In Iraq they like nothing better than lopping a sheep’s head clean off, cooking it for a bit and then bunging it on a plate with a couple of bits of shitty sausage and some egg. As a treat, most eateries will cut the eyes out of the head for you before serving. Apparently, the best parts are the cheeks and the tongue.

Dogs are well thought of in China. Their owners like to show them off, but not in a Crufts sort of way. They keep them in cages outside restaurants to show their meat is fresh. Then they slaughter them, to order. And serve them up on plates. People in Peixian (the nucleus of the dog-eating region of China) start their day with hot soy milk and oily chunks of red dog wrapped in a pita-like flat bread. Apparently, all species taste pretty much the same.

Skuon, a place in Cambodia, hasn’t discovered Pot Noodle yet. They prefer to eat poisonous spiders. Tarantulas in fact. Apparently, they are best plucked straight from the burrow and pan fried with a bit of garlic and salt. The locals describe them as “like a scrawny chicken with gooey innards”. Which not only sounds disgusting, but also reminds us of a girl we once dated.

The Filipino equivalent of a Big Mac, Baluts are kind of ace, but in a very Oriental, quite depressing way. Fertilised chicken or duck eggs are boiled just before they’re about to hatch and then served up to baying customers who slurp down on a nice juicy yoke and get a tasty bit of chicken to boot. A cruel double-whammy.

According to those experimental types in China, eating cat is good for the libido (just thinking about it makes our pants move) and is best consumed in winter (perhaps the fur keeps your throat warm?). Eight out of ten owners apparently prefer theirs grilled and dipped in soy sauce (the other two pan-fry).

Iceland is a cruel yet resourceful little place. They have large colonies of puffins there. And they eat them. They catch the low-flying critters in big Scooby-Doo nets, break their necks, skin them and then devour their fresh hearts raw. Seriously. How excellent is that? Even Freddie Starr would be proud. (FYI: The meat is like duck, but fishier.)

The film Jaws didn’t scare Icelanders, it just made them hungry. They even eat a poisonous variety, called Hakarl. First they wash and gut their prey, then they bury it in gravel for six weeks, dig it up, air cure it for two sweet months, cut off the thick brown crust that’s formed around it and then gobble it down in a frenzy with loads of Schnapps.

Not considered the least bit unpleasant in (you guessed it) China, “household deer” meat costs four times more than chicken and twice as much as beef, and is generally considered to be something of a delicacy. As far as taste goes, what little meat there actually is bears little comparison to anything else. According to the food critic in a non-existent Chinese magazine, “rat just tastes like rat”.

Surely watching them eat stuff is bad enough without resorting to eating the fuckers yourself? Specialized restaurants in Shanghai serve snake dishes made with pit vipers, cobras, freshwater snakes and sea snakes. The Flying Dragon Snake Farm in Panyu even serves snake semen liqueur, which is apparently "good for a person with a weak body". We’ll stick to the Guinness.

Sometimes when we’re mad thirsty we patrol a lake near us and stare the cute little ducklings’ necks, gently drooling out the corner of our slack, vampyric mouths. Then we usually get arrested. Have you ever wondered what a duck’s blood tastes like? Well, in north Vietnam they sprinkle it with peanuts and slurp it for breakfast. And if they don’t have it for breakfast, they have it in the evening with beer. The point being: they have it. Regularly.