In “Mice in the Sink”, an essay exploring empathy in non-human animals, Jessica Pierce leads off with a provocative incident witnessed by CeAnn Lambert, head of the Indiana Coyote Rescue Center. Lambert found two baby mice, exhausted and terrified, trapped in the sink in her garage. She set a bowl of water in the sink. One mouse drank immediately, but the other was too weak to traverse the short distance to the bowl. The stronger mouse, however, devised an ingenious way to help the weaker one. It moved the piece of meat Lambert had also put in the sink close enough to the second mouse so that the latter could nibble it. When it had done so, the stronger mouse moved it closer to the water until it took another bite. Step by step, it led its weakened partner to the water to drink. By the time Lambert placed a board against the sink wall, both mice were strong enough to scurry up it. In her essay in the latest issue of Environmental Philosophy, Pierce calls this an example of heroism. What would you call it?
Here is an experience related by a woman who made a career of taking in injured bats and rehabilitating them in Eugene, Oregon. She was affectionately termed the “Bat Lady” by the school children whose classrooms she visited. She relates how she was cleaning the wounds of an injured bat-an obviously painful process. As she began to work on a severely injured bat that was struggling in fear and panic, there was another bat in the room who had undergone the same treatment and was now healed. As the new bat began to fight, the veteran bat made a sound. Instantly the newly injured bat become perfectly still and let the human handle it in any way she chose.
If we recognized that there is a place in the animal brain that is linked to empathetic reaction, as Pierce details in her article, perhaps it would change factory farming techniques that radically harm the health of ourselves and our environment together. Caging chickens so close together they practice cannibalism and restraining cows in such crowded conditions and filth they need daily antibiotics not to succumb to disease are two practices I am thinking of.
Indeed, ever since Francis Bacon, the purported father of modern science, stated that the wily scientist ought to “pin nature to the experimental board to torture her secrets from her” (language he got from the witch trials current at the time), experimentation on natural creatures has been licensed by the idea that nothing else in the world feels anything but us. At least other natural life does not feel anything deserving of our consideration, that is. That’s what doctors used to say when they circumcised male babies without anesthetic: their brains weren’t developed enough yet to feel the pain.
If we accepted the fact that animals of all brain sizes not only feel pain, but feel the pain of others, we’d have to revise Herbert Spencer’s misuse of the idea of Darwinism as the struggle in which only the “winners” survive. We’d have to go back to Darwin’s original sense of things, which emphasized cooperation rather than competition in the development of interdependent natural systems over time.
Evidence of this type is all around us– if we give up our sense of privilege in our work with other natural creatures– as do the scientists writing in Linda Hogan’s, Intimate Nature. Jane Goodall had an ongoing struggle with her scientific peers, who argued that her naming the animals she worked with made for “subjective” results they could thereby dismiss. She argued that good science takes all our senses: including empathy. This does not mean that the animals she studied lived an idyllic existence– though they have much to teach us. She found among her chimpanzees individuals who acted on their community mates with compassion and altruism, and others who acted with hostility and violence. The point is that the natural world is a complex affair when we allow it to speak for itself.
I would go so far as to say that anything we think we have learned about natural behavior using caged animals is not about natural behavior at all-but the human-created results of animal behavior under stress.
At the very least, we miss a great deal by telling our scientific story within such cages. For decades, geneticist Barbara McClintock worked without the support of an official research position, her work denigrated by her colleagues-until she won the Nobel Prize for the work that she derived from “listening to the corn”.
This is not a new way of looking at our world, but an old one. Among the Sahaptin-speaking people on the mid-Columbia River who lived at least 10,000 years in their home, the term, waq’ádyšwit, meaning “life”, was the “animating principle or ‘soul’ possessed by people as well as animals, plants, and forces of nature”. Waq’ádyšwit “implies intelligence, will, and consciousness” and since it existed in all natural things, it was the moral basis of the reciprocal partnerships between humans and their land. This is Eugene Hunn’s description of the belief system of these peoples: “People, animals, plants and other forces of nature-sun, earth, wind, and rock-are animated by spirit. As such they share with humankind intelligence and will, and thus have moral rights and obligations as PERSONS”.
“The earth is alive”, said Esther Stutzman, echoing this view from the perspective of her Western Oregon tradition: “It has a heart.” The indigenous peoples of Northern California likewise believed that the entire land was alive with spirit. In the early 1900’s, linguist Jaime de Angulo wrote of his frustration in trying to get a classificatory word for “animals” as opposed to humans in the Pit River language. His consultant, Pit River elder “Wild Bill”, told him there was no such term in the Pit River language, since there was no such distinction between humans and other natural beings in Pit River culture. When pressed, the only equivalent Wild Bill would give for “animal” was a term that meant “world-all-over-living”-a category which embraced all natural things, including what the white men called animals, what they called humans, and even what they saw as objects. In Wild Bill’s words: “Everything is living, even the rocks, even that bench you are sitting on. Somebody made that bench for a purpose, didn’t he? Well, then it’s alive, isn’t it? Everything is alive.”
Everything, that is, has a will and purpose of its own. Even those creatures we might dismiss in Western culture: like mice and bats. Like the water we mistreat, according to Takelma Siletz elder Agnes Baker Pilgrim. Or the salmon whose honoring she has recently re-instituted along with the ancient ceremonies of her people. “Grandma Aggie” Pilgrim’s insight is that if we restore our reverence to these aspects of the land that sustains us, we will treat them better: not using the water, for instance, as our “garbage dump”.
Wild Bill went on to contrast this worldview with that of the whites: “White people think everything is dead… They don’t believe anything is alive.” As a result of living in a “dead” world, he concluded, “They are dead themselves.” I once had a student of Pit River heritage in one of my classes at Linfield College. He related how an elder had told him that in traditional times, humans had been able to speak to the animals. Some might still be able to do that-if we were ready to listen.
His elders urged Lower Chehalis elder Henry Cultee to dive in the rivers to train for his spirit quest “when the water was alive”- when it was full of power and spirit. “The eyes of the world are looking at you”, they would tell him. Thus the multiple eyes of the natural world assessed his behavior-and ordained the length of his life and that of his people here with it. It was a survival technique increasing human awareness of the natural world that worked for Cultee’s ancestors for 10,000 years.
I led off this essay by asking how recognizing a world with a will, consciousness-and the ability to feel empathy toward others-might change our behavior toward it. There is a linked question. How would it change our quality of life to recognize that our daily lives take our place in such a living world?
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You are always welcome to link to this post. Note it is copyright 2008 by Madronna Holden. Feel free to contact me if you wish to cite it rather than link here. Thank you.
The Sahaptin material cited above is from Eugene S. Hunn and David H. French, “Western Columbia River Sahaptins”, Handbook of North American Indians 12, and Hunn, Eugene S., with James Selam and Family: Nchi’i-Wána “The Big River” Mid-Columbian Indians and Their Land (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press: 1990).
The Pit River quotes are from Bob Callahan, ed. A Jaime de Angulo Reader (Berkeley: Turtle Island Press, 1979).
Filed under: Animals, Contrasting worldviews, Ecofeminism, Environmental ethics, Environmental psychology, Ethics, Folklore and Oral Tradition, Our Earth and Ourselves | Tagged: animal behavior, environmental philosophy, Environmental psychology, Ethics, Folklore and Oral Tradition
I was actually just thinking the other day about whether or not “heroism” occurred in nature. The mice and bat stories are very intriguing.
My other thought was, if atheistic evolution is correct, shouldn’t this eliminate creatures that take risks to help others? If two mice were being hunted by a hawk and one “volunteered” so the other may live (of course, I don’t even know if that’s feasible, but let’s say it is), wouldn’t this tend to remove the genetic impulse for “heroic martyrdom” because it would remove itself quickly from the gene pool?
The issue of animal pain is perplexing, but in his The Problem of Pain, I think C.S. Lewis does an admirable job of addressing it. Normally the issue is avoided because it is so complex to deal with in a philosophical/theological sense.
I think accounts such as these should be told over and over, until what is buried in our subconscious, begins to emerge. It takes courage to apply “non-scientific” principles to studies, but if they are factored into the hypothesis and accepted, perhaps we’ll see more humane treatment of test subjects, and radical reactions by groups, such as PETA, will no longer be necessary.
The subject of animal cruelty and empathy in animals has been one that I have always been throughly interested in. I have been a vegetarian for most of what I can remember because the thought of me even indirectly inflicting pain on another was too much for me to handle. I have read many stories much like the story of the mice. One in which a hunter killed a buck that was standing next to a doe…even after having shot the buck the doe did not move. Upon further inspection the hunter came to the conclusion that the doe was blind and was being lead around the forest by the buck. As far as considering the mouse heroic I would not use that word per se but feel that the mouse recognized the hopeless state of the other mouse and decided to ensue that mouses survival because his own survival also counted on it. I believe very much so that if the world gravitated toward a more empathetic society that the world we would witness around us would be hugely different. This change in peoples perception and their actions would directionally affect the quality of life that would be experienced by all. This is something that everyone should be compelled to work towards.
Thank you for your comments, Kate and Ashley. I like the idea of the telling particular stories over and again (perhaps to replace the stories of human dominance we currently tend to tell?), Kate.
Ashley, you have an essential point here: the way we perceive and treat other species is reflected in our treatment of other humans. So if we had more empathy factored into our worldview we would recognize the empathy that other species express as well. Astute point!
I think that as children, our imaginations allow us to believe anything is possible. We talked to a number of imaginary friends and beings. I had an imaginary dog and horse that played with me and my real dog and horses. I believed in the Velveteen Rabbit story, and thought that every stuffed animal that I had became alive when I wasn’t around. As I got older, I stopped believing that everything was alive. It wasn’t until recently I really began to believe that everything is alive and that everything has a soul. I have a similar appreciation for the same things that I did when I was a child. It is almost as if I have come full circle. It is imperative that we treat everything as if we had the ability to hurt its feelings because if we do, we will all live in a more considerate world.
Thank you for sharing this interesting part of your personal journey. I think your last sentence is especially well taken.
