Dinosaur Propaganda

I’m going to become a Dad this year. Even typing that onto the page, it still doesn’t feel real, but it’s happening, and I’m excited, nervous, and experiencing pretty much all the other emotions rolled into one.

When you enter new phases of your life, I've come to realise your field of vision can be dramatically altered, sometimes gradually and sometimes suddenly.

One that falls more into the 'gradual' category was when I first started training as an ecologist after finishing university and began to focus on learning the plants and animals of the UK in detail.

As you start to identify plants and animals and their traits and behaviours, everything around you starts to become slightly clearer. Previously, I would walk through a woodland, and my field of vision would just be a blur of green and brown stuff, ‘nature’ or ‘the outdoors’. Gradually, over time, this blur sharpened; those indiscriminate plants on the floor were now wild garlic, wood sorrel, and dog's mercury, telling an immediate story that this woodland had been around a while and was probably worth paying attention to.

It sort of feels like the first time you put on glasses after not realising you’ve needed them for years, or switching to the HD channel on the TV (although maddeningly, my parents swear they can’t tell the difference!).

This, of course, has its downsides, as now I despair when I see invasive species on every single road verge and railway embankment, or when I see green fields with only 3 or 4 wildflower species in them. Sometimes I actually envy those who just see the countryside in SD and not HD, but clearly, this is not a good thing and one of the reasons, with shifting baseline syndrome, we struggle to get many of the general public to understand the scale of biodiversity loss. And why we are still having confused arguments about building on the sacred greenbelt in the UK despite the fact it is actually a green desert.

When I found out I was going to be a father of a tiny and then eventually much larger human, I had a similar moment of perspective shift, but this time it was an instant shift. As soon as that news dropped, all of a sudden, there were prams and children literally everywhere. Walking through the supermarket suddenly felt like being in a baby transport showroom. Before, I assume I was just darting and weaving between a blur of trolleys and prams, with the only thing in clear focus being the 16-inch pizza at the end of the aisle.

I’m not annoyed; I’m actually fascinated by it all, the gadgets and gizmos parents are sporting to try and make their parenting lives a little easier. From slings to carry them on your front to battery-powered rockets you attach to a pram so it rocks the little one back to sleep without you lifting a finger. A whole industry I was unaware of and am now, of course, being bombarded by targeted ads left, right, and centre.

One thing I have noticed above all else, though, is the dinosaur propaganda. Everywhere I look, there is a babygrow covered in cartoon stegosauruses, a cap with a T-rex, or entire events with huge animatronic recreations of these extinct reptiles.

How has something that has been extinct for millions of years still captured the imagination of every child so well? This has to be the biggest brainwashing exercise since big oil set out to convince people climate change wasn’t real.

I have started to wonder, who the hell is behind this powerful dinosaur lobby?

I then thought back to my own childhood and remembered I, too, was weirdly obsessed with these creatures. From collecting toys to watching the, at the time, groundbreaking show Walking With Dinosaurs, I too was captivated.

So, I started bringing this up with existing parents, asking, ‘Are your children into dinosaurs?’ and the answer was almost always a yes. When I asked why they thought this was, the response was along the lines of, ‘Well, they are fascinating creatures, huge reptiles, it just captures our kids’ imagination.

This is a fair statement; they are (were) fascinating….but there are endless examples of fascinating creatures on this planet right now that are ALIVE. The mad thing is, many of them are at risk of extinction themselves!

A part of me wonders if it is only when animals go extinct that they become interesting to the majority. Who cares about plants and animals that are living by our side, but as soon as they are all dead, they get a new air of cool akin to a rockstar who died in his or her prime.

So, this has left me wondering, is this actually true, or is this a weird self-perpetuating mess of our own society’s creation?

It makes sense: lots of dinosaur merchandise in the world, children are bought and buy said merch, and their love for them grows…they demand more, and companies make more dinosaur-related stuff, and the propaganda grows stronger until we reach where we are now….peak dinosaur.

I can think of hundreds of animals that are just as interesting, if not more so, than dinosaurs. I mean pretty much all insects, for one, which have weird adaptations that feel like the stuff of science fiction. Consider the mimic octopus, which can imitate numerous marine species, or the axolotl, a salamander capable of regenerating limbs. The pistol shrimp creates underwater shockwaves with its claw, and the dragonfly exhibits unmatched aerial agility ad 460 degree vision. Don't even get me started on tiny tardigrades that can survive the vacuum of space!

In fact, we even have crocodiles and alligators which are effectively living dinosaurs, but even they don’t make it onto half as many pairs of pyjamas.

So, this is a rallying cry to all parents and parents-to-be out there. Don’t let the dinosaur lobby win. Push back and champion living animals whilst we still have them. Seek out the weird and wonderful and show that to children who will one day be in charge of protecting them, either directly or indirectly through their actions.

There are lots of people championing this cause, and great books being produced by the likes of… which do just this. Sorry dinosaurs, but you’ve had your time. It’s time for us to focus on the present ??.