"What's the strangest thing you've eaten?

We tried giant anteater once. It wasn't very good. It started tasting like formic acid after a few bites. I've eaten a large number of different kinds of bats. Once we ran out of food in northern Peru, and we ate whatever we could get our hands on, including palm weevils. The grubs are about two inches long and maybe half an inch in diameter, and they are just wonderfully good, particularly when you're hungry. They are somewhat like chestnuts if you eat them alive, but if you fry them they taste a bit like melted cheese.

Is there anything you've refused to eat?

On our first trip to the Amazon we were living with an Indian group out in eastern Peru called the Cashínáwa. We were invited over to a neighbour's house for dinner that night and they'd just returned from a long hunting trip and they'd brought back some smoked monkeys. But smoking only does a partial job of curing the meat. And in order to eat what they served us you had to pick off the living maggots, which was not very pleasant. But we were obliged to at least make the effort because this was a delicacy and we were in a foreign household being offered the best. That was tough."

Adventures with rats