From the archive: what geese can teach us, 1966

Animal behaviour expert Konrad Lorenz explains why it is man who is red in tooth and claw

You can see why the goslings on the cover of the Observer Magazine of 1 May 1966 took Konrad Lorenz (‘the world authority on animal behaviour’) to be their parent – with his feathery white hair he could pass for a goose himself. In fact, the geese have a ‘fixed idea’ that his hair is grass, which is why they are trying to eat it.

By a lake at the Max Planck Institute near Munich, John Davy talked to Lorenz about what humans can learn from animals, particularly when it came to aggression. The piece began by saying that ‘It is man, not nature, who is red in tooth and claw,’ and that between 1820 and 1945 humans killed 59 million fellow humans in ‘wars, murderous attacks, and other deadly quarrels’. Goose on goose deaths weren’t cited, but you get the idea.

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