 Harbour Audio presents I Contain Multitudes by Ed Young Read by Charlie Anson Prologue A Trip to the Zoo Barbar does not flinch. He is unfazed by the throng of excited kids who have gathered around him. He is unperturbed by the Californian summer heat. He does not mind the cotton swabs that brush his face, body and paws. His nonchalance makes sense, for his life is safe and cushy. He lives in San Diego Zoo, wears an impregnable suit of armour and is currently curled around the waist of a zookeeper. Barbar is a white-bellied pangolin, an utterly endearing animal that looks like a cross between an anteater and a pinecone. He is about the size of a small cat. His black eyes have a dull foyer and the hair that frames his cheeks looks like unruly mutton chops. His pink face ends in a tapering toothless snout that's well adapted for slurping up ants and termites. His stocky front legs are tipped with long curved claws for ginging to tree trunks and tearing into insect nests. And he has a long tail for hanging off tree branches or friendly zookeepers. But his most distinctive features by far are his scales. His head, body, limbs and tail are covered in them. Pale orange overlapping plates that create an extremely tough defensive coat. They are made of the same material as your nails, keratin. Indeed, they look and feel a lot like fingernails, albeit large, varnished and badly chewed ones. Each one is flexibly but firmly attached to his body, so they sink down and spring back as I run my hand down his back. If I stroked him in the opposite direction, I'd probably cut myself. Many of the scales are sharp-edged. Only Barbar's face, belly and paws are unprotected. And if he chose to, he could easily defend them by rolling up into a ball. It's this ability that gives his kind their name. Pangolin comes from the Malay word penguin, meaning something that rolls up. Barbar is one of the zoo's ambassador animals, exceptionally docile and well-trained individuals who take part in public activities. Keepers frequently take him to nursing homes and children's hospitals to brighten up the days of sick people and to teach them about unusual animals. But today, he gets the day off. He just sits around the Keeper's midriff, like the world's strangest cumberbund, while Rob Knight gently dabs a cotton swab against the side of his face. This is one of the species that I've been captivated by since I was a kid, just that something like that exists, he says. Knight, a tall, lanky New Zealander with buzz-cut hair, is a scholar of microscopic life, a connoisseur of the invisible. He studies bacteria and other microscopic organisms, micro... Sample complete. Ready to continue?