Heroes come in all shapes and sizes! I believe that all creatures great and small have thoughts, feelings, distinct personalities and language. Having been a close care taker to animals of all kinds, both wild and domestic, I have witnessed this time and again. I have carefully considered the stories of the bats and mice above and believe they feel emotion and pain as humnas do. Just because we aren’t able to directly understand what any given species may say, we can certainly discern through body language and actions what emotions are being felt. We also can witness the communication between animals in any given situation. We have also found ways to communicate with each other and form close bonds. Scientists such as Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey who communed with the Chimpanzees and the Gorillas, they can certainly attest to all that I have touched upon. Creating empathy is the key to improving the situations of all living things.
I like your first statement–and the compassion expressed throughout.
If we can have friendship and a helping instinct, so can other living beings. Their desire for survival and cooperation at times outdoes our own. While we as civilized humans are increasingly widening our love for “individual freedom” and refuse to smile as we pass each other, the animals as ever, continue their instinctive bond and given the chance, will outrun any person in the white coat in one concerted push.
Strangely however, our desire to get away from each other, leads us to the need for bond and respect for the animals. Hence, people’s wish to live alone but for their animals. We feel more empathy for animals than for our own species, which although good in a way, hides the underlying disappearance of love, warmth and respect that a human family must have in order to function outside the family in a positive manner.
We can have plenty of respect for animals inside our houses, but if we suppress our kindness and respect for our neighbors and those we call “strangers”, our empathy may not hold true for too long. For, without quality human interaction and relationships, whatever goodwill we develop for other living creatures will be meaningless.
Hi Sayed, a point well taken here with respect to pets– which are sometimes treated better than our fellow humans.
That, however, is not the whole of the story. There is the mistreatment of animals in factory farming and the degradation of wild habitat. Note also that the hierarchy that places humans (some humans, we might add) above other living creatures also plays into racism: thus members of devalued races have been called “animals”– which only works to objectify them when animals themselves are degraded. It would not work, for instance, in an indigenous society in which wild animals are honored as teaching us more about our own human potential.
You put your finger on a key problem here: the problem of insider and outsider– in a hierarchical system which labels the “other” or stranger as devalued and objectified, one upon whom it is legitimate to wreak violence. This is one of the reasons why Vandana Shiva makes an eloquent argument for a “democracy of all life” as underlying world justice.
Thanks for bringing up these thoughtful points here.
Dr. Holden, I know the animals are mistreated in the labs, chicken farms, and cattle ranches. I didn’t deny that. I just meant that our human to human bond must be strengthened if we want to have the right impact on the animals.
I focused on a different area, but that does not mean abuses happen with animals. But if a person loves animals more than his/her family and people of other backgrounds,
Dr. Holden, I didn’t deny the abuses going on in chicken farms like Tyson or slaughter houses like Cargill and other companies. I said human relationships must be strengthened so we can better be able to help and support other living creatures. In a conflict-ridden household, there is little respect and goodwill, which can translate into disrespect and disinterest toward animals.
Sayed, I’m sorry if my reply seemed to indicate I misunderstood you. I think you had an excellent point in our need to strengthen human bonds (and the justice and compassion that flows from those strengthened bonds). Thanks for clarifying this point for us.
Animals are amazing – my mastiff had puppies this last summer and at about the same time a stray cat had kittens in my backyard and left them. I was frantic, I didn’t know how I was going to try to bottlefeed these kittens or keep them warm and that when Brandy’s maternal instincts took over. She actually nursed them and kept them warm. It was absolutey amazing, brings tears to my eyes just writing about it. I’ve always known that animals have feelings as you’ll see in my lesson 5 assignment. As for the horrific treatment of animals that are raised as food, I think we need to sensitize people to animals rather than the desensitization that’s been happening due to animal research and the need to grow larger and slaughter more animals to sell for a profit for so many years. I really think stories like the ones above should be put out there more for so many more people to read. Emails are a perfect way to have stories like these passed around, I see lots of animal wonders go through my email and I forward them on becuase they are so spectacular.
Hi Renee, thanks for your comment.
I have heard many stories of female mammals nursing mammals of other species. I hadn’t known there were stories of animal wonders circulating the web. Interesting. There are a good many stories of this type expressed by the personal experience of female scientists in Intimate Nature, reviewed here: http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/books.php?id=2628
Barbara Kingsolver’s Small Wonders has a powerful essay (because it also addresses human potential for good and bad action) on a bear that nursed a lost child and kept it alive in Iran. There is much worth looking at on her website:
http://www.kingsolver.com/home/index.asp
I find the story of the two mice to be very intriguing. I do believe that everybody in the world sees everything as either dead or alive. As the article was explaining, the white man typically sees things as dead, however, the more knowledge of nature that a person can gain, the more they will start to see everything come to life, even the inanimate objects such as rocks and benches. I can relate empathy between animals in nature on a very personal level as I have experienced it first hand numerous times. I work very closely with horses on a daily basis and have witnessed first hand mother horses really protecting and “babying” their foals after a significant injury or traumatic event. The other example that comes to mind would be how often times dogs have a very keen sense of judgment. I have had two dogs in my life that I swear have been able to read humans better than most other humans can and have actually saved my fathers life. My current dog was able to tell when my father, who is diabetic, was low on blood sugar in the middle of the night and actually tried to wake my dad up. When he was unsuccessful, he woke my other dog and together they woke my dad up until he was able to realize what was going on before he went into a comatose state. I really do believe that heroism exists in places other than human nature and I also believe that everything, including animals have feelings of empathy, pain, and are capable of loyalty. There are many diverse and political issues regarding animal abuse such as the slaughter houses and chicken coups that go way beyond empathy and human nature. I believe that since everything is essentially alive, animal abuse is just as bad as abuse in humans. I am an avid hunter however, and I believe that killing animals for consumption should be done in a humane fashion with respect to the animal and I also believe that Native Americans were aware of heroism in animals in mother nature and that animals and other inanimate objects had feelings and this is why it was so important to perform the spiritual ceremonies after making a kill.
Great response, Amber. Thanks for all these personal examples throwing more light on this issue.
Reading this article was quite an eye-opener for me. In my opinion, we live our daily lives completely unaware of the living nature around us. We merely treat animals as well as our resources as objects. You mentioned the chickens that are so crammed in their cages to the point they kill each other, and cattle that must receive daily antibiotics so they can survive dirty living conditions. We treat these animals as a food source, not as members of a living, breathing nature. We dump trash and waste into the oceans and in our water supply with the intention that it will just go away. We have the mentality that we can throw away resources such as clean water and food and just replace them when it’s convenient. This reinforces the idea that nature doesn’t feel. We treat is as if Mother Nature is an inanimate object meant to be dominated and controlled by humans.
This article reminded me of the old wives’ tale that fish don’t feel pain. I researched some websites to see whether or not this was true. I came across a site with the research findings of a doctor at the University of Wyoming. He concluded that since fish lack a “complex, enlarged cerebral hemisphere” and frontal lobes, fish “do not have the neurological capacity to experience the unpleasant psychological aspect of pain.” He continues that since fish are unaware of their existence with a brain that “is simple and efficient, and capable of only a limited number of operations, much like a 1949 Volkswagen automobile.” He compares the human brain as to being a modern, luxury car with “all-wheel drive, climate control, emissions control, electronic fuel injection, anti-theft devices and computerized systems monitoring.” Because humans possess a complex brain, capable of experiencing pain, responding to psychological stimuli, and totally aware of their existence, I guess humans have the right to be the dominate creature in nature (totally sarcastic). He even says that fish don’t suffer when they are caught by a fisherman or captured by a predator.
By treating nature as a weak being, we will continue to exploit our natural resources and cause further damage on our environment. What really caught me off guard was the quote by Wild Bill saying “White people think everything is dead….They don’t believe everything is alive. They themselves are dead.” How very true!! The last part gave me this eerie feeling about how true Wild Bill’s quote is. If we don’t wake up and acknowledge our earth is a living, breathing organism, life will spiral downhill. Everything is connected and when we destroy one part of it, everything else will follow either immediately or in the future. We are already seeing the effects industrialism and the advancement of technology has on our environment. Some people are able to recognize the impact of our consequences. Money is what runs our world, causing greed and the desire to obtain and control nature. Fish may not be aware of their existence, however, are we as humans aware of what we are doing to our planet?
Sources:
Dr. James B. Rose. University of Wyoming. http://cotrout.org/do_fish_feel_pain.htm
Hi Ashley,
I really appreciate the care you took in reading and responding–and in finding this article. It seems to me the height of arrogance to assume that because another living creature doesn’t think like us or have our particular brain structure, it can’t feel. That is a bit like saying that those who cannot speak our own language (say, English) cannot speak.
This excuses all sorts of unethical–or at the very least unthoughtful– behavior toward our fellow creatures. It distresses me that someone with the authority of a university degree should misuse it in this way. I understand there is some research currently being done that indicated that fish are a good deal smarter than we used to think.
I much prefer the approach of those who live in close day to day contact with the natural world on a partnership basis: if we DO have a larger and more astute brain, doesn’t this mean we should therefore be the ones to work to communicate with other creatures on their own terms?
It seems to me that would be a real sign of our wisdom– our ability to extend ourselves in empathy to the life around us.
Going back to my childhood in a resort community, I became very familiar with the “visitor” mentality, as opposed to the “resident” mentality.
The attitude (consistent with the dominant culture/western worldview) that many people exhibit when they arrive at a place, make a mess, and then leave it behind to be forgotten in time reminds me of this topic.
My thought is even in regards to animals, there is an owner vs. visitor mentality at work.
Many people who eat chicken and beef regularly are pet owners. They pamper and spoil their pets, treating them as members of the family, while turning a blind eye to the cruelty that exists in the livestock operation that is supplying their dinner. They even go so far as to label themselves an “animal lover” but the term is often reserved for animals in their daily lives, with personality and familiarity.
I believe that removing people from the proximity of animals fosters an insulated perspective that reduces the animals to commodity status.
If we moved the chicken cages into their backyard, I suspect the level of empathy would change somewhat. I am not sure that people basic respect for animas is so much to blame as the perception that “someone else” is responsible for empathizing.
