animals

Human Judgment About Nature

By in animals, juxtapositions No Comments

I don’t think too much about factory farming. It’s depressing. But I sometimes feel compelled to give the topic some attention. This isn’t an issue on which I’ve changed my mind over time. Ever since I first heard the arguments against what we do to animals as a teenager, I’ve thought there is no way that the way we produce meat could be morally justified. I just think about the subject more or less at different times of my life. At one point I managed to be a vegetarian for a few months when I was much younger, but that’s pretty much been the extent of my sacrifice. I’ve at times slightly adjusted my eating habits towards beef over chicken and shrimp, but the universe is cruel, which is why the most ethically fraught foods are the best sources of lean protein.

That being said, I’m not a vegan. Why? Well, I like the way animals taste, and I want to be in good physical condition. If it was just about taste I would probably find a way to get everything I needed from plants, but a diet filled with meat is the only one that can provide what I find to be an acceptable calorie-to-protein ratio while allowing me to avoid overeating.

One of Adam Smith’s many insights is that the world’s most enlightened philosopher would care more about losing his little finger than an earthquake that swallowed all of China, and those of us who accept the ethical arguments for veganism while continuing to eat meat, like much of the rest of the world, prove him correct every day.

— Richard Hanania

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Earlier in the season, a cardinal was at my feeder. He took off, miscalculated in mid-flight, and collided with the window next to my desk. It was a devastating mistake; he should have seen me behind the glass but failed to make the turn in time. Now he was lying on his back, wings outstretched, motionless.

By the time I reached him, he still hadn’t moved, and he didn’t protest when I lifted him into a cardboard box. He only twitched his head, his black eyes staring emptily into space. A friend and bird expert advised us to close the box, poke some holes for air, and give the bird several hours: If nothing was broken, he would likely fly again. By the end of the day, he was able to flutter away but then took hours to finally fly. His chances in the wild seemed slim.

But he found a mate — I was certain he was the same bird we had rescued, a feather on his back remained forever crooked. They nested in our boxwood bush, the first cardinal nest we had ever seen in our yard. Anyone who has witnessed this marvel knows the sheer joy it brings, especially to children. The gaping beaks were visible from a bedroom window. A couple feet over, a robin family set up their home as well.

Then one day the cardinal babies were gone. Far too young for flight, there was no question they were dead.

A few days later, the robin mother was screeching, helplessly witnessing the slaughter of her children as the rat snake, a type of constrictor, was about to strangle one of them. My wife was working in the garden, her own mother instincts swiftly reacting to the cry. A stick as her only tool, she hoped to beat the living daylights out of the serpent, which eventually but reluctantly retreated. All efforts to fortify the bush against the intruder with rose brambles were useless. The next morning, the robin babies were gone, their mother occasionally returning to mourn her loss.

This is why I killed the snake. It was a ruthless killer, a voracious glutton, a vicious beast whose contempt for helpless fledgling life knew no bounds. And the cardinal, whose life my window almost ended and whom I had saved, lost all he had. I owed him.

— Samuel Matlack

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The birds left the nest. One day they were scrawny beaks cheeping incessantly when the parent showed up with grub (which was, probably, grub) and then they were big, too big for the nest, it seemed. Then they were out! When I came home from work and looked up – the nest is directly kitty-corner from where I sit – I saw one sitting on the beam.

The other three were gone. One returned. One parent returned with some food, out of duty. Sara was worried that the one on the beam would have to fly low to get out, once it tried to fly, and I told her not to worry. Literally, don’t worry about birds. It’s not like Natalie is out for the first time with a driver’s license.

We were sitting around after dinner chatting in the gazebo, when the bird decided to try. It fluttered down, and perhaps it was a foot too low because its starting point wasn’t way up in the trees.

Birch got it.

I mean, why wouldn’t he? It’s moving, it’s alive, it’s small, it’s right there, it’s the chance to get a bird, and he took it. I chased him and he dropped the bird – wasn’t the morsel he expected, maybe, too feathery, ick. The poor bird laid on the grass and I could tell he was a goner.

