Bizarre Guardian FunSponge Animal Rant

I was whizzing through the Guardian’s “comment is free” section – the professional version of the Southern Suburbs Tatler letters page – when I saw this story:

guard

It’s an image that does, admittedly, pose a number of questions.
What do you see? Is that really a grimace, or is a grin?
But enough about the Dad; what about the horse?
Do you see a photobombing mare, or do you see a distressed equine, longing for sweet, merciful death?

Writer and all round black hole for any sort of joy or happiness, Catherine Shoard, has no doubts:

I’ve barely fed a horse carrots, let alone sat on one, but even I can see in her face a combination of anger, hunger and confusion, rather than the larky desire to promote some lols on Instagram.

Yep. That’s probably it, Dr Doolittle.

The whole article reads like some sort of grave warning of the end of days and the downfall of society should we “continue to” take pictures of, or poke fun at, animals. It also reads as a gigantic pisstake, and – much like my reaction to the horse photo above – I’m rather confused as to what is actually going on.

According to Catherine, it’s all to do with us becoming more “species-ist” “as the planet warms”. Right.

I’ll give this another read this evening once I’m home have publicly ridiculed the beagle.

UPDATE: And then, this morning, an unsolicited tweet from a guy who blocked me immediately afterwards:

Fullscreen capture 2016-02-05 111531 AM.bmp

Oh yeah? What credibility would that be, Pieter?