In amongst the serious and sometimes scary topics bought up at Thursday's Mobile Network Security Strategies event, there were also a striking number of references to animals by speakers throughout the event.

Animals referenced included:

Humans and zombies also featured in the metaphorical menagerie whipped up at the Westin Hotel in New York City Thursday. Mobile security is a difficult and dense topic with many layers, so I suppose the animals were there to give attendees some concrete imagery -- like deer jumping over fences -- to latch onto.

Almost no one -- apart from Heavy Reading senior analyst Patrick Donegan and a couple of the people on the day's many panels -- however, talked about the elephant in the room: the continuing revelations about mobile operators in the US handing over customer data to the NSA.

It would have been interesting to see what animal references that would have dragged up.

— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading