He provides Gerry with a number of books and tools (microscopes, slides, chemicals for preserving specimens) that help Gerry learn more about the natural world. One of Gerry's greatest friends on the island is Theodore, an esteemed scientist who treats Gerry as though he's an adult and knowledgeable in his own right. Gerry's love of the natural world is trying for the rest of his family, and Larry in particular takes issue with Gerry's passion and does his best to try to introduce Gerry to great literature, though he experiences little success. For example, Roger, the family dog, is often described as being almost human, and Gerry goes to great lengths to describe animals' personalities, tics, and preferences. He regularly anthropomorphizes the animals he observes and spends time with. Gerry spends most of the novel acquiring exotic pets, either by capturing them himself or purchasing them from the Rose-Beetle Man. However, his tutors recognize that Gerry latches onto subjects when they insert a zoological flair to the lesson.

Gerry has a distinctly negative view of education he sees educational pursuits that have little or nothing to do with science as boring and unproductive. To this end, he spends most of his time in Corfu observing the plant and animal life in his family's gardens and around the island, and he spends a great deal of his narration detailing his discoveries for the reader.

Because he's the youngest Durrell child by almost a decade, he occupies a liminal space between child and adult, and his primary interests are biology, botany, and the care of animals. Gerry's youth means that he's the first member of the family to learn Greek, and he adapts to many of the local customs, such as bathing in the sea instead of in indoor bathrooms. Gerry is the narrator of the novel he's ten years old when his family moves to Corfu, a Greek island.

My family and other animals setting