainly present by 1170."

"In many of the countries of West and Central Africa, the people love "". In the old days a hunter would shoot or trap animals just to feed his own family, perhaps his village. But now he kills as many as many as he can, cuts them up, dries of smokes the meat, and then sends it on a truck to the towns. It is not legal to hunt chimpanzees; they are endangered. But how does anyone know what the animal was when it has been cut into small pieces? Thousands of animals are killed for the bushmeat trade each year. The only hope for the wild animal populations in these countries is that, because animals are disappearing fast, they are harder to find and kill. The hunters complain that they have to travel farther and farther into the forest to catch anything at all. And so, if programs for breeding s can be introduced, at lest some of the remaining wildlife will have a chance."

"The has outright destroyed s, and where it did not, it altered them drastically to the detriment of wildlife and often people themselves. Over the last century, the more the population grew, the more es flowed into the , and the greater the impact on wildlife were, all of which required specific temperature ranges other limited climatic conditions. And the more people there are, the more cities, roads, farm fields, fences, and other barriers there are preventing wildlife from living in or moving to areas of more favorable temperature or humidity in a rapidly changing climate."

"A flock of a dozen s spends the year in my woods. In winter, when we are harvesting diseased or dead trees for our fuel wood, the ring of the axe is dinner gong fro the chickadee tribe. ... But for diseases and insect pests, there would likely be no food in the trees, and hence no chickadees to add cheer to my woods in winter. Many other kinds of wildlife depend on tree diseases. My s chisel living plants, to extract fat grubs from the diseased heartwood. My s find surcease from s and s in the hollow heart of an old ; but for this diseased tree their sundown serenade would probably be silenced. My s nest in hollow trees; every June brings its broad of downy ducklings to my woodland slough. All squirrels depend, for permanent dens, on a delicately balanced equilibrium between a rotting cavity and the scar tissue with which the tree attempts to close the wound. The squirrels referee the contest by gnawing out the scar tissue when it begins unduly to shrink the amplitude of their front door."

"That land where the black antelope naturally roams, one must know to be fit for the performance of sacrifices; (the tract) different from that (is) the country of the Mlekkhas."

"Sometimes losing a pet is more painful than losing a human because in the case of the pet, you were not pretending to love it. We are responsible for the wellbeing of our pets, so it is hard not to feel some sort of guilt when they pass."

"Compared with non-pet owners, pet owners take more moderate and vigorous physical activity. [In addition some pet enclosures such as aquariums or chicken coops may need specific lighting, water features, plants, rocks, or soils, that] may help promote owners to establish connections with nature, thereby increasing the immunity of owners."

"Goldmeier (1986) aimed to discover whether animals could fill the gap created by absent humans. One hundred and four-four elderly participants, living alone, living with others, living alone with pets or living with others and pets, were assessed. The groups were demographically similar and results showed that pets did not make a difference to morale amongst those who lived with others but that they improved the morale of those living alone."

"A small pet animal is often an excellent companion for the sick, for long chronic cases especially. A pet bird in a cage is sometimes the only pleasure of an invalid confined for years to the same room."

"I raised Harambe from the day he was born. He lived with his mama for the first twenty-one days. He was in a situation where there's this strange thing here that I don't know, what do I do? Do I fight it? Do I love it? Do I run from it? What do I do?"

"He just had two girlfriends and no babies yet, cause he's young, and you know, instead of being disappointed and making him feel like, you know, I just didn't want him to feel like OH... like everybody else is walking in and saying OH the babies aren't out, you know, and they'd be disappointed, like oh no, I can't. You know, I was just developing a relationship with him where he felt comfortable with me and my camera. Harambe was one of those where you just knew somebody was inside. I mean, it was, you know, I, I say I talked to him, that's mentally I'm not speaking out loud, but I felt like I talked to him all the time. And I felt he communicated with me and he seemed to be highly intelligent and interested in what was going on. And his personality with me seemed to be like he was always screwing with me, like, you know, oh, you want me to do this? So I'll do that. You know, it just seemed like we had, you know, a good relationship in that, that way, where he smiled at me all the time and that just, you know, made you feel good, you know?"

"jawed vertebrates, which include the cartilaginous fishes (sharks, rays, and ratfish)"

"tetrapods, which include amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals"

"jawless fishes"

"So vertebrates like us are unusually huge and unusually fragile, have relatively simple life cycles, and are built from the least common type of cell. The fact that we are not the standard mode of life is important to remember."

"bony fishes"

"Cakkan, king of the mountain, embosses the king's emblems and puts his implements in order. He twists a giant rope against the great peaks of the rebel land."

"What keeps snails and flukes apart in evolution is their divergent future interests, and this is because they do not share reproductive propagules. What keeps host genes together with host genes — and parasite genes together with parasite genes - is that they do share future interests. Parasites, then, have led us to the solution to the paradox of the organism. The genes in an organism share desiderata lists. And this is simply because they submit to the same meiotic lottery and possess the same stochastic gametic destiny."

"The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng. The cruel larva mines its silky course, And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse."