Most people I know who live in rural areas and are exposed to animals both domestic and endemic have a genuine respect and empathy for both.
When rats get in our attic, I use a “humane” trap to catch and “relocate” them outside at a distance from our house. I was doing this because my wife didn’t want animals killed in our house, but I also felt empathy for a fellow animal trying to find a good home for its family.
I think you are right about the “visitor” mentality. There is compassion as well as thought in this response! Thanks, Jay.
I think that the acts described in your essay are exactly the kinds of things that people need to hear. I wonder how we got to this place of superiority, and how this ability to treat living beings so terribly has developed. As you mention, the idea that all beings have souls, empathy, and intelligence is not new, but how did we move away from it so completely? Couldn’t we foresee where that sort of outlook would end up?
I do think that the story of the mouse helping the other mouse is heroic, and I’m sad to say that I even found it surprising. I really would never hurt a living being, and feel that I do really try to treat nature with respect, not overuse, and certainly not abuse her creatures, but I don’t know that I would have thought that one mouse would recognize and assist with another’s need.
I feel that the ballot measure that just passed in California concerning less restrictive areas for chickens (primarily), but also pigs and cows, really exemplified people’s thoughts on the matter of the huge mistreatment of these animals, as discussed in your essay. I read many of the arguments against it, and they were all completely centered on the fact that the passing of this measure would raise costs, possibly close down henhouses, and all this at a time when the economy is hurting. It seems that many people just couldn’t get their heads around helping another being, when it would have possible negative effects on their lives. It did pass, and I think that’s a great start, but I thought the fight against it was very sad.
I think that the recognition that we live in a world with feelings, rights, and needs would greatly change our behavior towards it. There’s a need to realize that humans can’t do it alone, and shouldn’t even want to. I think it would be amazing for our own quality of life, as well. So many more things to connect with, recognize, and learn from.
A compassionate comment, Erika. I appreciate the perspective on the ballot measure in California. Both interesting and important.
It does seem to me that our own quality of life is at stake in an interdependent world. I am assuming that those against this measure didn’t talk about the health problems to humans of eating animals raised so restrictively.
It also seems to me that we can make a pretty solid case that the ways in which our communities encourage us to treat other creatures is directly related to the ways in which we treat one another.
This comment is in response to Dan Fitzpatrick’s comment above, regarding evolution and heroism. I actually took a course in social and developmental psychology a while back, and learned that empathy and compassion are actually dominant survival responses, in comparison to other self-serving behaviors, which serve mainly to promote one’s own survival. The reason for this is that empathy actually does promote one’s own survival (I hope I didn’t just disprove my own point by saying that). See, by a stronger mouse aiding a weaker mouse by moving a piece of meat the stronger mouse is actually exhibiting a behavior which will benefit not only the weaker mouse, but also himself. There are many reasons why the empathy exhibited by this stronger mouse benefits the stronger mouse. Just a few examples are that the stronger mouse has just made a friend (in the weaker mouse) and this “friend” may help him out in the future. There may also be other mice that find out that this stronger mouse is helpful, and will therefore help the stronger mouse when the stronger mouse is in a bad situation and he needs help. Quite possibly, the stronger mouse realizes the principle of reciprocity and therefore realizes that acting in a compassionate manner is the most beneficial. Maybe the stronger mouse even just benefits from aiding another of his own kind for the feeling that he gains from commiting such a heroic act. Maybe to this strong mouse the act is not heroic, and is merely a responsibility. (I have many many thoughts on this that could just end up winding in circles). Also, I must mention that heroic acts do not necessarily have to include life or death situations. Therefore, it is unrealistic to assume that heroism would quickly remove itself from the gene pool if it was the dominant response. I also do not clearly see how your comment involves atheism, as evolution of certain non-human animal behaviors occurs regardless of a human’s belief on the origination of this planet.
The idea concerning good science to require empathy reminded me of an idea presented in “Ecology and Traditional Thinking,” an interview with Skokomish elder Bruce Miller where he argues that not only do humans have no place valuing one life over another, but such an idea is unnecessary. The correlation I drew was that in both situations we need to recognize that we live in harmony with everything around us, be it plant, animal, or Earth and we need to act accordingly. In a perfect would with that idea in mind, I would respond to the question posed that recognizing a world with will, consciousness and empathy would significantly change our behavior and push our society to behave as a real community. People would freely give with the intention to do good and improve the quality of life of those less fortunate, more simply put, people would genuinely care about each other. Plants, animals and other gifts taken from the earth are taken in moderation, appreciated and people strove to give back in recognition of the gifts they receive. Not be a cynic but I don’t see such a change happening though I strongly feel that showing empathy and consciousness toward each other would go a long way to improve everyone’s quality of life.
Firstly, I think this post does an excellent job of discrediting the worldview of domination, which affirms the idea that non-human animals do not have souls, and therefore do not exhibit feelings. Clearly, the acts exhibited by both the mouse and bat illustrate the notion that animals do have feelings, and are able to percieve and understand more of human behavior than we normally think.
Secondly, though I agree with the idea of “Waquadswit,” in that I view all animals, nature, and people as possessing life, or a principle soul, I do not necessarily believe that white people think that everything is dead. I think that this belief is simply another stereotype concerning human beliefs. I know that I personally don’t view everything as being dead, and do not like being grouped in with “white people” who cannot view the world in a “live” sense. While I acknowledge that I do not have a good sense of “satori” or the Zen Buddhist aesthetic concept of unity between man and the environment, I do view the world as being alive, to the extent that I am capable and aware. I have cultivated an appreciation for all non-human animals. I recognize that non-human animals do have feelings, feelings which I may not necessarily understand, but nevertheless I recognize that the feelings are prevelant.
Third, I definitely agree with the idea that what we have learned about natural behavior using caged animals is not really about natural behavior, but about how animals behave under stress. I remember reading in Dwellings (Hogan) a while back a story about a horse who had apparently learned the basic elements of language, although afterward the trainer who claimed to have taught the horse language found out the horse had in fact been mimicking human maneurisms the entire time just to respond in the way that the human desired him to respond. Thinking back on this example almost makes me laugh because there really is a communication and understanding, associated with feeling, that non-human animals hold that humans will likely never understand.
Ben, thank you for answering the posed question in such visionary terms– even if vision is a far cry from our current reality, your vision is itself empowering– and can lead us to the first step which is, as you indicate, treating one another as if we truly recognize how we share the circle of life.
Denise, thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings here. I can certainly see your sense of care for a living world. As you point out, it is important to remember than not all people follow the ethical standards or worldview of their culture– that includes, of course, native peoples as well as modern westerners. I should add that Wild Bill made his remark nine decades ago in the context of a grammatical discussion with a linguist– remarking on our objectified and (too often) objectifying language. In this sense, those who wish to see our world differently (in a wider, more empathetic, more inclusive, more vital way) must work against the structures of our language which is linked to our worldview. It was for this reason that a Chehalis grandmother urged me to “get the words” of her language, for it communicated her tradition in a way that English simply could not.
Interestingly, modern poet-translators like Jerome Rothenberg see English language transformed into a less objectified possibility in poetry.This is seconded by a Navajo child who could make no sense of the English she was attempting to learn until she heard a poem. “Everyone here speaks in poetry”, she said, when this avenue of “translation” became clear to her.
I want to set your response in a bit of context– while at the same time acknowledging your point about the right to and reality of dissent from a dominant cultural paradigm.
On a concluding note, I have seen more and more of my students exhibit the care and sensitivity you rightly claim as my decades of teaching continue: at least from my perspective, there are many more of you today than there were thirty years ago. It is my hope that we can read this as indicating that as we become more concerned about our shared earth, we are learning a more vital language of life.
Thank you again for your thoughtful comment. It is my sense that only out of dialogue does any idea become clearer– this is certainly true in the more ancient way of communication between humans– in oral traditions.
There is this old saying that states something about when you are looking for a mate you can tell how a person is suited to raise children (male or female) by the way that they treat their pets. I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t love and respect their pet just as they would with anyone in their family. I always cringe when I hear people say that animals do not have feelings. I have a golden retriever that acts shameful when she is in trouble, happy when she is greeted, playful at times of fun, she gets sad and whines when she is left alone, and is brave and protective when strangers approach. If she didn’t have feelings then what is it that I am witnessing? I am not a vegetarian and I won’t say that I can’t or won’t eat meat. I think that it is essential for humans to partake in the sharing of life that animals provide for us. It’s how we respect that gift and what we do after we recieve it to show gratitude for that gift that defines the type of person we are. It would be ideal to imagine that we live in a perfect world and that no being, human or not, would not suffer and were never to experience pain. But the truth in the matter is that it does occur and what you do about it in your interactions with the environment and nature, including all animals, determines what type of person you are and how you treat other people. If ever humans came to the realization that everything was living I think that it would almost be impossible to do anything. It would be a world of mass paranoia because eachtime you took a step you would be inflicting pain upon what was beneath your feet. That may be taking it to the extreme but people do need to realize that there are living things besides humans that inhabit the earth and we are obligated to live harmoniously amongst them as we all share the same home.
I do think this post does an excellent job of showing that there is a problem with how we, as members of a Western tradition have been brought up to see the world. We have always assumed that nature was there for our benefit, that animals were meant to be domesticated and slaughtered to feed our families. It is much easier to accept that you are killing something that doesn’t have emotion or feeling than it is to kill a creature with humanlike thoughts, feelings, and emotions. I believe that Wild Bill’s notion that white people see the world as being “dead” is more true than it would seem. While it is true that we know that animals are alive before they are killed, the fact that most people don’t accept that nonhuman animals have “souls”, something that makes a body more than just meat.
If tomorrow, everyone were able to accept that everything on this planet is just as alive as anything else, and that humans are not the dominant species for any other reason than for our insatiable appetite for destruction and moral validation, the world would be a different place. We would no longer be able to justify using lab animals for experiments or keeping domesticated animals in cages until we were ready to slaughter them. There would be no need for people to fight for animal rights, because humans and nonhumans would be on level playing ground, and everyone would have the same right to respect as anyone else.
