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Life

Inside the strange world of the Museum of Ordinary Animals

A London exhibition about everyday creatures prompts oddly unsettling thoughts about the dangerous nature of humanity

By Simon Ings

1 November 2017

cats

Extraordinarily ordinary: from mummified cats (above) to dog and cow skulls (below)

UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology/Oliver Siddons

Grant Museum of Zoology, London, to 22 December

SOME animals are so familiar, we barely see them. If we think of them at all, we categorise them according to their role in our lives: as pests or food; as unthinking labourers or toy versions of ourselves. If we looked at them as animals – non-human companions riding with us on our single Earth – what would we make of…

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