"Let me repeat that these parasitic insects comprise ten percent of all known animal species. How can this be understood? Certainly we give our infants the wrong idea about their fellow creatures in the world. Teddy bears should come with tiny stuffed bearlice; ten percent of all baby bibs and rattles sold should be adorned with colorful blowflies, maggots, and screw-worms. What kind of devil’s tithe do we pay? What percentage of the world’s species that are not insects are parasitic? Could it be, counting bacteria and viruses, that we live in a world in which half the creatures are running from—or limping from—the other half?"

"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."

"There is an extremely thin line of demarcation between the ferment and the parasite."

"Fell Oestrus buries in her rapid course Her countless brood in stag, or bull, or horse; Whose hungry larva eats its living way, Hatch'd by the warmth, and issues into day."

"Whoever looks at the insect world, at flies, aphides, gnats and innumerable parasites, and even at the infant mammals, must have remarked the extreme content they take in suction, which constitutes the main business of their life. If we go into a library or newsroom, we see the same function on a higher plane, performed with like ardor, with equal impatience of interruption, indicating the sweetness of the act. In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight."

"All infections, of whatever type, with no exceptions, are products of parasitic beings; that is, by living organisms that enter in other living organisms, in which they find nourishment, that is, food that suits them, here they hatch, grow and reproduce themselves."

"It is about the most awful thing you can imagine in terms of a non-fatal ailment. It's a parasitic disease and you know you've got it when at some point you develop a blister on your skin on your leg or your arm, and it's a burning blister and soon what emerges is a worm, and it's a worm that eventually, as it comes out, could be three-feet-long. It looks like a long strand of angel hair pasta and it's excruciatingly painful as it comes out. And the way it's transmitted is through drinking water. The worm, when it comes out, you've got that burning blister, your instinct is to want to immerse the skin in water. Well, when you do that, the worm puts out thousands and thousands of larvae that infects the drinking water. If anyone drinks the water, it gets into their system and a year later they develop a blister and out comes another worm."

"[The parasite that causes malaria] edges through the cells of the stomach wall of the mosquito and forms a cyst which grows and eventually bursts to release hundreds of "sporozoites" into the body cavity of the mosquito [...] As far as we can tell, the parasite does not harm the mosquito [...] It has always seemed to me, though, that these growing cysts [...] must at least give the mosquito something corresponding to a stomach-ache."

"To choose a rough example, think of a thorn which has stuck in a finger and produces an inflammation and suppuration. Should the thorn be discharged with the pus, then the finger of another individual may be pricked with it, and the disease may be produced a second time. In this case it would not be the disease, not even its product, that would be transmitted by the thorn, but rather the stimulus which engendered it. Now supposing that the thorn is capable of multiplying in the sick body, or that every smallest part may again become a thorn, then one would be able to excite the same disease, inflammation and suppuration, in other individuals by transmitting any of its smallest parts. The disease is not the parasite but the thorn. Diseases resemble one another, because their causes resemble each other. The contagion in our sense is therefore not the germ or seed of the disease, but rather the cause of the disease. For example, the egg of a taenia is not the product of a worm disease even though the worm disease may have been the cause, which first gave rise to the taenia in the intestinal contents—nor of the individual afflicted with the worm disease, but rather of the parasitic body, which, no matter how it may have come into the world at first, now reproduces itself by means of eggs, and produces the symptoms of the worm disease, at least in part. It is not the seed of the disease; the latter multiplies in the sick organism, and is again excreted at the end of the disease."

"[A] major difficulty in the parasite's life is the return to water. It is, therefore, of particular interest that the parasite appears to affect the behaviour of its hosts, and 'encourages' it to return to water. The mechanism by which this is achieved is obscure, but there are sufficient isolated reports to certify that the parasite does influence its hosts, and often suicidally for the host [...] One of the more dramatic reports describes an infected bee flying over a pool and, when about six feet over it, diving straight into the water. Immediately on impact the gordian worm burst out and swam into the water, the maimed bee being left to die."

"It is only within the present epoch, that physiology and chemistry have reached the point at which they could offer a scientific foundation to agriculture; and it is only within the present epoch, that zoology and physiology have yielded any very great aid to pathology and hygiene. But within that time, they have already rendered highly important services by the exploration of the phenomena of parasitism. Not only have the history of the animal parasites, such as the tapeworms and the trichina, which infest men and animals, with deadly results, been cleared up by means of experimental investigations [...] but the terrible agency of the parasitic fungi and of the infinitesimally minute microbes, which work far greater havoc among plants and animals, has been brought to light."

"The insidious lethality of a parasitic wasp, the cruelty of a cat playing with a mouse – these are, after all, just the tip of the iceberg. To ponder natural selection is to be staggered by the amount of suffering and death that can be the price for a single, slight advance in organic design. And it is to realize, moreover, that the purpose of this "advance" – longer, sharper canine teeth in male chimpanzees, say – is often to make other animals suffer or die more surely. Organic design thrives on pain, and pain thrives on organic design."