Humans consider ourselves superior to all other life forms on the planet. We alone have created skyscrapers, literature, medicine, courting, burial, and religious rituals, complex math, and have even begun to study and learn the universe itself. We have established communities and law, farming, transportation systems, central heating and air conditioning, and indoor plumbing. We expect our fellows to follow our moral code of right, wrong, love, empathy, compassion.
We are so pompous, so ignorant. We really think we're "all that", but we are physical hosts for millions of organisms within our own guts. They live, thrive, and multiply without knowing or caring they are in a "superior" species. They live their lives in the warm, moist, airless darkness they've evolved to inhabit. Only as side benefit, does their day-to-day activities help us digest and absorb nutrients from our food and eliminate our own bodily waste. (Please, before you start spouting "intelligent design", be aware that there are also thousands and thousands of microbes and larger organisms that would willingly kill or maim you in their own reproductive efforts - a small worm in Africa is burrowing into the eye of a child, blinding him as I type this. Thousands of children are dying of leukemia or other cancers now; thousands and thousands of children are dying of starvation or cholera as you read this.)
The "lowly" ant builds its community colony of chambers, tunnels, rooms in vast underground labyrinths complete with ventilation shafts and storm drains. Within the chambers, they farm fungal gardens to feed their young. Some colonies can house up to 7 million individuals, with dedicated roles for defense, child care, queen care, resource gathering -- just as is required in a human colony (except the ants work together for the good of all inhabitants). Termite mounds are built similarly, using a system of air pockets within the mound to drive natural ventilation through convection. Scientists and engineers are only beginning to look to biomimicry for ideas to develop better cooling mechanisms for human structures. (5 Natural Air-Conditioning Ideas Inspired by Nature - National Geographic.com)
We think we're the only animals with language. Just because we don't understand them, doesn't mean they don't understand each other. We've all seen or heard about the honeybee "dance" here, food this way, or the nose down singing humpback whale song, or the porpoise/dolphin squeak, squawk, call to each other and to humans, or the songbird raucous sound when a crow or raptor is in the area. I read a researcher's story (chimps) where she was in her office at feeding time and from the sounds and vocalizations of the chimps, she knew they were having grapes... the sudden realization that she had over time and experience "learned their language" for that particular word was eye-opening.
We are not the only animals that use tools. Crows, chimpanzees, dolphins (maybe others) have been observed making and using simple tools. No, they don't have bulldozers, but early man probably discovered the lever totally by accident, and may have learned to "fish" for termites by watching his more distant cousins. Chimps, orangutans use leaves as umbrellas, and throw rocks or similar at their enemies.
We think we're the only animal with emotions. How ignorant and unobservant we are; how pompous of us.
Death - Grief, Mourning, Respect - Gorillas: "Gana, an 11-year-old gorilla at the Münster Zoo in Germany, holding up the body of her dead baby, Claudio, and pursing her lips toward his lifeless fingers. Claudio died at the age of 3 months of an apparent heart defect, and for days Gana refused to surrender his corpse to zookeepers." "primatologists do know this: Among nearly all species of apes and monkeys in the wild, a mother will react to the death of her infant as Gana did — by clutching the little decedent to her breast and treating it as though it were still alive.
For days or even weeks afterward, she will take it with her everywhere and fight off anything that threatens to snatch it away. “The only time I was ever mobbed by langurs was when I tried to inspect a baby corpse,” said the primatologist Sarah Hardy." Chimpanzees: "A mother will try to nurse her dead baby back to life, Dr. Wilson said, “but when the infant becomes quite decayed, she’ll carry it by just one leg or sling it over her back in a casual way.” "Juvenile chimpanzees display signs of genuine grief when their mothers die. In one famous case in Gombe, when a matriarch of the troop named Flo died at the age of 50-plus years, her son, Flint, proved inconsolable. Flint was 8 years old and could easily have cared for himself, but he had been unusually attached to his mother and refused to leave her corpse’s side. Within a month, the son, too, died." Elephants: "Researchers have determined that elephants deserve their longstanding reputation as exceptionally death-savvy beings, their concern for the remains of their fellows approaching what we might call reverence." "[Researcher] described in Applied Animal Behavior Science the extraordinary reactions of different elephants to the death of one of their prominent matriarchs. “One female stood over the body, rocking back and forth,” Dr. Wittemyer said in an interview. “Others raised their foot over her head. Others touched their tusks to hers. They would do their behaviors, and then leave.”
