Like most of our ape ancestors, we have really had only one response to the fall of night. We have stretched and yawned, we have climbed upwards, we’ve lain down somewhere soft, closed our eyes and shut the whole thing out until morning. Humans may have exchanged tree trunks for a set of stairs, and bunches of green leaves for sprung mattresses, but the same basic reflex has been ongoing among large primates for four million years.
The new exhibition at the Natural History Museum, Life in the Dark, reveals to us a little of what and who we have been missing as a result of our diurnal bias. Not surprisingly, it turns out that night-time is peopled with creatures that we find scary. The show includes some of our favourite cast members from the horror genre: sharks, snakes, vampire bats — even vampire squid — scorpions, giant cockroaches and whip spiders.
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