Animals
Our Disturbed Relationship with Pets and Wildlife
| Animals
Our Disturbed Relationship with Pets and Wildlife |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Literature, from the Bible to Lolita, is all about us and our interaction with the world around us.
When we speak of our life, we usually forget that we are just the current tip of an evolutionary process.
The problem is, that we misinterpret man's evolutionary benefit to his home planet and overestimate our cosmic importance.
Somebody once wrote "Thank you God, for giving me the beautiful face of humanity".
When I read this evidence of self-admiration, uttered by one animal that thinks itself made in the image of the creator of the universe, I see armies slaughtering women and their children. God must be very proud indeed.
In our languages, the part of our character that we recognise as reproachable, is defined as "beastly". The devil himself is sometimes associated with "The Beast" .Animals defending their offspring against our killing instict are vile monsters.
Countless popular names of animals are used in our day-to-day colloquialisms as degrading words:
Pig, dog, rat, snake, ass ....
Homo sapiens being more violent than other animals, why aren't "man" or "human" used instead as derogative cursewords?
I can think of no animal even approaching the level of "beastliness" that humans effortlessly manage.
But we do love animal babies; at least those that remind us of our own.
The more humanoid an animal appears to us, the more we like it, especially if it can be made to walk on two legs.
That leaves spiders and snakes at the end of the scale.
In cartoons, animals are completely humanised.
We find it amusing or endearing, when ducks wear human clothes, rabbits walk on their hind legs or deer speak in human language.
The most humanised animal is Man's Best Friend.
He can be made into an animal surrogate that obeys by learning to interpret the sound of his master' voice into various orders.
We delight in a dog behaving like a human servant. Sometimes we even put them into clothes, despite their fur.
Will we ever learn to respect life in its pure original form instead of looking for the "human" part in animals?
Two neighbours can't stand eachother. Whenever they meet, a quarrel erupts.
They are "like cat and dog", we used to call the attitude. Derogative to the animals again.
Meanwhile, one often hears of exeptions to the rule. Pictures showing real cats, gently rubbing against a much larger real dog's legs, cubs being fostered by a cat mother.
Both species are house-pets, meant to replace man's lost access to the wild animals that he has displaced.
But the true reason why cats or dogs are kept in our homes, is that we simply love to caress them Dogs and cats not only demonstrate widely different traits of character and patterns of behaviour, they also convey a lot of information about the nature of their "owners".
- Dogs are loved by machos, commanders, sovereigns, who prefer to see animals as small, obedient people.
- Cats are more suitable for keepers who can accept animals with a strong will of their own.
A cat may recognise the alpha animal in its keeper, but will always consider itself the owner of its surroundings.
The dog has been made much more dependent on humans than the cat.
It can't even get rid of its excrements on our territory. A dog can't find the toilet without accompaniment. But it has learned to sit and beg on command. ("He understands every word I say".
Cat will take themselves walking. As a rule, the female cat will dig-in her faeces and even cover them up. And no human ever ordered her to do so.
In contrast to dogs, all attempts to make a pussy into anything else than a cat are bound to fail. If it dislikes somebody, the cat will avoid human contact whenever possible.
If we try to make it understand that sharpening claws on the sofa is bad, we meet with sheer disdain.
To me, people who display a will of their own, are more engaging than individuals who need someone else to show them what to do next.
That is why I sympathise a bit more with cats than with dogs, but I definitely prefer cat- keepers to dog-kepers.
After all, I want an animal in my house, not a product of civilisation, educated to be similar to me.
Inheritary stability in cats appears to be stronger than that of dogs.
Man's endeavours to breed dogs in accordance with his concept of beauty, has resulted in the most grotesque aberrations.
Think of the success Chinese fish breeders had centuries ago, when they mutated the goldfish into the veiled carp. An unfortunate creature, hampered while swimming, by its oversized pectorals and tail fin.
In contrast, even a beauty-contest puss is still easily identified as a member of the cat family.
"
Often when the media mention "animals", what they refer to are pets and farm animals.
I prefer a strict distinction of terms between these domesticated animals, who need us and the so-called "wild" animals, who need us - to stay away.
Protecting wildlife requires our care about as much as a rain forest requires a forest ranger.
Animals are best protected by the absence of man.
A good example in this context are the islands of Galápagos.
One hundred years of freedom from poaching whalers and pirates were enough to make most wildlife there decrease their specific distance of flight down to zero.
But now they are again in danger from man and the foreign species he introduces.
Tourism is fine to make people understand evolution and the need for natural parks.
But if the mass of tourists continues to increase along with the locals attracted by it, tourism will destroy the very subject of its presence.
In Kenya's national parks I learned in 1966, that one can closely approach many wild animals if one remains inside the vehicle.
However, leave the car or just open the door and a reaction sets in:
According to the prevailing situation the animals find themselves in, they will resort to flight or attack.
In other words:
Wildlife park animals see the iron monster as a harmless phenomenon.
Their distance of flight is much closer towards a vehicle than towards the animals that may emerge from it.
Even though the linearly moving, loud phenomenon is much larger, it is less feared than the humans, who are instantly recognised by experience as deadly.
Park animals can have been familiar with motor vehicles for not more than a few decades.
Despite that short history of identification, cars can approach animals much closer than men.
Thus, if man had not pointed his weapons on wildlife for at least sixty years, peaceful coexistence with animals in open nature could well be a reality rather than part of the myth of "paradise".