Hi Debbie,
Thoughtful response: your dog has obviously found a good home! I’m not sure that it would lead to mass paranoia if we understood the earth beneath our feet were alive. Suppose we looked at this totally differently, and thought of walking as though we honored the earth we walked upon?
I do agree that it is often true that the ways in which we treat the living world upon which we depend for our lives is comparable to the ways in which we treat other humans.
Thanks for your comment.
Hi Mehgan, very nice perception about domination here. I like your vision of a different world–and the reason why it is not the one we currently inhabit. Though your vision may seem far from the present, the very fact that you have envisioned it is one step in the direction of having it come to be. The first step toward change is holding what we truly want (and should be) in our hearts and minds. Thanks for sharing what you hold in this way.
I found this article to be a great example of just how much compassion their can be between humans and animals and between different types of animals. Animals are a lot smarter than most people give them credit for and have the ability to sense what a person is feeling. I, for one, have a cat that starts chasing her tail, doing back flips, and running into walls whenever I am feeling sad. She never does these things unless I am having a bad day and once I have started laughing she quits (it is like she is trying to cheer me up). I have read that many pets do similar things when the people that care for them are feeling down or alone. It is terrible that people do not consider the different emotions that animals feel or that they don’t think that animals do not have any brains. You gave wonderful examples in your article about how intelligent animals are. For example, the mice taking care of each other to stay alive in the sink and one bat letting the other know that the “Bat Lady” would not hurt it. These show just how intelligent animals are and how comprehending they are.
Sadly, many people view animals as just another means of food and don’t care how they are treated (as long as they don’t have to see it). While animals are a means of survival for humans, their treatment does not have to be cruel. If we treated animals like equals as many other cultures have done then we would have much more respect for the animals and be much more grateful for the food that we have. Many people in the U.S. have no comprehension of where their food is coming from. They just know that if they show up at a grocery store or order a hamburger at a fast food restaurant that they will magically receive meat. For the most part, they don’t consider where the meat was from, whether it was injected with any chemicals, how the animal was treated before slaughter, etc. In cultures where animals are important to their culture they know the answers to these questions and therefore have a much closer connection to their food and a better connection with the animals around them.
Thank you for a touching personal comment, Samantha. Sounds like your cat wins the cat-clown performance award!
I really enjoyed the article “The Mice in the Sink-And Us”. I have always been intrigued with the certainty that animals can communicate and speak to each other. And the idea that we too once a time could communicate with them is quite amazing. I think the concept of our connection to other beings amongst this world is remarkable, we bond we could possible have with animals and how they could very well sense our empathy or lack of it is impressive. The story of the stronger mouse helping the weaker one expressed the reverence and compassion that one had for the other, and in turn they both survived. The unfortunate truth about western worldviews is that, that very compassion is not as common as it should be. Not often do we find ourselves looking out for anyone but ourselves. It is sad to think about that and even worse when animals have more respect for each other than some humans out there.
I personally have never really been an animal person, don’t get me wrong, I always had respect for them, but I just never thought of ever owning one or being close to one. A few months back my fiancé and I got a puppy. I was amazed at how he knows your emotions and your moods just by observing you. He would sit with me when I was stressed or overwhelmed and when I am getting upset he starts to groan a little as if he is telling me that it will be okay. This article and as well as taking my philosophy class and having experienced owning a dog, I have realized that we are extremely connected to nature and the other beings around us.
Earth is definitely alive and every being that is in it does deserve and have rights and obligations just as we do. Why should be feel that it is okay to mistreat another living being in the world and not expect them to be irate with humans, if we as humans mistreat each other or disrespect on another, we are not to kind to each other in return either, so what difference would it make with animals. Many tend to forget that animals too are living creatures created for many reasons. As Wild Bill said, “…people think everything is dead… They don’t believe anything is alive. As a result of living in a “dead” world….They are dead themselves.” And that is sadly how many are living and that is how our world will become one day if we don’t change.
Hi Francine, thank you for such a thoughtful response.
Certainly, not fully appreciating the liveness of our world is our own loss as well as leading to some tragic consequences.
Sounds like your dog is doing well training his owner!
In ancient times, I believe that people were less tied up with the ways of the world. There was no internet, television or radio to fill the minds of people with non-essential things. Their life demanded that they find food, shelter, water and essentials for survival. Although this took time, it also allowed them to become intimate with the surrounding environment. They had to observe the ways of the animals and had to attempt to understand the ways of nature in order to survive.
Today, we are caught up in a fast moving, information filled society. In our haste and stress filled atmosphere, many people have become arrogant and self centered and no longer have time nor take time to observe nature. Why should we be the only creatures that have feelings? The example of the mouse helping the other mouse shows that animals have the will to live. It also shows that they are capable of love. All creatures great and small live in their own world and hope to survive, just like ancient man. For that matter, survival is important for our own society. In order to survive, compassion and love are critical to our survival.
If we treat animals with compassion and respect, they will return it in the best way they can. Animals can and do talk to us. Somehow we know when the dog or cat wants to be fed or petted.
If we, as humans, can slow our lifestyle pace down enough to look around and become one with our surroundings, we will feel a completness with the world around us. It is only then that we will understand that we are one with the universe.
Hi Bruce, thank you for an insightful as well as compassionate response here! More of this kind of thinking would certainly change our world for the better.
This article is about women to have empathy for all creatures. I have done the same thing; I saved a baby mouse from drowning, a baby duck who was injured and rejected by its mother, as well as a baby chick, the list goes on but it’s who I am. It is part of life and we all need to appreciate all things in nature no matter how big or small or how insufficient people may think they are all things matter. I think that women tend to be more nurturing than men and many women have empathy like this towards all living things more so than me because it does matter.
Hi Dianna, thanks for your comment and your expression of care. I do think we might want to give one caveat here: if women are more caring, it is in part because our society discourages this kind of caring in men. I must say there are men who are caring in this way– especially in those societies which link nurturance and power– but also, among men who break the mold in our own society.
This artical is so interesting. To think that animals have empathy would be an amazing break through that might change a lot of things in the world. I think we as humans underestimate the intellect of animals and therefore believe they don’t have feelings as we do. Women have always been known to be more nurturing than males which is another reason why help animals when they are in trouble when men see it has interfering with nature. Hopefully the break throughs that woman are making with the ecofeminism movement will open the eyes of all people to the reality that we need animals and nature so we need to take care of them, they don’t need us.
An empathetic reply, Danielle, thank you. I would add a small rider to any “women have always” statement– this is true in a culture in nurturance is chalked on the “feminine” traits column (and also devalued). But there are also other cultures–and men who have refused the labels to honor their compassion for other creatures.
I am intrigued by the Darwin take of this essay. We have all been taught “survival of the fittest”. As if life is all in a competition with each other, and only the strong survive. It was interesting to think of “cooperation rather than competition”, which had not occurred to me before. We’ve all seen instances where animals help one another…we’ve probably all seen dogs within the same home help each other, or animals within a herd help each other.
But .. does this cooperation exit outside of a bond? Be it genetic, or emotional – without it does the same cooperation exit, or are we stickly back to competition? If two baby mice had fallen in the sink an hour before, would there still be heroism? Was that cooperation based on a bond, rather than blank compassion?
Hi Angie, thanks for your comment. I’m not quite sure what you mean about two baby mice falling in the sink “an hour before”–and what kind of bond are you thinking of instead of “blank compassion”– compassion without a bond? Do you mean, had they been raised together or something? You might be interested in Alfie Kohn’s work on the “brighter side of human nature”, which indicates that the smallest children express compassion toward others before they express competition-and it is competition rather than cooperation that takes cultural training. The point in terms of human society is that for the million years or so homo sapiens has been on earth, the vast majority of human societies survived through cooperation (such as the cooperation that created culture by passing knowledge between generations.)
Darwin is talking about the interdependence (cooperation) in natural systems; interpreting “survival of the fittest” as some beating out others came with the interpretation of Herbert Spencer’s application of the term to the ways that Western hierarchical society operates. Interestingly, those indigenous peoples I worked with in the Pacific Northwest saw nature as presenting a model of cooperation and reciprocity– not competition. Social ecologist Murray Bookchin noted, for instance, that since all of us both feed and are fed by others in an ecological system, there is a very basic equality there.
It shouldn’t be so hard for people to believe that animals may have empathy for each other, after all we see species that mate for life, or form family groups, or live in complex colonies. If we admit to ourselves that animals are complex creatures, and deserving of respectful treatment, it would be much harder to justify the way we treat them. Strangely we make an exception when it comes to pets, as if the act of adopting them into our families bestows upon them a soul. The truth is we haven’t granted our pets anything they didn’t already have, we just refuse to recognize it everywhere else.
Thanks for your comment, John. It seems we might learn something about empathy from those who creatures who seem not to require that others be like them in order to express it.
These were heartwarming stories. The mice story shows that sometimes those that seem down and out need a little more encouragement to get back up and continue on with life. I particularly liked the part that trying to learn natural behavior from a caged animal is really just what the animal looks like when stressed. It’s a very good question about what life would be like if we all had empathy for each other. I think people wouldn’t be nearly as stressed out and even if something terrible happened it wouldn’t hit them as hard because people around them would have empathy. Sometimes having someone acknowledge that you are having trouble helps lift the burden and shortens recovery time. Animals are very good at this. Always willing to comfort someone who is crying. People really can learn a lot from animals.
Thanks for the comment, Teresa. Would our recognition of empathy in other species lead to any different responsibility or treatment of these creatures or their habitats? Nice points about empathy: what might other creatures teach us about this?
As I was reading this article I began thinking of the many stories fo animal compassion and empathy that have been reported through the years. Animals who have nursed the young of a different species, animals (pets) who manage to get help for injured humans, and service animals trained to help people with disabilities. The story that came to mind first was the toddler who had fallen through the fencing of the zoo into the gorilla compound where a female gorilla carefully picked up the child and took it to the entrance so that zoo personal could safely reach the child. All this while protecting the child from the dominant male. There is definitely compassion in the animal world. Through scientific research it has been proven that many animals have intelligence and work together . When I think of animal research I do wonder how it can be successfully accomplished without interference in a laboratory setting or “caged”. environment. Scientists have stated that field research yields a more reliable picture of the behavior or topic of interest. Laboratory conditions not only produce stress but the are not the natural environment so how can the animal act naturally? What about the research with the elderly and the ill that has proven contact with animals to be benefical to the health and well being of the human?
