Meet the Malaysian pentailed tree shrew: A weird little beastie that weighs 47g and drinks more alcohol than your average English lager lout
Did you know there was such an animal as the ‘pentailed tree shrew’? Well, neither did I.
It’s a weird-looking creature, I have to say but that’s not what makes this West Malaysian animal so fascinating. It’s what he does, that’s rather remarkable – which is giving your average English lager lout a good run for his money:
A tropical shrew with a taste for alcoholic nectar has been identified as the hardest-drinking creature in the world. Pentailed tree shrews have such an appetite for alcohol that each night they imbibe, weight for weight, the equivalent of a human downing up to nine glasses of wine.
Yes, traditionally, England’s associated with saint George and that silly dragon he killed – which is why a certain type of English football fan paints that stupid red cross on their faces before they drink themselves in a stupor and/or violent rage.
Maybe St George was a bad-tempered alcoholic himself, or perhaps that dragon got a bit too feisty after a few rounds of gin and tonics. So, I suppose this whole hooliganism thing could be a case of young Englishmen devoutly trying to play a game of ‘Follow the leader.’
If so, then the world would have been a much quieter and more civilised place if England had adopted the blameless (if alcoholic) pentailed tree shrew as its national symbol. At the very least, it would have made for a far more interesting national flag, of course.
Also, it’s kind of hard to imagine hordes of marauding morons, shouting ‘Eng-er-land, Eng-er-land!’, under the shrew’s superbly silly looking banner, while boasting long shrew tail scarves and waving little pointy shrew face caps.
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