An elephant seal: the nose does something no nose should do | Helen Sullivan

It shudders

The writer Jenny Diski is on her way to Antarctica. At Grytviken, an abandoned whaling station on South Georgia, she spots a grey, jellied mountain".

Elephant seal is one of those euphemistic names humans give creatures who remind them of what they don't want to be reminded of," she writes. But her fellow travellers want to be reminded: they take pictures. Maybe the elephant seal will get a spot on someone's wall. It will be the first time in history that a person has chosen to decorate using that face.