read in tooth and claw

When I was young, my folks used to read bedtime stories from Character Sketches, a book that gleans pithy lessons from animal tales juxtaposed with Bible stories. It might encourage its young reader to be as tenacious as the wolverine, or, as in the classic proverb, as industrious as the ant.

I wasn't yet clever enough to wonder why the book didn't mention the spouse-chomping virtues of the praying mantis, or the relative laziness of tapeworms and leeches and remoras. But since arguments about morality often refer to what is "natural" or "unnatural," such selective gathering is to be understood, though not forgiven. (Character Sketches is hardly unique in the world of inspirational animal hoo-ha.)

Animals are cunning, stupid, powerful, helpless, beautiful, gross. Dear children, remember the loggerhead shrike, which never plays with its food. Or the common house cat, which does. Emulate the swan's mythical monogamy. Or the bonobo's bacchanalian polygynandry.

And whatever you do, check out the Animal Diversity Web, a fantabulous resource. Read from the book of Nature--but don't go looking for a moral.