Editor's Weekly Ramblings 112

Friday 19th Aug 2005

The Zorilla - The Smelliest Animal on Earth?

Whilst doing some research for this week's Factfile section I stumbled across one of those weird facts that just rocks the world to high heaven. Namely that the Zorilla, a skunk like mammal that lives in Africa, is one of the smelliest animals on the face of the planet, with anus glands that can be smelled from a half-mile away! And although it is not particularly large or ferocious, it has few natural enemies, because it stinks so much that few animals want to come close enough to eat them. Cool!

This is the animal equivalent of eating curry every day for a month, but then refusing to change your underpants until they have literally become welded to your body. Not a very pleasant thought then; but one that I am sure that plenty of students and other creatures of the night have tested out from time to time in their quest to extend the boundaries of science.

Anyway, I now find myself torn in this ramble between saying the word 'Zorilla' 52 times outloud (just because it rolls off the tongue so sweetly). Or educating you, the baying, but clean masses, with lots of irrelevant facts, figures and general all-round interesting bunkum about the sense of smell.

The first objective takes care of itself. For the second goal, and in my never ending quest to bring you the best that the science world has to offer, I visited my local library to see what they had to say on the subject of smell. And was duly pointed in the direction of the children's library by the librarian.

The Zorilla - A Master in the Art of Smells

Actually, digressing slightly. It never fails to amaze me how often the really good stuff in a library is to be found in the children's section. And that it is almost as though us older folk (i.e. older than six) are meant to have figured out all this 'basic' stuff long before we ever encroach on the hallowed halls of the adult section. Not true say I! And the proof lies in the subject of this very ramble. The Zorilla had totally passed under my radar until this week, when he decided to emerge in all his stripy glory and amaze me.

The correct verb for this state of 'amazement' is now to have the title of being 'Zorillaed'. Which means that someone or something knocks you out with a fact or a truth that feels so new that it causes you to either radically re-adjust your attitude to life, the universe and everything. Or at the very least causes enough of an 'Ah-ha' moment, that you literally feel COMPELLED to tell at least three other people about it; because it is in, and of itself so enriching.