SAMA HOOLE: A golden eagle on a hare goes straight through to the heart and liver and leaves the back legs for the fox.

Across every ocean and continent the first mouthful goes to the fat, the organs and the marrow, and none of them learnt it from anybody. --Sama Hoole.

A lion opens a zebra at the belly and eats the stomach, liver and intestines while the hindquarters are still warm and untouched beside it. A leopard drags a kill up a tree with its teeth, and the first thing it takes in the branches is the innards. A pack of wild dogs tears the belly open on the run and the organs are gone before the animal has stopped kicking. A house cat brings a mouse in and eats the head. The brain, the eyes, the fat behind them. The body is left on the mat as a gift. A raven lands on a dead sheep and takes the eyes and the tongue, the two softest, fattiest things on the carcass, and leaves the rest to whatever comes after it. A golden eagle on a hare goes straight through to the heart and liver and leaves the back legs for the fox. A tiger starts at the rump and works into the body cavity, and a wolf pack opens the chest for the heart and lungs before anybody touches a ham. A Greenland shark is pulled up with a stomach full of seal blubber and not a shred of seal muscle. Across every ocean and continent the first mouthful goes to the fat, the organs and the marrow, and none of them learnt it from anybody. Then there is you, with a stomach as acid as a vulture's, a gallbladder sitting primed under your liver, and two million years of ancestors who walked miles to a carcass for the parts nothing else could open. You order the turkey breast. You pay extra for the mince with the fat taken out. You lift the skin off the salmon with a fork and push it to the side of the plate like a bone. You carve the fat off a sirloin with the care of a man defusing a bomb, then leave it on the rim for the waiter. You drain the dripping off the roast and down the sink, and the Sunday fat goes to the drains instead of the family. Then you buy collagen powder, fish oil capsules and a vitamin A tablet to put back a fraction of what you just scraped into the bin.

Every creature on that list, shown your plate, would assume a bigger animal had eaten first.