He accepted no honours or high-profile jobs, though there were rumours that he had been offered both Characteristically, he had no listing in Who’s Who. “Even though it was a tremendously healthy business when we took over,” Simon Sainsbury later said, “we were all fired by the ambition to run it better than it had ever been run before.” They succeeded. By the time his elder brother retired as chairman in 1992, the company had a turnover of £9.2bn.Simon Sainsbury’s most significant role in these years was handling the transition from a private company to a publicly listed one His job was to add the letters “plc” to “J Sainsbury”. His principal interests lay in English furniture, early English pottery and late-19th-century and early-20th-century paintings. He was a trustee of the National Gallery (1991-98) and Chairman of the Wallace Collection (1992-97), where he set in place the biggest programme of changes since the museum had opened in 1900.

In terms of capitalisation it was the biggest flotation ever mounted by the London Stock Exchange. She will then kill the first female’s young, to remove the competition and ensure that the male spends as much time as possible helping to raise her chicks.GRUBBED OUTThe caterpillar of the large blue butterfly settles beneath its food plant to await discovery by red ants (Myrmica species). By secreting hydrocarbons that mimic those made by Myrmica, the caterpillar tricks a foraging worker into taking it into the nest, where it is placed among the ant grubs. The caterpillar then moves to safer chambers, returning periodically to binge-feed on ant grubs.SLAVERY ON SIX LEGSSome ant species make slaves of others. Those in the subfamily Formicinae will go out and raid the nests of other species nearby, and steal their eggs and pupae. These are taken home, when the resulting young are raised as slaves, having to do all the foraging, cleaning and babysitting for their masters.TIME TO BALE OUTCertain species of canopy ant jump out of trees to escape being eaten. When Cephalotes atratus is approached by a predator it throws itself into the air, orientating its body to steer into a steep glide and head for the lower reaches of the tree trunk.

On average, 85 per cent of all ants that take a leap successfully land back on the tree.MARAUDING MUSSELS Mussels can be voracious cannibals. At certain times of the year, up to 70 per cent of all food eaten by the green-lipped mussel (Perna canaliculus) is the larvae of its own species.TRY THIS ON FOR SIZEUloboridae spiders wrap their victims to death. An individual small uloborid spider (Philoponella vicina) will weave more than 140 metres of silk to wrap a moth or beetle. It binds the silk shroud so tight that it compresses the prey’s body, breaking the insect’s legs, buckling its compound eyes inwards, and often killing it outright. Spiders of the family Uloboridae have lost their fangs, forcing them to evolve their vice-like death shroud.MURDEROUS MOGSIn the UK alone, domestic cats kill 57 million mammals a year, 27 million birds and 5 million reptiles and amphibians.STOP AND YOU DIESwarms of Mormon crickets (Anabrus simplex), which in the United States reach up to 10km long, keep on the move not just to find food, but to avoid being eaten by each other.

If an individual stops for any reason, it is likely to be devoured by some of the millions of its following brethren.THE HOUDINI CHALLENGEThe parasitic gordian worm (Paragordius tricuspidatus) begins its life in water before infecting the body of a larger insect host: a cricket. But the worm has a remarkable ability to survive even if its host is eaten by a larger predator. When the cricket is eaten, and partially digested, the worm escapes by burrowing through the body of the predator, usually a fish or amphibian, until it emerges unscathed in the water, where it continues its life cycle.WOULD YOU LIKE EYES WITH THAT?Animals usually swallow using their tongue and throat The northern leopard frog (Rana pipiens) uses its eyes. To swallow food such as a small cricket, it closes its eyes and retracts its eyeball into its body. These push into the pharynx and against the prey item, and regular retractions help force the food to the back of the oesophagus.THE BIG CELLThe yolk in an unfertilised ostrich’s egg is the largest single cell found in nature.WE’RE JUST DOWNSIZINGThe Galapagos marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus), the only sea-going lizard, is also the only vertebrate known to shrink in body size regularly when adult, and then to grow larger again. The iguanas shrink up to 15 per cent in body length during El Ni?eather events, losing bone mass.