A comment on the ability to speak with the animals as was prevalent in “traditional” times. Often we hear of pet owners who have connected in this manner but there are also those who work in the wild or with animals they do not own. I believe it is quite possible for this “human/animal” connection to exist. In that case if “we” could feel the joy as well as the terror of animals around us would we treat them differently? In many cases absolutely! Would that cause people to refain from hunting? Most likely not ,however, it may cause those to hunt for food only and not for sport. Most people in the Western culture are too far removed from nature and the environment to maintain a connection. We purchase our food and clothing in stores thus do not need to hunt and forage. The act of hunting and gathering leads to knowledge of the environment that would influence how we react to the plants and animals seen on a regular basis. Protection for the sake of reciprocity would occur if nothing else. We would wish the food and clothing source to flourish in order to replenish our supplies so care and concern for the environment would rise to the surface.
I think that being in tune to one’s surroundings can only serve to incease the quality of life for that person and the environment.
Hi Colleen, thank you for a thoughtful and compassionate response. Trophy hunting as opposed to hunting for subsistence seems to violate the ethics of compassion with regard to animals. There are many constraints and ways of honoring hunted animals among indigenous peoples: they include not wasting anything, letting the strongest (and females) go to secure future crops, limiting takes (some more in some years than others– there were sophisticated ways of assessing an appropriate sustainable take of fluctuating animal populations), and honoring the animal in question (protecting their habitat, for instance). There was also the understanding of reciprocity that follows a natural model in which all are both eaten and fed by others. This I also think responds to Andrew’s response here. Val Plumwood has an interesting idea about looking at humans as part of the food chain, similar to that which I have heard voiced by indigenous elders: that we are in effect “borrowers” of life from the natural system in the same way that we borrow a book from the library. Plumwood, who barely escaped a crocodile attack (see her “Being Prey”) and buried her son, does not speak abstractly. Neither does the Apache woman who stated that for all the years that she has taken from the natural system with her life, she is grateful her death will allow her to give back. Of course, this does not work if we embalm bodies with poison…
If we looked at everything that we encounter with empathy we would treat our entire universe differently. We would have compassion on all things. We would recognize that all animals, human and non-human feel pain, can sense emotion and have some form of communication and therefore we should treat them with the respect that they deserve. Just because man is at the top of the food chain we should not feel that we are superior to all other creation or have dominion over all. How we view life, how we treat it, what we take from it and what we give to it will have a reciprocal effect for many generations. The old saying “do unto others as you would have done unto you” is a very fitting saying. If we treated others, human and non-human, as we would like to be treated our universe would be a much more harmonious place to live. Just as a sidebar, if you ever have the opportunity, if opportunity is what it could be called, to visit a poultry farm or a cattle lot you would be a vegetarian for the rest of your life. The living conditions for these poor animals is deplorable. Most people would not believe that a modern society could treat their animals so horribly, especially, when we visit our local grocery store meat department and see all of the sanitary looking packaging that the meat department displays our meat products in. Another thing I have noticed is when you go to the grocery store you no longer can see the butcher cutting up the meat, the butcher is somewhere behind the meat department wall. Could this be another way to sell more meat, if you can’t see it being processed are you more apt to buy it?
Hi Pam, thanks for your response. It is interesting that we hide the slaughtering and butchering of meat and yet cut up human bodies in full view on the widely watched CSI. I think that we must draw a serious line between factory or industrial farming with its vast mistreatment of both the environment and the animals it raises with other kinds of treatment of animals raised for food. We might add that besides the mistreatment of animals (chickens in spaces so crowded they cannibalize one another, for instance), and the feeding of antiobiotics with food to stem diseases of those in such unclean and crowded conditions (with obvious results for human health) and the use of pesticides to attack insects preying on animals in such conditions, there is also the fact that animals who are fed grain that might go for human consumption are eating higher on the food chain in terms of energy than are grass fed animals–and this process contributes substantially more to global warming than does the equivalent consumption of vegetable matter. Though personally, I sometimes (though pretty rarely) eat fish and meat, I certainly respect those who are vegetarians, given both their compassion and their contribution to eating lower on the food chain/with lower carbon emissions.
You might also be interested in my response to Colleen here.
These are all heart warming stories about compassion, some make sense to me and some don’t. I understand having compassion and respect for animals and the environment, these are worth while goals to achieve, but how is a predator-prey relationship viewed here? There has been talk in some of the responses about being vegetarian because of the effect on the animals that we eat. I do not view “meat eating” as an offense against animals, to me it is more like a predator-prey relationship. Please don’t take this the wrong way, in no way am I for the way some of the factory farms treat the animals. In my view the animals should be treated with respect and given “good” lives from birth until the day we eat them. This respect for where our food comes from is an attitude that I am working to build with my children, and it is a view that should be taught to everyone. We raise our own chickens, and they are treated with every respect on our property. My family is thankful for the eggs we get from them, and we have a good deal of respect for the animal because of that. There is great pride taken when my five year old comes with me to the chicken coop to gather the eggs, he is always excited to find them. When it comes time to eat them, he knows where they came from because he picked them up. This is a lot more than most other five yar olds understand.
As far as the article itself is concerned, there are some good points that get brought up in it. One part of the article mentioned “Darwinism”, and it was mentioned that cooperation rather then competition is what drives relationships in the wild. To some extent I agree, cooperation that is for the greater good exists. For example, honeybees gather and store food collectively for the greater good. There isn’t one honeybee that has his own horde of honey, they all dip from the same pot. But in my opinion, competition is a greater part of the natural environment than cooperation. There are limited resources for many animals, the strongest will eat first. The will to survive is stronger than almost any emotion or value. All you need to do to see this is turn on “Animal Planet” and watch a lion chasing a herd of Zebras. The fastest, strongest ones out run the lion, and the lion targets in on the weakest one in the herd.
As far as the indidgenous peoples respect for the environment and the animals within it, it is admirable and everyone should strive to attain that level of respect for the others that inhabit the earth. Do you think they are vegetarians? I don’t. They know and respect our relationship with the animals, which includes eating them. Eating them is not a sign of disrespect, it is more an understanding of the circle of life.
Hi Andrew thanks for the very thoughtful comment. It’s great that your family eats both ethically and healthily–and I bet they have some fun in the process (chasing chickens and collecting eggs).
I do have some comments on the use of animal planet or modern nature programs to illustrate competitive behavior in the wild: you may aware that these programs might be critiqued for slanting their materials to fit the tastes of modern audiences. In fact, many physically “weaker” animals have considerable status and are protected by their peers– but they must have other things to contribute, such as elder wisdom. For instance, a smaller and weaker but older dog introduced to a pack will assume more status than the robust younger ones. In this sense they value elders in parallel ways to humans. You might also be interested to know that animals who are predator and prey often play together when they are not feeding– and there seems to be some choice in the prey about being eaten. That is, some cue that passes between predator and prey (that is somehow built into the chase you see on animal planet): for predators will pass up prey (even physically weak prey) who behave in a particular way. You might look up Lila Leibowitz’s physical anthropology text: she has many such examples, including the one where two female lions who refused to breed in the San Diego zoo finally did so when introduced to an old lion (whom human handlers simply intended as a companion), whom they had to take turns bracing so that he did not fall over in the act. It turns out the placid red deer of Ireland (remember Bambi and all that Western folklore about the young stag replacing the old one amidst great pathos?) breed while the aggressive ones are fighting each other, thus effectively taking the aggressors out of the gene pool.
I am not saying that nature “proves” anything about human nature: that thesis has ample problems of its own. What I am saying is that we choose what to view (and count as important) when we view animals in the wild or otherwise, and it is important to note that whereas modern Westerners use “nature” to support their views of competition, many indigenous elders seeing nature as modeling the cooperative ethic they themselves follow.
Check out my replies to Colleen and Pam as well: this is a very interesting discussion!
I have received some very provoking insights on heroism from herbalist Susun Weed’s book Healing Wise, which have greatly influenced my attitudes about this culturally respected ideal. Labeling the actions of the healthier mouse as “heroic” seems like an inappropriate anthropomorphizing of these animals. I fully believe that animals and all living things have the capacity for empathy for their own species and for other species, but I think that the only animal that develops hierachical and dualistic thinking (which creates the ideas of “hero/savior” and “victim/saved”) are humans. As noted in the above comments, size or physical strength does not correlate to dominance or authority in the natural world. Granted, the situation with the mice is more of an emergency situation where mere survival was the only focus, and the actions of the one mouse clearly did “save the victim”, but I caution against spilling out our human constructions such as “heroism” onto the rest of the natural world. So, to answer the question in the essay, I would not call this act “heroism.” I would call it cooperation and empathy. I think there is more evidence in the natural world to support the idea that partnership and mutual aid are the foundations of survival across all species, rather than competition and dominance.
Thanks for sharing this perspective, Rachel–and your personal answer to the question posed here. As you point out, rather than anthropomorphizing heroism (as something expressed in wartime, for instance?) perhaps we could learn something about the connection between heroism and empathy from the natural world. I like the indigenous idea that the natural world may teach us how to become fully human as in this statement featured as a title of a book on Australian Aboriginal views of the land: “dingo makes us human”.
I believe that all living things have empathy and compassion for one another. Even in our Western dominated culture we have empathy, were just more likely to turn a blind eye and to cling to ignorance, so that we don’t have to change. I believe that if people saw first hand what goes on in commercial chicken factories, or the effects of pollution that they would react. That their internal sense of what is right would overcome the learned behavior of looking the other way. The story of the mice does not surprise me, although many animals establish a hierarchy of domination, empathy and compassion for other living things seems to overtake domination in the natural order of life. Like many people in this class I raise chickens, and although they have a pecking order I have seen the strongest chicken pair up with the weakest chicken in order to be its protector.
If we lived in a world that we recognized as having a consciousness and a will, not only would our quality of life be changed, but who we are and how we see the world would be changed, the human animal would be a different being. If we were able to have the same level of empathy and compassion for the world as a whole as what we feel for one another, as what we feel for our kin then how could we acts selfishly and abuse the world?
