This was predictable. The makers of the film, March of the Penguins, resent that it has been hijacked by right-wingers and creationists.

Yesterday, days before the film’s British premiere at The Times bfi London Film Festival next week, the director hit back at the commentators he believes have wilfully misread his film. “If you want an example of monogamy, penguins are not a good choice,” Luc Jacquet told The Times. “The divorce rate in emperor penguins is 80 to 90 per cent each year,” he said. “After they see the chick is OK, most of them divorce. They change every year.”

That was plainly said in the film, too. It's a double error: it's the naturalistic fallacy, in that penguin monogamy is not an argument for human monogamy, just as the fact that penguins change mates annually is not an argument that humans should divorce annually; and it is simply wrong to claim that penguins are models of human values.

Another commentator, Andrew Coffin, wrote in the Christian publication World magazine that the complexity of the penguins’ lives was evidence of “intelligent design”, a theory developed for those who believe that life is too complex to have come about through random selection.

“It’s sad that acknowledgment of a creator is absent in the examination of such strange and wonderful animals,” he wrote. “But it is a gap easily filled by family discussion after the film.”

Mr Jacquet, who has never made a film for the cinema before, is concerned that his documentary has been hijacked. “It does annoy me to a certain degree,” he said. “For me there is no doubt about evolution. I am a scientist. The intelligent design theory is a step back to the thinking of 300 years ago. My film is not supposed to be interpreted in this way. Some scientists I know find the film interesting because it can be a good argument against intelligent design. People should not jump on these bandwagons.”

Again, it was amazing that these nitwits thought that long, dangerous treks through a frozen wilderness were signs of design. It is a kind of cruel complexity of exactly the sort that arises from unguided processes, and certainly wasn't evidence of a benevolent hand. The movie showed vividly evidence of casual death, and I don't think it was the gay baby penguins that were being selectively frozen and pecked to death by predators.