Community Morticians, Waste Disposal:
"For others, a corpse is considered dangerous and must be properly disposed of. Among naked mole rats, for example, which are elaborately social mammals that spend their entire lives in a system of underground tunnels, a corpse is detected quickly and then dragged, kicked or carried to the communal latrine. And when the latrine is filled, said Paul Sherman of Cornell University, “they seal it off with an earthen plug, presumably for hygienic reasons, and dig a new one.” "Among the social insects, the need for prompt corpse management is considered so pressing that there are dedicated undertakers, workers that within a few minutes of a death will pick up the body and hoist or fly it outside, to a safe distance from hive or nest, the better to protect against possible contagious disease. Honeybees are such compulsive housekeepers that if a mouse or other large creature, drawn by the warmth or promise of honey, happens to make its way into the hive and die inside, the bees, unable to bodily remove it, will embalm it in resin collected from trees."
Love, Compassion, Empathy:
quoting Science Explorer.com: “The researchers created an experiment where they temporarily isolated relatives and known individuals from each other. While isolated, they gave one of them mild shocks. Once they were reunited, the non-stressed prairie voles began to lick the stressed voles sooner and for longer durations compared to the control scenario where individuals were separated, but neither were exposed to shocks…" “The study also showed that oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone,” is the underlying mechanism for this empathy. Oxytocin is the receptor associated with empathy in humans, so [the] team blocked this neurotransmitter in the prairie voles and then conducted a series of similar experiments. It turns out that blocking oxytocin resulted in the prairie voles ceasing to console each other.”
It was once thought that Nile crocodiles ate their babies. Finally, someone actually looked and studied, instead of jumping to conclusions. It was found that the babies were being carefully carried in the mother's mouth. She can carry as many as 15 in her mouth at once. This is after she has guarded the riverside nest of eggs for about 3 months, until they hatch.
Chimps, Gorillas, many other animals are also loving, doting parents to their offspring.
Several animal species mate for life (wolves, mourning doves, for instance).
We are indeed the most pompous, egocentric, selfish species on the planet. We have exterminated several species within the past couple hundred years. The dodo bird was common on Mauritius, before man arrived in ships in the early 1600s, and over 60yrs or so, slaughtered the last of them in 1662. No one gave any thought to preservation, to allowing the population to replenish before taking them or their eggs as food. The Passenger Pigeon in North America numbered in the many millions before the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas. We wiped out their habitat and hunted them for cheap meat. The last was seen in 1901. The western black rhinoceros of sub-sahara Africa was wiped out in the early 20th century (yes, by man). There are only about 5000 remaining related Black Rhinoceros in Africa (Kenya) today, though there were about 65,000 in the 1970s. In South Africa, there was a species of zebra that was only striped on the front half of its body (Quagga). It was extinct by man's hand by 1878. We wiped out the largest mammal except whales, the Steller's Sea Cow; it was hunted to extinction in 1768, within 27 years of its discovery by Europeans. The Great Auk of the North Atlantic was driven to extinction by demand for its down and as meat by 1852. "It was driven to extinction as a consequence of centuries of intense human exploitation." says London's Natural History Museum. "Lonesome George" died in a zoo in 2012, the last known of a subspecies of the Galapagos Giant Tortoise.
Currently at risk are monarch butterflies because of killing their caterpillars' only food source (milkweed) by today's non-selective herbicides (glyphosate and similar) and their winter habitat destruction in Mexico; the manatee in southern waters including Florida; Black Rhinoceros; the Everglades panther (puma); Iberian lynx, Europe's rarest cat, in southern Spain; probably many others. We are destroying acres of Amazon Rain Forest daily, not only releasing carbon dioxide into the air (it eats through the ozone layer and traps heat), but destroying habitat of creatures that may not have even been cataloged yet. Critically endangered are mountain gorillas, tigers, sea turtles, orangutans, Sumatran elephant, Amus leopard, polar bears, numerous nonhuman primates... all critically endangered by hunting, habitat loss, and global warming.
This is what we've done. This is our legacy to our children and grandchildren and later generations. Are we proud of it?
