Boys and dinosaurs

Why do children love dinosaurs? What it is that makes extinct, prehistoric reptiles so appealing?

As I have two sons and have no intention of having any more children, I must acknowledge that the whole experience of becoming a parent is now highly unlikely to change the fact I lived with long prior to parenthood – that I don't know much about girls.

But I do know about boys. I used to be one. I went to school with a lot of them. And now there are two living in my house, who clearly expect me to induct them into the mysteries of 21^st century British manhood.

Boys love dinosaurs. And one day, Roger Jr is almost certain to turn to me and say: "Daddy, what is it that makes dinosaurs so awesome?"

Roger Jr is at the point where he loves dinosaurs in an undifferentiated way. They are brightly coloured, they go "RAAAARGH!" and they share many of the thrilling characteristics of that equally undifferentiated archetype – the monster.

The next step in Roger Jr's relationship with dinosaurs will undoubtedly be the pedantic phase. He will learn an encyclopaedic quantity of information about dinosaur taxonomy, anatomy and chronology. I am just waiting to be told "No Daddy, stegosaurus lived in the Late Jurassic period and tyrannosaurus rex in the Upper Cretaceous – separated by a minimum of 78 million years – so it they cannot have a water fight in the bath."

After this period, for most boys, obsession with dinosaurs dwindles and transfers on to something else – obsession with football, dungeons and dragons, sex or bullying others.

There is a clear cut-off point at which a passion for sauropods ceases to be socially respectable.

When I was in the sixth form at secondary school (correct me if this is also historically inaccurate, dear readers – I might have got the year wrong) a new first year pupil started a "dinosaur club". It was possibly one of the single most universally ridiculed actions I can remember throughout my whole school career. He was 11.

No, around this age, specialisation in dinosaur trivia becomes scorned as nerdish. Part of that, at least, must be due to the level of technical accuracy accessible to an 11-year-old. Whereas Roger Jr is likely to tell me that a particular dinosaur doesn't go "RAAARGH!", in fact it goes "RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGH!!!!", being told by someone who could in principle be working for a living that what you thought was a velociraptor, in fact is an oviraptor, is just plain irritating. And it rightly attracts scorn.

If the phase goes on for too long, they will have no choice but to become palaeontologists, and spend their lives in the desert gently wiping huge rocks with small brushes and getting excited by shale.

Of course, some people return to dinosaur love "ironically" or have their interest genuinely rekindled through popular fiction mediums, like the BBC's "Walking with Dinosaurs".

Technologically impressive as that series was, I remain convinced that it was largely bollocks.

OK, maybe you can infer that triceratops mothers looked after triceratops babies because you've found their bones together. Fair enough. But I challenge you to produce any evidence that they nuzzled each other lovingly, that baby triceratops made cute squeaky noises, or that mummy triceratops looked around anxiously for the littlest baby one when a couple of chavvy allosauruses showed up, wearing hoods, drinking cans of lager, and hanging around outside the corner shop sitting on their miniature BMXes.*

Indeed, why do we assume that dinosaurs went "RAAARGH!" at all? I have yet to see a modern reptile that makes any kind of noise above a hiss or a creak.

Most reptiles just sit there doing nothing for 90 per cent of the time. Is it not reasonable to assume that dinosaurs were the same? That tyrannosaurus rex actually spent most of its time sat on a big tree stump, occasionally swivelling one eye – before every so often charging unprovoked to another spot where it sat motionless for several more hours? That brontosaurus spent the best part of its days chewing lettuce, before being put in a box in the airing cupboard for six months of the year?

So why, if dinosaurs were in fact quite rubbish in most respects (as I believe I have conclusively proven in the last paragraph), are all dead, and are in the adult world the preserve of the worst kind of Tony Robinson-alikes, do boys love them?

I can only conclude that it is because they are brightly coloured, they go "RAAAARGH!" and to a two-year-old, these things are AWESOME.

* Again, triceratops lived in the Upper Cretaceous and allosaurus in the Late Jurassic, putting tens of millions of years between the former's genesis and the latter's extinction. This scenario, is therefore, absurd. The picture above, likewise.