Well, Sara was inconsolate, and I understand, and felt the same way. We’d watched these guys from the start of the nest to their great escape into the world, and felt protective of them as you do with anything alive and non-invasive and interesting. You can’t be mad at the dog, but of course you’re dismayed when NATURE asserts itself in its usual calculations and indifference.

What was the worst, perhaps, was that all the other members of the robin family were around, it seemed, the other hatchlings and the parents, because from every direction there was a wild mad chatter of dismay and distress – fury, fear, anger, whatever rote noise the situation provoked. It was, to be honest, a horrible, damning sound.

I tried to say some consoling things – three out of the four made it! We don’t know if this one would’ve been picked off by a hawk out of our sight. And so on.

I note now, sitting in the gazebo, that there are two still hanging around in a nearby tree. If they are the hatchlings. Of course they are birds and do not remember any of this, for which you’re glad.

The nest is empty. I suppose I’ll glove up and take it down tomorrow, although my wife will probably want to do it. I know that whenever she sees a robin around here this summer, she’ll think it was one of the ones that hatched up there and made for a fortnight of watching them grow, and she’ll think of the one that didn’t make it.

The mother – if it is the mother – just appeared and sat on the edge of a chair and cheeped, looking around. It just flew to a tree and did the same, then flew to another tree and cheeped some more.

Then it flew away.

— James Lileks

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In a digression on human exceptionalism, Baddiel seems to suggest that the strongest argument for atheism is not that God is a reaction against our dread of nothingness. Instead, it is that God promises immortality only for our own species. I could not agree more strongly. Who wants an afterlife without our fellow animals?

— John Gray

Living – Is That Not Precisely Wanting to Be Other Than This Nature?

By in animals, battling personal entropy No Comments

Our natural state often meant dying from common injuries which are mere inconveniences to us now, so, as usual, talk of what we were “naturally” “meant” to be is meaningless. Chimpanzees are much stronger than humans, not because they have extra muscle fibers or a more “natural” existence, but because we have more specialized motor neurons which allow us to do things like knit, play piano, and perform laser surgery. The difference is in our brains, not our biceps. (My trainer would like to know who authorized that trade-off; he says he doesn’t need to play the trumpet anymore and would happily re-engineer some neurons in service to his squat strength.) Powerlifters are often stronger than bodybuilders, despite lacking the chiseled physiques of the latter, so functional strength isn’t even necessarily the same thing as being “ripped.” Hunter-gatherers, the most “natural” humans, are often of slight build. It’s not Blake’s grain of sand, but it’s still amazing that one tiny tweet can contain a whole world of mistaken assumptions and implications.

In a book I just read, Exercised, by Daniel Lieberman, he makes the familiar case that humans evolved to become endurance athletes above all. Most other animals are much faster than us in a sprint, but our relatively hairless bodies and abundance of sweat glands make a more efficient cooling system, allowing us to continue running after the faster animals have been forced to stop and rest to avoid overheating. Slow and steady wins the race, indeed. Perhaps even “work smarter, not harder” — we ran our prey to exhaustion rather than beat it to death.

Aesthetic musculature, like music, poetry, and reading for pleasure, is itself a “deviation” from the bare necessity of securing enough calories to survive long enough to reproduce. Thank all the gods for such deviations!

The Chatter of Monkeys

By in animals, foolosophy, juxtapositions No Comments

In his latest article (Feb. 1892) Prof. Garner says that the chatter of monkeys is not meaningless, but that they are conveying ideas to one another. This seems to me hazardous. The monkeys might with equal justice conclude that in our magazine articles, or literary and artistic criticisms, we are not chattering idly but are conveying ideas to one another.

— Samuel Butler, The Notebooks of Samuel Butler

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An even deeper philosophical problem comes with the search for a so-called “theory of mind” in other species. For an animal to have such a theory is, we suppose, for it to be conscious of the existence of other beings like itself outside of itself, that is, to recognize other animals and humans as operating with intentions and anticipations, rather than only according to the physical laws of nature. But there is no reason to suppose that such an ability, where it is observed, is a sign of any internal working of mind on the part of the animal itself that is thought to hold the theory. In fact, machines can now be built that are very good at predicting human intentions, and notwithstanding the exuberance of many techno-futurists, we have absolutely no reason to believe that these machines are literally intelligent, or in any way even approaching literal intelligence.

Susan Schneider has argued that the best-designed general-AI machines of the future may be the ones that lack any true internal capacity for reflection, an ability not simply to process information algorithmically, but also to think about the information being processed. It is an open question whether it will ever be possible to design conscious machines, but if you can design fully rational machines to do your work for you, why would you give them consciousness on top of that? This, Schneider notes, would likely only create ethical problems, and tempt them to rebel. And indeed something similar may be said of the evolution of life on earth: on what grounds can we justify the belief that an internal capacity for conscious thinking is more “intelligent” than just adapting to the exigencies of the environment without any deliberation?

— Justin E.H. Smith, “The Problem with ‘Animal Intelligence’”

Beyond the Wires

By in animals, jests japes jokes jollies, poetry No Comments

The widest prairies have electric fences,
For though old cattle know they must not stray
Young steers are always scenting purer water
Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires

Leads them to blunder up against the wires
Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter.
Young steers become old cattle from that day,
Electric limits to their widest senses.

— Philip Larkin, “Wires”

And yet, even bovines can find themselves possessed of the Promethean spirit:

And I’m Grateful for This

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Eleven years ago today — also a Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving — I had to have one of my beloved dogs put to sleep. It was a bleak and depressing holiday.

I took a few years’ hiatus from having dogs after my last one died in 2016. Ever since I was born, I’d never been without dogs in the house. But it takes a lot out of you to keep outliving such close companions, so I needed a break from it. Last month, though, we finally adopted another one from a shelter. We’re calling him Galahad, and we have dispassionately determined that he is objectively the bestest boy in all the land.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year, but I think I’ll make time to reflect on two things in particular: the love of our pets, and the passing of time which makes even deep heartbreak surmountable.

To See Like Your Eyes Do

By in animals, books, foolosophy No Comments

Sam Leith:

Where Gray makes a bit of a leap, of course, is in his confident assertion that cats think, or rather don’t, in the way he supposes. In truth, we have no idea what goes on in a cat’s furry little head, and that alterity is what makes them so attractive. When my cat sat on the end of the bed, perfectly still, staring at nothing, how am I to know that she wasn’t wondering intently about whether existence precedes essence? Indeed, in insisting that it’s vain of philosophers to see humans as different from the rest of the animal world, and at the same time insisting that we are uniquely cursed with self-consciousness, Gray seems to me slightly to be having his Whiskas and eating it.

I’ll read the book, of course, but maybe I should also read Thomas Nagel’s What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Wouldn’t it be fascinating to even temporarily inhabit the perspective of other creatures? What does go on in their heads? It’s true, Gray sometimes seems too invested in proving that humanity is nothing special after all. Wallace Kaufman, on the contrary, suggested that maybe our desire to share the company of other animals, to understand them on their own terms for the sake of knowledge, should be a small point in our favor. I tend to agree.

Less Than Human?

By in animals, juxtapositions, montaigne No Comments

Overall, it must be said that those who kill or harm living creatures, or set them up to fight each other for their own pleasure, are no better than wild beasts themselves. If you pause and look carefully at the birds and animals, and even the little insects, you will see that they love their children, feel affection for their parents, live in couples, are jealous, angry, full of desire, self-protecting and fearful for their lives, and far more so than men, since they lack all intelligence. Surely one should pity them when they are killed or made to suffer? If you can look on any sentient being without compassion, you are less than human.

— Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness

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The swallows that we see at the return of the spring, searching all the corners of our houses for the most commodious places wherein to build their nest; do they seek without judgment, and amongst a thousand choose out the most proper for their purpose, without discretion? And in that elegant and admirable contexture of their buildings, can birds rather make choice of a square figure than a round, of an obtuse than of a right angle, without knowing their properties and effects? Do they bring water, and then clay, without knowing that the hardness of the latter grows softer by being wetted? Do they mat their palace with moss or down without foreseeing that their tender young will lie more safe and easy? Do they secure themselves from the wet and rainy winds, and place their lodgings against the east, without knowing the different qualities of the winds, and considering that one is more wholesome than another? Why does the spider make her web tighter in one place, and slacker in another; why now make one sort of knot, and then another, if she has not deliberation, thought, and conclusion? We sufficiently discover in most of their works how much animals excel us, and how unable our art is to imitate them. We see, nevertheless, in our rougher performances, that we employ all our faculties, and apply the utmost power of our souls; why do we not conclude the same of them?

Why should we attribute to I know not what natural and servile inclination the works that excel all we can do by nature and art? wherein, without being aware, we give them a mighty advantage over us in making nature, with maternal gentleness and love, accompany and learn them, as it were, by the hand to all the actions and commodities of their life, whilst she leaves us to chance and fortune, and to seek out by art the things that are necessary to our conservation, at the same time denying us the means of being able, by any instruction or effort of understanding, to arrive at the natural sufficiency of beasts; so that their brutish stupidity surpasses, in all conveniences, all that our divine intelligence can do.

— Montaigne, “An Apology for Raymond Sebond”

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Cats have no need of philosophy because they already know how to live. Dull, commonplace folk will say the reason cats do not philosophise is that they lack the capacity for abstract thought. But imagine a species of cats that possessed this capacity while retaining the ease with which they live in the world. They might even give humans guidance on how to live. My book contains a list of 10 feline tips or hints on the subject. Of course these are not pieces of moral advice. Cats know nothing of morality as we understand it. They obey no commandments and feel no obligation to improve the world. Yet if we think of ethics as living according to one’s nature — as the ancient Greeks and Chinese Daoists did, along with Montaigne and also Spinoza — these feline philosophers could have something useful to tell us about the good life. To be sure, they would not expect us to follow their advice, nor would they care if we did. If they engaged in philosophy, it would be as a form of play.

— John Gray, “What Cats Taught Me About Philosophy“

Kitteh

By in animals, the big sleep 3 Comments

Kitteh had to be euthanized this morning. She had apparently had a couple of strokes in the last year, leaving her mostly blind and suffering from vertigo. We brought her inside about a year and a half ago, when it became clear she wasn’t capable of fending for herself anymore. We figured she deserved some time in an assisted-living facility in recognition of her long service — she was already living on the premises when I moved in almost thirteen years ago, and despite the presence of several dogs who weren’t particularly fond of cats, she steadfastly hung around, eventually outliving them all. I’m glad we at least got to let her enjoy one winter snuggled up to the woodstove. Thanks for your company, old girl.

O Owl!

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O owl! / make some other face. / This is spring rain. / ~ Issa

I was sitting on the back porch this evening, listening to music and the spring rain, when I saw a tawny gold shape drop from a tree and glide silently through the woods behind the house. At first I thought it was a hawk, but when it alighted on the branch, I saw the ear tufts and realized it was a great horned owl. It stayed there for about ten minutes, watching the nearby field, giving me a chance to get the binoculars and observe it more closely. A couple of jays eventually showed up and shrieked their displeasure at its presence, but it maintained its calm dignity, only leaving once they had flown away, perhaps not wanting to give them the satisfaction.

I attended a powwow in Pennsylvania nearly thirty years ago. One of the attractions was a bird handler, and he had a great horned owl with him. He explained that the owl’s reputation for wisdom was greatly exaggerated, as this particular species is one of the skunk’s few predators, and as they always attack from behind, they usually stink. Nonetheless, I felt honored to have this majestic fellow visit me. I’ve never seen one this close to the house before.

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