We are the only ones who can repair the damage we've already done to the biosphere, to enable us and our descendants to continue to live here. We must move to clean energy. We must ensure humane housing (indoor plumbing, clean water) for all. We must have education for all; health care for all; equal rights for all. We must respect other animal life. All of society together must contribute to the well-being of all earth's species, including homo-sapiens (wise man). Also, note how humble we are in naming ourselves. Let's earn it.
The earth herself will go on without us. New species will develop that will be able to breathe the air we've made toxic to ourselves, be able to withstand the sun's UV rays that are no longer blocked by the ozone layer we've destroyed, be able to filter or biologically eliminate the water we've so polluted it's no longer potable for us, be able to withstand the super-bugs we've created with our haphazard medical practices.
The earth does not need us. We need the earth. The time is now to actively undertake corrective actions if we want our great, great, great grandchildren to be born and thrive.
We are so pompous, so ignorant. We really think we're "all that", but we are physical hosts for millions of organisms within our own guts. They live, thrive, and multiply without knowing or caring they are in a "superior" species. They live their lives in the warm, moist, airless darkness they've evolved to inhabit. Only as side benefit, does their day-to-day activities help us digest and absorb nutrients from our food and eliminate our own bodily waste. (Please, before you start spouting "intelligent design", be aware that there are also thousands and thousands of microbes and larger organisms that would willingly kill or maim you in their own reproductive efforts - a small worm in Africa is burrowing into the eye of a child, blinding him as I type this. Thousands of children are dying of leukemia or other cancers now; thousands and thousands of children are dying of starvation or cholera as you read this.)
The "lowly" ant builds its community colony of chambers, tunnels, rooms in vast underground labyrinths complete with ventilation shafts and storm drains. Within the chambers, they farm fungal gardens to feed their young. Some colonies can house up to 7 million individuals, with dedicated roles for defense, child care, queen care, resource gathering -- just as is required in a human colony (except the ants work together for the good of all inhabitants). Termite mounds are built similarly, using a system of air pockets within the mound to drive natural ventilation through convection. Scientists and engineers are only beginning to look to biomimicry for ideas to develop better cooling mechanisms for human structures. (5 Natural Air-Conditioning Ideas Inspired by Nature - National Geographic.com)
We think we're the only animals with language. Just because we don't understand them, doesn't mean they don't understand each other. We've all seen or heard about the honeybee "dance" here, food this way, or the nose down singing humpback whale song, or the porpoise/dolphin squeak, squawk, call to each other and to humans, or the songbird raucous sound when a crow or raptor is in the area. I read a researcher's story (chimps) where she was in her office at feeding time and from the sounds and vocalizations of the chimps, she knew they were having grapes... the sudden realization that she had over time and experience "learned their language" for that particular word was eye-opening.
We are not the only animals that use tools. Crows, chimpanzees, dolphins (maybe others) have been observed making and using simple tools. No, they don't have bulldozers, but early man probably discovered the lever totally by accident, and may have learned to "fish" for termites by watching his more distant cousins. Chimps, orangutans use leaves as umbrellas, and throw rocks or similar at their enemies.
We think we're the only animal with emotions. How ignorant and unobservant we are; how pompous of us.
Death - Grief, Mourning, Respect - Gorillas: "Gana, an 11-year-old gorilla at the Münster Zoo in Germany, holding up the body of her dead baby, Claudio, and pursing her lips toward his lifeless fingers. Claudio died at the age of 3 months of an apparent heart defect, and for days Gana refused to surrender his corpse to zookeepers." "primatologists do know this: Among nearly all species of apes and monkeys in the wild, a mother will react to the death of her infant as Gana did — by clutching the little decedent to her breast and treating it as though it were still alive.
Community Morticians, Waste Disposal:
"For others, a corpse is considered dangerous and must be properly disposed of. Among naked mole rats, for example, which are elaborately social mammals that spend their entire lives in a system of underground tunnels, a corpse is detected quickly and then dragged, kicked or carried to the communal latrine. And when the latrine is filled, said Paul Sherman of Cornell University, “they seal it off with an earthen plug, presumably for hygienic reasons, and dig a new one.” "Among the social insects, the need for prompt corpse management is considered so pressing that there are dedicated undertakers, workers that within a few minutes of a death will pick up the body and hoist or fly it outside, to a safe distance from hive or nest, the better to protect against possible contagious disease. Honeybees are such compulsive housekeepers that if a mouse or other large creature, drawn by the warmth or promise of honey, happens to make its way into the hive and die inside, the bees, unable to bodily remove it, will embalm it in resin collected from trees."
