The Animals Strike Back

My friend, Sarah, sent me this link from the Daily Telegraph. To make a long story short, animal attacks are up all over. Crocodiles, elephants, wolves and badgers all have their sights on us. The animal war has begun.

Well.

Much as I like the metaphorical Armageddon, I have this annoying tendency to try for a rational explanation-- presuming, of course, it's not sensationalistic news. I've come up with rational explanations for Superman and Star Wars. How hard can it be?

One of the biggest problems humans have with animals (or with other humans) is to refuse to acknowledge kinship with them. Animals must be inferior and/or different to such a degree that humans and animals cannot be compared.

Humanness lives in the brain. We do have a bigger and more complex brain than our cousins but that makes them no less our relatives. Like our hearts, livers and fingers, much of the construction of our brain is common with rats, dolphins and crocodiles. Even so, it's hard for me to believe they're all plotting common revenge.

I think it's more likely there's a selection here. (I always like to get an evolutionary take on things if possible.) Let's remember that until very, very recently, a lot of these animals were just fodder to us. Elephants were slaughtered by the thousands for their ivory. Crocodiles for their skin. Wolves because they were thought to prey on sheep. Badgers because, well, they're badgers.

This puts a huge selective pressure on these populations to run away from man. Those that did survived. Those that didn't went the way of the dodo-- which, incidentally, had no fear of man.

Then, about a century ago, comes the preservationist movement. Which truly got going about the midpoint of the 20th century and came into strong prominence in the last thirty years. We had selected one way, weeding out those that didn't fear us. Now, we've removed that selective pressure. It wasn't long enough to get established genetically and now those animals that didn't fear us quite so much are back in the population.

Add in to this that there are a whole lot more people than there were. And a lot of them have moved onto the land that's most valuable as far as the animals are concerned.

But something is different now. We've forgotten how dangerous those animals are. We've forgotten the metaphorical wolves that drove fairy tales and legends for the last few thousand years. There's a reason truly bad times are characterized by "the wolf at the door". There really was a wolf. And it would come into your house and eat you unless you kept it at bay.

Now, I have no problem imagining a sophisticated animal as an elephant, wolf or whale making the connection that 1) humans are bad news and 2) they're not slaughtering in the same way they used to. An elephant twigging to this new state of affairs might well attack a lorrie or destroy a village. They've done it before.

Unless we're willing to go back to our slaughterer's ways, we're going to have to cut them some slack and, what's even harder, give them some room. Time to quit going down to snuggle the sharks, bundle the bears and tickle the tigers. Let them be wild animals. Let them roll back into our nightmares and remind us what it was once like to fear the dark. It's time for us to grow up and quit pretending we live in a Disney paradise. Let them be terrible and let us leave them alone.

Because we're more terrible.

-------------------------------------------------------
Eat 'Roo and Save the Planet
Anniversary of the original Fat Lady
Chilly Plastics
Possible rejuvenation approach
Carnival of Space #66
Defenses against hurricanes and nuclear bombs
Perseids peak 8/11-8/12
Cassini to take pictures of Enceledus
Snakes, Spiders and Extinction