Wild animals are great gift givers – and there’s one present in particular I’d love to receive for Christmas | Helen Pilcher

By Helen Pilcher · The Guardian Opinion

Penguins hand over pebbles; scorpionflies give spitballs. But I’m hankering after a sea sponge presented by a dolphin This Christmas morning, are you worried you didn’t choose quite the right gift for that someone special? I always try my hardest, but everywhere I turn I’m bombarded with unhelpful suggestions. No, I don’t want a candle that smells like turkey , because, well, we’ll be cooking turkey. Nor do I want a sunrise alarm clock that mimics natural light, because I can leave the curtains open. And I definitely don’t want a salmon DNA pink collagen jelly mask (Good Housekeeping’s Best for Beauty Lovers ), because said DNA comes from milt. AKA semen. If I wanted fish sperm on my face, I would tickle some pollocks. So if, like me, you’re always looking for inspiration, my advice is: learn from the animal kingdom. Humans didn’t invent gifting. The practice has been around for at least 100m years , long before our species evolved. With a little help from natural selection, this has given wild animals ample time to perfect the art of giving. Hell, some spiders even gift-wrap ! Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-Extinction Continue reading...