鈥淲e could be forgiven if we start busily searching for Hindu priests to bless our cattle sheds. The ruling could set disease control in Britain back by 70 years.鈥�
Evan Thomas of the National Farmers Union of Wales on a ruling sparing Shambo, a sacred bullock in a Welsh Hindu temple, from being slaughtered, despite having TB (The Guardian, London, 17 July)
鈥淭hey move about with their trunks right on the ground, and it could be that they pick up the scent in this way.鈥�
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Biologist Ian Whyte at the Kruger National Park in South Africa, on how elephants in Angola are no longer getting their legs blown off by landmines, possibly because they can sniff them out (National Geographic News, 16 July)
鈥淚t was delicious.鈥�
A villager in Papua New Guinea describing the taste of an Attenborough鈥檚 long-beaked echidna. His testimony is evidence that the echidna 鈥� a primitive, egg-laying mammal 鈥� has not yet been driven to extinction (The Times, London, 16 July)
鈥淚n our country we are used to nonsense like this.鈥�
Kevin Padian of the University of California, Berkeley, responding to the appearance of the first books promoting an Islamic creationist agenda (The New York Times, 17 July)
鈥淲e were able to tie the energetic costs in chimps to their anatomy.鈥�
David Raichlen of the University of Arizona on a comparison of the energy expended by chimps and humans on a treadmill. The finding shows that a two-legged gait is 75 per cent more economical than knuckle-walking on all fours, supporting the idea that bipedalism evolved to allow our ancestors to move around more efficiently (The Independent, London, 17 July)