Love, Compassion, Empathy:
quoting Science Explorer.com: “The researchers created an experiment where they temporarily isolated relatives and known individuals from each other. While isolated, they gave one of them mild shocks. Once they were reunited, the non-stressed prairie voles began to lick the stressed voles sooner and for longer durations compared to the control scenario where individuals were separated, but neither were exposed to shocks…" “The study also showed that oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone,” is the underlying mechanism for this empathy. Oxytocin is the receptor associated with empathy in humans, so [the] team blocked this neurotransmitter in the prairie voles and then conducted a series of similar experiments. It turns out that blocking oxytocin resulted in the prairie voles ceasing to console each other.”
It was once thought that Nile crocodiles ate their babies. Finally, someone actually looked and studied, instead of jumping to conclusions. It was found that the babies were being carefully carried in the mother's mouth. She can carry as many as 15 in her mouth at once. This is after she has guarded the riverside nest of eggs for about 3 months, until they hatch.
Chimps, Gorillas, many other animals are also loving, doting parents to their offspring.
We are indeed the most pompous, egocentric, selfish species on the planet. We have exterminated several species within the past couple hundred years. The dodo bird was common on Mauritius, before man arrived in ships in the early 1600s, and over 60yrs or so, slaughtered the last of them in 1662. No one gave any thought to preservation, to allowing the population to replenish before taking them or their eggs as food. The Passenger Pigeon in North America numbered in the many millions before the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas. We wiped out their habitat and hunted them for cheap meat. The last was seen in 1901. The western black rhinoceros of sub-sahara Africa was wiped out in the early 20th century (yes, by man). There are only about 5000 remaining related Black Rhinoceros in Africa (Kenya) today, though there were about 65,000 in the 1970s. In South Africa, there was a species of zebra that was only striped on the front half of its body (Quagga). It was extinct by man's hand by 1878. We wiped out the largest mammal except whales, the Steller's Sea Cow; it was hunted to extinction in 1768, within 27 years of its discovery by Europeans. The Great Auk of the North Atlantic was driven to extinction by demand for its down and as meat by 1852. "It was driven to extinction as a consequence of centuries of intense human exploitation." says London's Natural History Museum. "Lonesome George" died in a zoo in 2012, the last known of a subspecies of the Galapagos Giant Tortoise.
Currently at risk are monarch butterflies because of killing their caterpillars' only food source (milkweed) by today's non-selective herbicides (glyphosate and similar) and their winter habitat destruction in Mexico; the manatee in southern waters including Florida; Black Rhinoceros; the Everglades panther (puma); Iberian lynx, Europe's rarest cat, in southern Spain; probably many others. We are destroying acres of Amazon Rain Forest daily, not only releasing carbon dioxide into the air (it eats through the ozone layer and traps heat), but destroying habitat of creatures that may not have even been cataloged yet. Critically endangered are mountain gorillas, tigers, sea turtles, orangutans, Sumatran elephant, Amus leopard, polar bears, numerous nonhuman primates... all critically endangered by hunting, habitat loss, and global warming.
This is what we've done. This is our legacy to our children and grandchildren and later generations. Are we proud of it?
We are the only ones who can repair the damage we've already done to the biosphere, to enable us and our descendants to continue to live here. We must move to clean energy. We must ensure humane housing (indoor plumbing, clean water) for all. We must have education for all; health care for all; equal rights for all. We must respect other animal life. All of society together must contribute to the well-being of all earth's species, including homo-sapiens (wise man). Also, note how humble we are in naming ourselves. Let's earn it.
The earth herself will go on without us. New species will develop that will be able to breathe the air we've made toxic to ourselves, be able to withstand the sun's UV rays that are no longer blocked by the ozone layer we've destroyed, be able to filter or biologically eliminate the water we've so polluted it's no longer potable for us, be able to withstand the super-bugs we've created with our haphazard medical practices.
The earth does not need us. We need the earth. The time is now to actively undertake corrective actions if we want our great, great, great grandchildren to be born and thrive.
As long as we consider ourselves superior, we will forever remain inferior and a hazard to ourselves.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful article.
Thank you for your comment. As we've shown as a species, we're hazardous to ourselves *and others*. We must change our ways.
Delete