We have seen how Native Americans like Henry Cultee treat the world and can understand that it is a learned behavior. We are intelligent and know that we are capable of teaching ourselves and our young that we are not separate from the natural world, and yet we keep looking away….
Overall, I believe that our quality of life would be far richer if humanity as a whole could embrace the world as living.
Thank your for your own empathy as well as thoughtfulness here, Kristian. Many interesting points here– as about your chickens. In a parallel vein, I have heard that researchers witnessed killer whales saving the lives of baby seals when they are not hunting. It seems to me that the natural world is mysterious–and entirely more complex than we give it credit for in a simplistic predator-prey hierarchy.
The observations of CeAnn Lambert and the “Bat Lady” are intriquing to say the least. While the mouse’s attempt to help another mouse to drink is a clear example of empathetic behavior, it is also a sign of rational thought. How else would the mouse know that by moving the meat, he would not only get his buddy closer to the water, but also nourish him in the process? And the bats are either telepathic or extremely adept at communication to be able to let one another know that this human (Bat Lady) means no harm.
If we are to believe that “the earth is alive”, we must also believe that, at the very least, ALL living things on earth are endowed with empathy, and thereby, emotions. As Dr. Holden points out, animals such as cows and chickens are not treated in concert with this way of thinking. I also think of the mistreatment that pigs endure, and this is a creature that is widely viewed as among the most intelligent.
This is yet another conflict between Western worldview and indigenous worldview, and once again the natives are much wiser from their years of experience in co-existing with nature. Showing empathy and practicing reciprocity with the natural world will also help in human to human relationships. Remember, it wasn’t too long ago that certain ethnic and racial groups were not presumed to have empathy and emotions, let alone flora and fauna.
Hi Mike, thanks for setting this a larger context and offering some tantalizing ideas to ponder about whether we humans have locked up the market on rationality, let alone empathy.
This was a wonderful article, detailing the finer points of non-human empathy and our need to be aware of it. There seems something wrong to be referring to all other sentient species as “non-human”, as if being human places us on a higher level. I can’t help but think about the book “Jurassic Park” and the notion that we humans like to do things just-to-see-if-we-can. It is quite saddening–and maddening–that the human species, one of the only creatures on our planet that are able to alter our environment to better “suit our needs,” still finds it necessary to poke, prod, split open, and kill so-called lesser creatures, just to see what will happen.
Our culture has such little respect for, well, the rest of the world, especially beings that have an empathic link to its brethren and/or it’s habitat. I’ve heard so many people mock the notion that all things have an inherent energy, a life force–from snow-capped peaks to rocks buried miles below the surface–yet how can they deny the power and energy of a wildfire? Or the wisdom that lay within boulders that have watched the sunset for over a millennium?
We are fools to think that the earth has no soul.
Thank you for sharing, Prof. Holden.
Thank you for reading and responding to this, Stasey. I hope we will someday grow enough as a species to understand that there is (as you indicate) a fundamental link between compassion and knowledge. After all, isn’t knowing another really inevitably linked to establishing a close relationship with them?
As I have read this article and read the other posts I am reminded of my US History class. (If we look, all things are related) I was thinking of how slavery affected the quality of life in the early US and how because of the hierarchy in our society it allowed for serious mistreatment of other humans. Then there was the differential treatment of women. Did we really believe that there were other people who were more or less worthy of equal respect? If we saw this value system amongst our selves (humans) what kind of value system did we have in place for animals and other living beings? I guess we can see the answer to that in the buffalo slaughters of the “winning of the west”. But are we like that today, have our perspectives changed in regard to the living world?
I think bit by bit we have, I see hope in the activism of animal rights organizations and largely in the education of our young people that the world we live in contains many things small and large all alive. If we continue to realize our place in a living world our quality of life and the quality of others lives would improve in ways we have yet to experience.
Thanks for the historical perspective, Jessie. It would be nice to think we are gathering maturity in expanding our ethical standards to our treatment of the natural world.
It always surprises me when people are astonished when they observe certain emotions in animals. Emotions such as empathy and altruism are common in many animals and especially mammals. Of course all mammals have emotions. It is all in our brains after all. A mouse has almost all of the same parts of the brain that humans do, just not as developed. But that doesn’t mean that it is not there.
It’s true that not long ago we thought that non-human animal’s and newborn baby’s brains were not devolved enough to feel pain, but now we know better. I wonder if the same thing will happen with our opinion of “nonliving objects.”
Thanks for the comment, Jessica. Your last point is especially interesting– there are many from non-Western cultures who would say we already know that “non-living” nature has its own spirit and agency. Just because it is not the same as ours (as you point out in the case of the mice), does not mean that it does not exist.
How would it change our quality of life to recognize that our daily lives take our place in such a living world?
In reading this essay, I was greatly encouraged to take more stock in my own life and in the lives of others, human and animal. It seemed to me that by being compassionate to these other animals, as the mouse hero and bat nurse do, we can achieve a better feeling about our own lives and take advantage of that great feeling we get when we “do something good” for another.
To answer the question, by incorporating our compassion and understanding for the way the world works in our daily lives, we gain further knowledge of our own world’s existence and what we can do to keep it safe. This may take 5 seconds or 15 minutes to really achieve, however, I believe we are better people for this understanding and can not only help each other but those things animate and inanimate.
Hi Tony, a generous personal response and reminder to all of us of the ways in which compassion for others might change our lives for the better.
I found this essay interesting. It is true that each of us interact and value with and animals differently. I have known a few people who dislike animals, others that have intense love for their own, and others who don’t care. It seems like a humans involvement of their existence can be reflected in their ability to interact with nature, humans, animals. If someone is shut off or isolated what does that mean? I new a few guys in high school that did some horrible things to a cat. I could not understand their reasoning. It sickened me to even comprehend why or what moved them to do such things. As I see them now years later it is clear internally many things remain the same. They did not understand the value of the cat of the life around them.
Hello Kaaren, thanks for your comment. In a hierarchical society those who feel that they are “above” others (as in humans above animals) like those boys feel justified in whatever they wish to do to those below. I do believe that the ways in which we treat our natural world is reflected in the way we treat other humans– I am assuming that when these boys grew into men, they remained troubled.
I liked the stories of the mice and the bats. I think that non-human animals have emotions and thoughts of caring just like humans do. For example when I give on of my dogs a bath, the other two sit outside the door and cry. I think this is because the one in the tub is crying and the others understand the discomfort she is in. I think we often underestimate all animals abilities to understand pain and suffering. We think they are driven by survival instincts alone and therefore cannot contemplate anything beyond reproduction. I have watched animals mourn the loss of a baby or of a friend. I have seen animals die shortly after their owners. I do not think this can be attributed to anything other than loneliness.
I feel sorry for the farm animals that are confined to small cages and I wonder if they have any sense of family. I wonder if since they are so genetically manipulated if they have any genetic relations near them. For example I was told the turkey we buy in the grocery store are really like a turkey/chicken cross. I wonder if these animals have the same emotional connection to the world. Does their brain shrink? Like if humans were genetically manipulated for a specific job, would the area of the brain that controls emotions shrink and the person become less caring? Not that I would approve of it, but I am curious.
Hi Ann, thanks for your compassionate sharing of your experience with non-human animals. Thoughtful examples of the qualities of animals that we can only considerable comparable, in some way, to human feeling. I don’t know the answer of the results of genetic manipulation, but it is something to ponder. I think any animals we use for our own purposes deserve the courtesy of a satisfying life. The way chimps have often been treated in this regard is unforgivable– but such ill treatment is now against the law in Spain, where the legislature passed a law giving the great apes rights similar to humans.
In our culture, we treat humans as if we are above other animals, and we even have a hierarchy within the animal kingdom. We keep dogs and cats as pets, and realize that they have emotional needs. We realize these needs and treat pets as companions. However, we don’t think twice about squashing a bug, or swatting a fly. While some animals obviously are more sensitive and have more emotions, we only take into consideration the more obvious ones, like the animals we keep as pets.
Obviously, as seen in examples from this passage, animals have emotions and the ability to be compassionate to fellow creatures. I wonder if we were more aware of this, we would think more about our actions? Because it is so easy to go grocery shopping, and see prepackaged meat that looks like food and not like it was once an animal, we do not think about where it came from. Most people do not think about how meat got to our table, or connect that to an actual life that we are taking.
Even if we were to be a little bit more aware, and compassionate, we could at least push for better treatment of animals on the farm. It is COMPLETELY unethical to raise animals, many of which we have altered to be as fat as possible, and only have body parts that we can eat, and then keep them in overcrowded cages. We are now able to raise “meat” and not actual animals, it seems. It is a gross, unregulated industry. If we were to treat the animals with dignity and let them roam free, at the very least, they would at least have some sort of a life before we took it away from them.
I wish more people could put themselves in these animals shoes, or to be more compassionate. I like that in this entry, there are a few different views in which all things have souls. If we were to believe and act on this today, we would be much more caring, and certainly less careless about such issues as eating and raising meat.
Thank you for your caring response, Erin. I appreciate your personal care. It is certainly true that we have no right to waste these lives that we raise for our purposes: and in fact, the least we owe them is a decent life in return.
To awnser the question at the beggining, i would call that having a heart and caring enough about a living creature to take time out of your day and save two life’s. I thought this was a great story i enjoyed it very much, it made me think what i might have done. Though i would like to think i would have done the same thing im not sure i would have, which then made me feel like i had no heart or being able to care.
This was an enlightning essay and i do feel that his has opened my eyes just a little more than it was before. To believe that everything is alive and everything is there for a reason to serve a purpose; how could you not treat everything with care and love if you believed this. I believe that was the point in this essay, we must undertand that everything on this earth is here for a reason and was not put here for nothing or te be treated wrongly. Respect, respect, respect….
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Christian. It is a great exercise to imagine ourselves in situations like this to see what we might have done–as who knows what situations might come up for us int he future.
I like your ending- respect!
