Benjamin Mee
Benjamin Mee, a former bricklayer and decorator, returned to education in his early twenties in order to investigate animal intelligence. Ben studied psychology at UCL and wrote his dissertation on dolphin intelligence, after which his first article appeared in the Independent, while he was a student on the MSc in Science Journalism at Imperial College.
As the world preferred articles on health and DIY, Ben subsequently made his living as a contributing editor to Men’s Health magazine on the former subject, and as a Guardian columnist on the latter, until commissioned by Penguin to write a book on the Evolution of Humour in Man and Animals. It was whilst living in France and writing this book that the Dartmoor Zoological Park came up for sale…
Ben currently divides his time between running the busy zoo and raising his two children, Ella and Milo.
“You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.”
“And for once, Donald Rumsfeld, in the news at the time over the Iraq war made sense to me: "As we know," he said, famously, "there are known knowns-things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns-things we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns- things we don't know we don't know.”