Since I was a little kid, I have loved programmes about animals (and animals themselves, hence me being a vegetarian all my life) . Maybe it was the Really Wild Show, with Terry Nutkins et al, or maybe it was sitting down with my dad watching the latest Attenborough show that was on after Knightrider, but I have always been fascinated by them.

I don’t know why I didn’t become a biologist really, the idea of finding a new species always makes me excited. Something I could name, Anandus Lupus Cani or something like that. Like Napolean Dynamite, I would draw fantastical beasts in my school books, unicorns, Ligers, the works, and so when I read that new species are still being discovered, it reminded me how little we know about the world around us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2010/oct/25/new-amazon-species

Actually, I do know why I didn’t become a biologist. It would have necessitated me spending time in the jungle, the most horrific of all the earths’ habitats. Insects rule that kingdom, and everything in it wants to kill you, or sting you, or bite you, or poison you. The earth beneath your feet causes trench foot, and the air is humid and full of flying annoyances.

Of all the creatures on the earth, surely insects are the world’s bastards. Wasps especially. They are like the sociopath-fanatics of the insect world. They care for nothing like buzzing nihilists. I love the idea of people finding new types of monkey, or maybe a new antelope. But seriously, when they find a new species of beetle, all I think is , ‘Great, another six limbed bastard to be scared of’. Yeah, I am scared of insects. So what? I don’t trust that they have more than 2 eyes or four limbs. And don’t get me started on millipedes. They don’t even have an even number of limbs on each side. They aren’t even symmetrical !

I read a book recently about the Lost City of Z, an El Dorado style mythical city in the Amazon. That cemented my idea that the Amazon was actually a green hell. Why would anyone choose to live there? And why would anyone want to go there?

But that doesn’t change the fact that I am interested in crypto-zoology (extinct creatures) and also the ever expanding species set this world has. I think the very diversity of the biological world makes me think there is no God. Why would he/she/it create all these creatures? For what purpose?

Part of the Intelligent Design lobby always talk about the humming bird which is tied to an orchid, and how they are so symbiotic that it is impossible that they evolved to that point. This proves an intelligent designer, a God who created this beautiful verdant world. What they never talk about is the River Fly in Africa which survives by burrowing into the eyeball of children, blinding them, before laying its larva in there. What kind of loving God creates that?

- Anand