“SURELY THIS DOESN’T ACTUALLY EXIST?” thought my nine-year-old self. I was at primary school, head down in an assignment to research and write about ‘an animal in which we were particularly interested’.
At nine, I was interested in nothing besides Pokémon, and that duly formed the basis of my research. I was going to study an animal as close to a Pokémon character as possible, and I knew exactly which one: the cute, charming, ‘fire-type’ known as Charmander. That was how I came to find myself searching for images of giant salamanders – enormous, lizard-like amphibians with long bodies and short limbs, which I was convinced were actually Charmanders deep down. They were the strangest and most captivating creatures I had ever seen.
From my research, I concluded that ‘my’ Charmander lived in Japan, though back then I had no idea where Japan was. I printed out my pictures and presented them to my class, but nobody – not even the teacher – believed that something so prehistoric in appearance could still be inhabiting the Earth.
IFTEEN YEARS ON AND
