‘PREDATOR’, Mary Colwell tells us, comes from the Latin for ‘plunderer’. The allusion is an important one. Animals which eat other animals have been much maligned by human culture, castigated in folklore, persecuted as vermin and categorised as pariahs. Colwell’s book, Beak, Tooth and Claw, however, seeks to redress that balance by presenting carnivorous beasts and birds as vital parts of the ecological and cultural landscape of Britain.
In the introduction, we learn about the ‘predator paradox’ which, as Colwell explains, means that we only see certain species as predators, based largely on how we feel about the prey they consume. After a scene-setting chapter that takes in a nocturnal bee study in Africa and a trip to the caves of Kents Cavern in south Devon, Colwell turns to explore a…