I believe it is normal for people to want to help people, for people to want to help animals and for animals to want to help animals. I believe, that in our core being, that we desire these things in life. Now, I also believe that we can choose to “ignore” these responsibilities and Core Values in each of our lives. Usually, ignoring these values and responsibilities result in more money in our pockets or a nice animal mount on the wall for the purposes of pride (among other greedy ideas).
Once again, as I have posted earlier, I just “wonder” what precautions could have been taken to prevent this new Swine Virus as related to money and industry? Are we interrupting nature processes with animals where we are now seeing the results in the health of the worldwide?
Food for thought,
Paul
Thanks for your comment, Paul. I think that a system that rewards greed (as you indicate in this instances) results in crises both for the earth that sustains us and the human populations that live there. As for the swine flu, I just saw an article from SCIENCE written a few years ago that suggests a correlation between the confinement and increased vaccination of farm animals and spurring viral variations of the diseases these animals carry.
Further, since pigs have been the vehicle of the three flu pandemics in this century, it does not seem entirely wise that we are now cloning litters of pigs with a gene that causes trouble in using them for human transplants turned off. That is, we are designing pigs whose genes specifically allow them to leap the species barrier.
Dr. Holden,
Thanks for your followup comments. I will have to research that article in SCIENCE later today. It does seem that there ought to be more cautionary steps available and to be taken surrounding these “cooped up” animals.
Paul Nash
You are welcome, Paul. I certainly agree with you–in fact, I think they shouldn’t BE cooped up in this fashion, that is “factory farming” has not only ecological but ethical problems attached to it.
This article reminds me of an article I read recently concerning the behavior of bees. The lady who was studying them was amazed by how complex their social behavior was for such small and seemingly “simple” creatures. Her hypothesis points towards a brain that works like a quantum computer, but maybe there is something more to it than materialistic science can get at. This article also reminds me of my girlfriend who does a lot of work with kids with autism and has be researching how autistic children often make incredible connections with animals and seem to be able to communicate with them in way they can’t with other humans. Maybe that’s one reason they can have such trouble with communicating with other people, because they can perceive both sides of the natural realm and have an intuition that might thus rightly lead to mistrust the human tendency to treat their surroundings inappropriately as “dead.”
Thanks for your comment, Mark. Some perceptive observations– we certainly limit our own thinking when we objectify the rest of the world. Your last sentence is especially interesting. It sounds like the children your girlfriend words with are fortunate to have such a sensitive adult around them. You (and she) may know about Dr. Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who is developing quite a reputation for proposing humane treatment of animals that non-autistic researchers have totally missed.
Is she the professor at Colorado state who developed the squeeze shoot? I have a good friend who has taken some classes from her while getting his masters in cattle nutrition.
I led off this essay by asking how recognizing a world with a will, consciousness-and the ability to feel empathy toward others-might change our behavior toward it.
My responses seem to be somewhat repetitive, so as to gain a new perspective on this issue, I asked my daughter how she thought this change in recognition could change the world. She stated that by changing our own perspective, we can see and understand others with different perspectives and begin to have respect for other living beings. Profound thought, I think.
That statement and the story about the mice made me think of an encounter which I had. One day, while out in the lawn, I came across a funny looking mouse by the outside shed. It was at the corner of the building and I bent down to look at it. It was a shrew, I think and it took straight up on its hind legs, looked me right in the eye and threatened me. I imagine she had babies around somewhere. And it reminded me of the feeling of standing up in protection of my family of what seemed to be a giant.
There is a linked question. How would it change our quality of life to recognize that our daily lives take our place in such a living world? Again, I asked my daughter what she thought. We would change because we would be listening. Dogs can talk among themselves and they know what the other is saying. But if they warn us of something, we have to be listening to them and respond; interact. When we listen, we begin to understand other living beings and that they have plenty of intelligent things to say. By listening to others, we save ourselves. We need to change our perspective to willingness and communication. Wow!
When we understand that everything is alive and gives to us we can then appreciate it; reciprocity. I believe all living things feel. Even the Earth is in constant motion with the cycles of life that are alive and feed live; like water and the rock cycle.
This was a very enlightening article and I was glad to open up a line of communication.
Thank you,
Tina
Hi Tina, thanks for sharing an inter-generational comment here! I do maintain that learning is always a two-way street and our children are here to teach us as much as to learn from us. And perhaps in a culture in which teach them objectification of the world as they grow, they have more insight and compassionate regarding a living world that is still alive to us. Your daughter is of course echoing the wisdom of many indigenous traditions that emphasize it is the responsibility of humans to learn the languages of other living things– and this can teach us many essential things about being human!
Humans listening to the rest of life and exhibiting their respect for it. Imagine!
Thank you for your encouraging comments here, Professor. In a time where our communication is stressed with outside influences, it was good to hear her intelligent comments.
Indeed it was, Tina. And you must be doing something right as a mother to help keep her spirit alive and alert!
Thank you for the compliment. There was some commercial some time back about how teens have it harder today than any other time in the past. And she agreed. And, of course, I disagreed because that’s what we do these days. My argument was, “what about the girls who lost entire neighborhoods of people they had to bury during the Black Plague? And what about the girls who traveled across the Great Plains and buried their siblings to cholera? And what about the slaves who built the pyramids?” Anyway, you see where I’m going. Here goes my adaptive process…:) But, I think that young people today see a lot of destruction in their world…the breakdown of the family (not ours thankfully!), environmental issues, the lack of respect between people…I think it weighs on them quite heavily and should be recognized and acted on.
This is a great article and a subject that is very important to me. Anyone who spends any time working with animals will testify that emotions are present. I work mostly with local animal shelters, so I see a lot of dogs and cats and the occasional goat or other discarded odd pet. People mostly see the animals with fear and anger, but what they don’t see is that fear changing to gratitude and happiness. Animals are extremely expressive if you just pay attention. My own dog wears his emotions on his sleeve, his ability to express his emotions is unbelievable. This has made him extremely successful as a therapy dog working with children. Children haven’t learned yet that animals don’t have feelings and are just dumb animals. His work has shown many children that he can comfort them when they’re sad and share in their happiness.
I don’t blame science for its incapacity to see animal emotion, I blame the controlling force that was originally behind modern scientific practices. In my opinion Christianity and other similar religions are to blame. Heads of churches always put themselves above everything around them. They were made in god’s image not the mice or the bats, so they were in turn superior. Religion oversaw the start of the scientific world and corrupted it to show no empathy towards the non-human inhabitants of this planet.
Hi Tim, thanks for sharing your experience with animals and animal shelters. To me, the word “discarded” animals is particularly pointed. I think that as you indicate working with these creature can teach us much about being human. When we discard humans, we see comparable fear and anger that can also be transformed by decent treatment. It’s too bad that we don’t all skip the learning about “dumb animals”– it must be very rewarding to work with your dog as a therapy dog.
On the question of religion– I agree with you to a point. I think we must separate the institution of religion from the spiritual impulse (including Christianity). The tragedy is twisting the human impulses for reverence and belonging into something that supports domination of others. I have also seen Christianity motivate tremendous generosity and love toward others of all species.
And whereas the cultural mentality that sees the world as a collections of objects for human use is a real problem, not ALL sciences follows this idea. In fact, science can be on our side in gaining environmental information if we assess whether it is really serious science and not influenced by its funding sources, for instance.
Check out the sites links here for “integrity in science” and the “Union of Concerned Scientists”.
Thanks for the personal engagement and care you express here.
I find it so amazing how animals and nature can relate and communicate with each and pick up on human emotions. The natural world and non-human creatures deserve so much more credit than society gives them.
I think we do not even understand most of how natures and animals relate and communicate.
I think that if modern society looked at the earth as alive and treated it with the respect that it deserved, it would be a much better place.
Thanks,
Troy
Thanks for your comment, Troy. I certainly agree!
If these little mice had been “men in sink” this would have been a very compassionate act and one that would have been dubbed an act of heroism. I think Pierce is right in that it was an act of heroism. Because we can not communicate with animals does not mean they can’t show compassion and empathy for one another just as we do.
My quality of life would be the same as it is now. I really don’t understand what Wild Bill meant when he said that white people think everything is dead. I have always thought everything around me was alive – to think any other way would be depressing. To love life is to enjoy everything living all around you. I think we are being stereo-typed here.
I am not a vegetarian but meat has always been the last thing I eat on my plate, however, after reading this article I can see me eventually giving up at least red meat and chicken eventually.
Thank you for your comment, Pam. I think that Wild Bill is referring to those who see the world as “objects” or the “dead people” that the linguist was trying to get him to give a grammatical equivalent for. I’m glad you see the world differently.
How would it change our quality of life to recognize that our daily lives take our place in such a living world?
I believe that our quality of life would be reawakened if we realized that our daily lives take our place in such a living world. I see the world as living and all that is in it. However, I believe what Wild Bill was saying about “white” people seeing everything dead is most of the things a person owns in a home is already dead. Furniture, phones, books, appliances, and so forth. When a person looks around the walls in their home, is anything moving except for the television and even that, one can perceive as dead since it is only an object once it is turned off. The life has been taken out of earth to make the materials. I was watching a train go by with car loads of trees on it. And it seemed as though the train was a mile long watching all those trees just moving on by, knowing that eventually they would be used for whatever. I believe we can be dead to everything around us because as our daily lives has it, we are too busy to really see that the world is “alive”, at least if I don’t move out beyond the structure of my home. The world is a beautiful place with so much life but I have to look at it to see it then I am no longer blind.
Thank you for you caring response, Tina–and all the images of the modern age that portray a dead or deadened world. A powerful last sentence: blinding ourselves of the life of the world is our loss– as well as, tragically, the world’s, since that view licenses such destructive human acts.
Last year a good family friend of mine who operates a large ranch in Eastern Oregon took me on a tour of the property he operates on. He owns or rents over a million acres northeast of bend, on this land he has about 1000 mothers. The cattle are free range, which is a great advantage for the rancher because its far less maintenance than the more conventional stockade techniques. However, the price of this method is the loss of dozens of cattle to predators. When the laws changed years ago about how people can hunt cougars their numbers skyrocketed in this area.
