Women of the BBC should heed lesson of the angler fish

One side in the BBC’S gender pay war could take heart from Super Small Animals last night. We heard how the female anglerfish can be up to half a million times heavier than the male. Not only that, once a male finds a female, he literally has to cling on for the rest of his days, waiting for her to feel the need to reproduce. Obviously I’m not suggesting the women at the BBC take things that far. It was an interesting lesson in evolution though.

It wasn’t the only fascinating discovery on this one-off BBC1 documentary, either.

That said, I was a bit disappointed Patrick Aryee’s item on “creatures punching way above their weight” didn’t feature footage of the likes of Piers Morgan, Rod Stewart and Donald Trump with their wives.

We did meet my new favourite animal though. The honey badger. Videos of this small predator have had over 80 million views online – although given that name that figure may include a few mistypes. Honey badgers prowl Africa and southwest Asia picking fights with massive lions – and it’s hilarious to watch. You can just imagine the lions going “Leave it, Simba, he’s not worth it.” Turns out the honey badger is more of a weasel, and we met some other weasels thanks to wildlife artist Robert Fuller rigging his garden with 30 fixed cameras. “So it’s a bit like weasel Big Brother,” suggested Patrick. No, Pat. Weasel Big Brother is on C5 right now.