Word To Use Today: zorilla.

A zorilla is a cousin of the weasel.

Unfortunately it's the sort of cousin even a weasel might try to avoid, because a zorilla is the smelliest animal in the world.

Its pong is so powerful that one has been observed holding nine lions at bay while it scavenged their kill.

In fact, even people with quite small noses can sniff its whiff over a thousand metres away.

Zorillas hunt at night, catching small rodents and reptiles (yum!) and even if a zorilla happens to meet a nasally-challenged hyena or something it can still avoid being eaten by either climbing a tree, or playing dead.

Zorillas live in the grasslands of Africa, almost always alone (its habit of squirting foul-smelling liquid out of its bottom at visitors might explain this).

Makes me feel quite smug to be human, really.

Word To Use Today: zorilla. This word is from the Spanish zorro, which means fox: though of course a zorilla isn't a fox at all, but a weaselly thing.

I admit zorilla is a word unlikely to be of great use in most people's day-to-day lives; but then perhaps we should be grateful for small mercies.

It's good to have a rhyme for gorilla, anyway.