When I was on this tour of the ranch we saw the aftermath of an cougar attack. I was told that when a cougar attacks, its typically at night and they go straight for a weak calf. When this happens, the mother usually does nothing to protect the calf. Because of this increasing threat a small herd will sprint away when they even see a cougar often leaving the weak calves behind.
This is not compassion. If it is true that animals are capable of experience empathy then they are equally likely to experience cruelty. I saw firsthand how competition exists in the natural world. If we recognize that we exist in a living world we must also realize that animals (including humans) must destroy and consume in order to live.
Thanks for your comment, Matt. Thoughtful point, however, I don’t think you saw firsthand how animals must “destroy and consume”: appropriate consumption in the natural cycle is not destruction. What you describe is a complex situation in which we need to make some careful distinctions if we really want to gain a handle on what is going on. Firstly, the evidence suggests that cougars are NOT increasing in human habitat (or habitat that was originally theirs but that we now want for ourselves) as a result of changed hunting rules, but because we are encroaching more and more on their habitat. Secondly, domestic cows are not wild animals and not ALL animals are compassionate in all circumstances– certainly including humans. I would argue that there is a way of taking only what we need with compassion for the animal (if we are a meat eater), which is not the same as factory farming. There are ways of treating the cattle we raise for food and milk with more or less compassion– in the case of your friend, free range cattle that are grass fed are better for the environment in multiple ways. And I would argue that they have a better life than factory farmed cattle as well.
That said, domestication also dulls the brains and senses of many animals. Perhaps you are aware of a study recently released on chickadees, in which chickadees in a zoo were far less adaptive and had less learning capacity than did those in the wild. This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to release animals back into the wild from captivity and have them make it.
Have you ever watched a herd of wild elk closely? When there are young, there are guard mares that help signal the herd of danger and watch over the nursing calves and their mothers. I found this fascinating to witness in a herd I once came on in the wild.
I think we cannot call what wild predators who live in systems of natural balance do “cruelty” when they take what they need to survive. I think we can call humans “cruel” when they torture and systematically abuse others of all species; and they are (inadvertently?) cruel when they over-consume to the detriment of so many other species.
But not all humans have done this: some have been smarter about fitting into natural systems (and fighting the “human instincts of self-destruction”- see a recent comment I made to Tina Barker on this point)/ If you haven’t already, you might be interested in taking a look at the page on “Indigenous peoples” here, as well as the essay on “misusing Darwin”.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
Here is an excellent overview of the controversy regarding the re-introduction of wolves into Idaho–and compromise reached between ranchers and wildlife advocates:
http://www.class.uidaho.edu/KPGeorge/issues/wolves_reintroduction/reintroduction_question.htm.
The necessity of the cougar is only one part of the story. What I intended to bring focus to was the actions of the mother. When a mama cows see a cougar they will not protect the calf, but will run away. They know that a cat can take down a full size cow just as easy as a calf. Do those actions not have a lack of compassion?
Going back to the story of the mice. If the lady put the board in the sink so that the stronger mouse could get out, wouldn’t the stronger mouse just leave without the weak one?
If people perceived themselves as part of a “living” world, I think it goes without saying that people would treat animals, the earth, and each other with more care. You bring up the point that people treat animals very badly because we often don’t consider that they have feelings and a soul. I think it is funny that people will cage chickens and allow terrible living conditions for cows, but people feel much differently about the treatment of domesticated “pet” animals, like dogs and cats. The “cute and cuddly” animals are cared for while the “food” animals are commodities. What an arbitrary and unfair distinction. I think it was in the UN Forum where I recently read a statement something like, we need to protect all animals, not just the charismatic ones.
Thanks for your comment, Christine. A good point about human “favorites”.
How would it change our quality of life to recognize that our daily lives take our place in such a living world? I think it would increase our quality of life dramatically if more people recognized that they lived in a more vibrant place. In thinking of people I know who are unhappy, it seems to be my friends who lack something meaningful to believe in, be it religion, nature, or a fulfilling career. It feels like, for some of them, this lack of meaning is entwined with their belief that they are living in a somewhat dead world.
If the world was seen as wholly alive, then people would have infinite possibilities in the connections they could make with this living world. They could feel something in the wind, smell something in the trees, and gain a sense of belonging when they observe other creatures. I think that this change in how they see the world would definitely imoprove their quality of life by giving them a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.
A lovely response, Erin! Thank you. With such results, one would think we would aim for recognizing the vibrancy of the natural world.
This has been one of my favorite essays so far. The interactions animals and communication they share is amazing. From our point of view it may just seem like a fluke or just a happen stance, but I think it scares us to believe that animals are capable of feeling and acting on an emotional level as we are. I agree with “wild bill” in a sense that everything around us i alive, the world we live in feels. Though one part I couldnt say I quite agree with is the notion that his example of a bench being alive. I belive at one point it was alive but its feelings have faded. Dont get me wrong I think the world and nature around us had emotions and feelings. I just believe that after its life has been extinguished that it loses those feelings. Overall I agree with his out looks on the world and to answer your question what I would call that actions of the mouse earlier. I would call it companionship, you wouldnt leave a friend behind in a dire situation.
Thanks for your compassionate comment, Kevin. Thoughtful point about the bench. Perhaps (if it is a wooden bench), the least we can do is honor the living trees that contributed their lives to it. Yet there still are many peoples who believe that they lend their spirit to a thing by making or using it. Haven’t you ever felt this about something belonged to another?
I find it difficult to believe that anyone cannot see the world as being “alive.” I am especially reminded of this during the spring, when the leaves return to the trees and the songs of birds fill the air. Considering my position on this issue, I find it extremely hurtful that others would consider wildlife and nature in general as non-living “objects.” For all of the misleading roads it has taken us down, modern science has consistently shown that more animals can sense pain than we ever realized. While a tree might not “feel” pain in the same way (or does it), are there not harmful effects on the ecosystem when a forest is logged for timber products? It is important to empathize with nature and all creatures (human and non-human alike). It provides a better appreciation for one’s surroundings and results in a better quality of life for everyone. That’s pretty hard to beat.
Thank you for sharing your powerful personal stance here, Allison. Good point about science. Let’s hope that we are able to use it for the benefit of all natural life– perhaps to make up in small part for the ways in which it has been been manipulated and destructive in the past.
How would it change our quality of life to recognize that our daily lives take our place in such a living world?
Quility of life, as we know it in our Western society, isn’t really quality, it’s just quantity. More is better with us: Bigger TV, Bigger paychecks, better cars, expensive technology and clothing, bigger closet… bigger cancer, bigger fat-stores, larger rates of depression and medical issues from stress, more filling lonely voids with things that don’t matter.
As it stands now, we think we are the solar system revolves around us, and that nothing matters but our “quality of life”. I think that if it was universally accepted that everything had to be respected equally, that we AREN’T the center of the universe, then we might start to finally see that all of these things we are working ourselves to death for are really very unimportant. We might see the world as a big family, sort of like some people/s have done for centuries. They seem pretty happy to me, living in harmony with everything around them. Now THAT is quality of life.
An essential point about the quality versus quantity of life, Josh. I like your striking new vision of a REAL quality of life.
In my eyes she was a hero, most people do not think of mice as living creatures who deserve a chance to live. They just see them as pests so they kill them. I used to always have to wrestle with my cat to get the mice away from her so I could take them to the woods and let them go. I feel that every creature has a purpose so they have just as much right to live as anything else. The bat story was so touching. It is so neat to see an example of the fact that animals are intelligent and can communicate amongst eachother. I hope one day I’m prevledged enough to be called the “some kind of animal” lady.
Very kind as well as caring reply. Thanks, Kelli.
The stories in this article reminded me of some animal encounters that I have had when I was growing up. We had an open carport that was walled on two sides. during the spring and even into the early parts of summer, birds would get trapped and disoriented inside when they got stuck in the windows during migration of just chasing bugs. I recall many times where I would climb up high into the rafters near the windows to catch the birds and free them. There was a particular scrub jay that became a regular to the backyard after a rescue. He was unique in his behavior towards me and I could always distinguish him from other jays. We also had a opossum that hung around after our dog trapped him in the backyard. He was fine, he just played dead and she left him alone. But, we began to see him regularly and we realized he had an affinity for orange halves. Just another backyard friend.
This was a great article.
Thanks, Chris–and thanks for sharing your own family experiences with your “backyard friends”.
“The Mice is the Sink” story is a great example of the empathy and compassion all humans should express toward any living being. Being brought up Christian, I have a strong respect for living creatures because God created them and showing respect to them is showing respect to the creator. While I agree in respecting all living forms of life, I also believe that God created certain animals for humans to benefit from nutritionally. While I am a strong supporter of meat and its nutritional benefits to a well balanced diet, I am against the practices of factory farming. I think stronger regulations are needed and quantity aware consumers are key. We need to eat more balanced meals to bring down the demand of meat so that manufacturers can choose more humane ways of bringing meat to our tables.
Thanks for the balance in your response, Jason. It does seem that if we consume meat, the least we can do is provide the animals that provide it a decent life (and death).
For 20 years or so PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has been displaying pictures of monkeys, dogs, and other animals as their bodies are being used for scientific experimentation. The animals appear to be making grimaces as their faces contort from the pain. I once saw a photo of a monkey strung up for experimentation its insides exposed to the air. It is an incredibly powerfull image and I remember it still after only seeing it once probably close to 20 years ago.
Thanks for your comment, Richard. I can’t imagine that those subjected to such experiments would not feel the pain, no matter how we read their faces. Obviously something resonates with us across species that we might attend to.
She is indeed, Mark.
I second your points on this, Tina (spoken as the true expert here– a mother!) I think that one of the gravest responsibilities we have is to care for our young. Tragically, not one that we are taking entirely seriously as a nation– or a human community.
Thanks for the follow up comment, Matt. I understood your point about the cows: that is why I mentioned the difference between domesticated and wild animals– and the fact that not ALL animals are always compassionate.
Wouldn’t we expect the stronger mouse to leave as you point out? That is what the researcher expected, but in fact it didn’t– it stayed to help the other at some risk to itself was what she observed instead. And thus she wrote up this rather astonishing fact (at least astonishing to those of us who assume the stronger will always help himself first in the natural world).