Our selective engagement with nature stops humans from seeing animals clearly – and that’s not good for them or for us

One of my most annoying traits, I have been told, is my tendency to puncture others’ casual enjoyment of nature with brutal and unsolicited pieces of trivia. Chalk it up to the influence of my hobbyist herpetologist father, who instilled in me not only a passion for less cuddly animals but also a rigorous attention to the facts.

If your favourite animals are sea otters, which mate for life and hold hands so they don’t drift apart? I will inform you that they also sometimes rape baby seals to death. Oh, you prefer chimps? Have you seen that David Attenborough footage of a group of them hunting a monkey that was apparently too disturbing to broadcast with close-up detail?

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

Pyramid stage
Her voice, affected by Lyme disease, isn’t what it once was – but her country glamour and crowdpleasing impulses make for a successful legends set

Long before Shania Twain’s set on the Pyramid stage, there were signs of building anticipation in the double denim and cowboy hats – either brought from home or quickly acquired from the stalls so as to feel part of the fun. The whispers going around Worthy farm was that Twain would arrive on stage riding a horse.

As often the case with Glastonbury rumours, it proved to have only the slightest, wonkiest bit of truth: Twain’s arrival is heralded by a procession of elaborate, larger-than-life hobby horses, held aloft by a motley group of dancers and drag queens, led by a whip-cracking ringleader. The crowd dissipates to reveal Twain, swamped with pink tulle and crowned, of course, with a rhinestone-studded black cowboy hat.

Follow along for updates, pictures, reviews and more, with sets by Janelle Monáe, Steel Pulse and Kim Gordon to come, with the National and more to come

Pyramid stage, 12.30pm

This performance couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to that of the previous band to play this stage. Where Coldplay last night brought pyro, fireworks, LED wristbands, lasers, guest vocalists, Afrobeat legends, and projections of K-poppers BTS on the side of the Pyramid, blues musician Seasick Steve has a drummer, a guitarist, and a guitar made out of a Mississippi numberplate. “I made it,” he says. “It’s a piece of shit.” There is a guest star in the form of a barefoot harmonica player, but Steve barely even stands up. With Coldplay’s confetti decaying amid the woodchippings underfoot, the crowd are taken back down to earth after the intergalactic scale of the night before.

Pyramid stage
The pop balladeer brings 1980s hits Time After Time and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun to a sweltering crowd

The 80s live on in Cyndi Lauper, who takes to the Pyramid stage looking every inch the rock chick of yore in her silver bustier and matching trousers and platform trainers, beneath a blue blazer also attached with streams of icy-blue tulle. There are also fingerless net gloves.

It’s a big look, and Lauper has the energy to match it, making full use of the stage and making forays out towards the crowd. They’re here for nostalgia, as she acknowledges with her opening track, The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough, her 1985 single from the much-loved film. From there it’s on to She Bop, one of Lauper’s better-known songs, though outside the handful of classics most of the audience are baking in the mid-afternoon heat to hear.

Follow along as the action heats up at Worthy Farm with reviews, photos and more, while we look forward to Little Simz, Camila Cabello and Coldplay

Pyramid stage, 12pm

Forty minutes before Afrobeat maestro Femi Kuti begins, the crowd are already beginning to gather for the soundcheck. An a cappella run of Oyimbo, with its repeated chant “All in the name of peace”, teases the show’s narrative.

In conversation with the Guardian at the festival, Paul and Phil Hartnoll recalled their culture-changing sets of the 90s – and whether they killed off Top of the Pops

At today’s genre-bending Glastonbury, it’s hard to imagine hard lines ever being drawn between electronic and rock music. But 30 years ago, when Orbital played their first-ever Pyramid stage set, thereby inching the “indie kids” towards techno, it represented a landmark moment for the festival and for British music culture.

Brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll were reflecting on how the festival has changed – and their own part in shifting it from a traditionally rockist event to the more accommodating one today – while in conversation with the Guardian’s chief pop music critic Alexis Petridis on Saturday morning.

The first day is reaching its climax – join us as we review the best sets and bop to Pyramid stage headliner Dua Lipa

Park, 12.25pm

Just after Lynx at Park, Bishi – wearing a gold kaftan and a white feathery headdress – performs Yoko Ono’s Voice Peace for Soprano before leading the crowd in a primal scream for peace, power and whatever you fancy, really. (If collectivism isn’t your thing, she suggests it could be a warmup for Dua Lipa later on the Pyramid stage.)

He seemed like a kind man just trying to help people conceive … until his serial fertility scam was revealed. The women he duped tell all

Even when she was searching online for a sperm donor, Vanessa wanted her children to know their father. In 2015, she was 34, the right partner hadn’t come along and fertility treatment “would have bankrupted me”, she says.

A website listing dozens of Dutchmen willing to donate privately seemed to answer her prayers. Though no photographs were posted, Vanessa was drawn to one profile in particular. The man – Jonathan – wrote that he’d been inspired to sign up after friends of his had struggled to conceive. “I thought: ‘That’s nice – he wants to help’,” says Vanessa.

The London five-piece are due to have this year’s Glastonbury moment – the cherry on four years of hard work. But from accusations about their authenticity to the speed of their rise, they say success has been ‘disturbing’

The annual scramble for Glastonbury tickets is a rite of passage – and Georgia Davies is used to disappointment. “I’d been trying to get tickets for years,” she says. “It never worked.” But last year, she and her friends found a workaround. “The trick is to play it,” she says with a grin.

Davies plays bass in Britain’s most talked-about young band, the Last Dinner Party (TLDP). The baroque-pop five-piece have had a staggering rise since forming in the pandemic, fuelled by their maximalist, nihilistic debut single, Nothing Matters, released in April 2023. Two months later, they played Glastonbury’s Woodsies stage, clocking off just after noon to enjoy the rest of the festival. It was “the best feeling ever”, says the rhythm guitarist, Lizzie Mayland: the thrill of performing, plus the freedom of being a punter.