NATURE'S BAD GUYS

Ciaran Sneddon meets the greatest “villains” of the animal world.

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Animals often appear in books and films as heroes and villains. While the heroes are generally cute herbivores (plant-eaters), some animals always seem to be cast as the villain. Often the bad guys are predators or creepy crawlies – terrifying bears, sharp-toothed tigers or giant spiders. The Bad Guys 2, which hits cinemas in August, features some famously wicked animals, so we thought this was the perfect opportunity to meet some of the “world's worst” – and also to ask: is it time to treat them as the heroes of their own stories?

What big teeth you have...

Many of the animals that regularly appear as villains are those that are dangerous to humans. Take bears, for example. While there are some friendly exceptions, such as The Jungle Book's Baloo or even Winnie-the-Pooh, evil bears rampage through Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series and Disney's Brave. Is it fair that bears are treated as the baddies, simply because they eat meat?

In the wild, apex predators (animals that hunt other species but aren't hunted themselves) play an important role in keeping habitats balanced. For example, without bears and wolves, deer populations in parts of the US would soon get out of control. With more hungry deer around, plants and trees start to suffer, becoming overgrazed and destroying the habitats of other animals living there.

It is similar with other large predators, including big cats. Shere Khan – a Bengal tiger from