The Human Animal (Animals)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 02, 2010, 17:49 (5287 days ago)

I'm reopening this thread (the earlier one is on Page 4 of the forum,) because of a new book, reviewed in The Guardian, entitled Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals by Jonathan Balcombe. Apparently we kill 50 billion animals a year for food, and 100 million are killed annually in American laboratories. Each of these animals, the author reminds us, was "a sentient being". -It will come as no surprise to some of us that Balcombe "finds strong evidence for compassion, cooperation, altruism, empathy, intelligence and communication" in animals. Chickens apparently have 30 different calls concerning food and predators, while prairie dogs have at least 100, including different terms for humans with or without guns. He recounts the delightful tale of a dolphin at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi. The dolphins have been trained to clean their pools of litter. "Kelly has found her own way to trick the system: when a piece of paper falls into her pool, she sneaks it to the bottom and tucks it under a rock. When she sees a human trainer, she tears off a scrap, takes it to the surface and gets a snack in exchange, leaving the rest of the paper for next time."-I don't know of anyone who has studied animals and not come to the same conclusion regarding their sentience. Regardless of the chance v. design debate, the anatomical, social and mental links we have with our fellow animals seem to me to provide living evidence of the evolutionary chain. They should also shame us into rethinking our whole attitude towards other creatures. The argument that "they are different from us, don't speak our language, don't feel things as we do", has been used throughout history to justify man's inhumanity to man, and it's still used both for that purpose and as a justification for man's callousness towards beasts. -Coincidentally, I came upon a similar sentiment the other day on a Buddhist website:-From Lectures on Kamalashila's Stages of Meditation in the Middle Way School by Kenchen Thrangu Rinpoche:-"Generally, everyone feels compassion, but the compassion is flawed. In what way? We measure it out. For instance, some feel compassion for human beings but not for animals and other types of sentient beings. Others feel compassion for animals and some other types of sentient beings but not for humans. Others, who feel compassion for human beings, feel compassion for the human beings of their own country but not for the human beings of other countries. Then, some feel compassion for their friends but not for anyone else. Thus, it seems that we draw a line somewhere. We feel compassion for those on one side of the line but not for those on the other side of the line. We feel compassion for one group but not for another. That is where our compassion is flawed. What did the Buddha say about that? It is not necessary to draw that line. Nor is it suitable. Everyone wants compassion, and we can extend our compassion to everyone."