Animal Envy

by Ralph Nader

  Parrot Talk

  Earlier, in the envy section, animals had lamented their inability to communicate as fully as humans. Now, as the TRIAD concentrated on presenting animal abilities, they realized this thought needed a little tweaking, so they brought on an animal who actually could say a lot more in human speech than humans gave him credit for.

  Along came a green-rumped parrotlet, not the most exciting plumage, but adorable nevertheless. This one was the size of a parakeet and lived on a parrot ranch in Venezuela. These parrotlets are pleased to be studied by scientists there who have arranged over a hundred artificial boxes in which they can nest and raise their fledglings just off the ground. As the parrotlet prepared to speak, owners of captive parrots displayed special fascination. Since the days of ancient Greece, humans have captured and bred parrots that are smart, with exceptional memories, and who, of course, have this unique ability to mimic human words and phrases. Some, like Alex, the famous African gray parrot, who was studied for three decades, have shown that in captivity, they can use words in the correct context.

  “I know how you teach our captive siblings in your cages a few words, some bad words, to repeat all the time as if we, free or captive, do not have a mind and voice of our own. You are mistaken. Our calls, vocal mimicry you call it, are intricate. They serve many purposes such as negotiating flock separations and mergers. We learn these calls; they are not genetically programmed. We have complex societies, imitate each other, even have dialects. Our contact calls are so fast, your ears can’t hear the variations. We give our chicks contact calls, just as you humans give your children names. The person who knows most about us is Karl Berg of Cornell University. He says that we can be the best animal model for understanding how you humans acquire speech. ‘Like human infants, parrots are born dumb and utterly helpless, and have extended dependent childhoods and relatively large brains. Also like humans, parrots hit a key developmental milestone when they begin to learn their “names.” There’s a moderate convergence between parrots and humans.’

  “Far away in a large San Diego home, the owner had built an intricate aerial home for two large Amazonian macaw parrots—one of the largest open-air domestic cages in the country. I was lucky to be able to talk to them with our new technology. I was ashamed by what I found. Living with humans had dumbed them down. I told these macaws about all the words I can say.

  “‘Who cares,’ said one to the other. ‘I’m just waiting for our master to upgrade this place. All he has taught us are twenty words and we greet him every day with . . . “You’re the boss, you’re the boss.” He likes that a lot, especially after he’s lost a case in court. As long as we lay an egg every two years, he’s happy.’”

  That segment had gotten a good laugh and the Owl sensed that the grumbling doubts about the TALKOUT’s authenticity were receding. She advised the Elephant and the Dolphin to continue the planned program.

  The Wolf’s Words

  Having established the intelligence of some animals as far as their abilities and societies, it was time to link these skills to the bigger ecological picture.

  The Owl chose to resume dramatically. She introduced the wolf. Thousands of Western ranchers pricked up their ears.

  “I am the wolf, probably the most misunderstood and hated big mammal in North America. That is why our numbers are down drastically. Mama wolves are losing interest in raising their cubs. Our wolf packs face elimination. We have become more aware of our plight and our dwindling habitat. There are only a few thousand of us left. Without our natural habitats where our customary prey lives, we sometimes hunt your cows and sheep but not very often. The ranchers then want your lawmakers to allow them open season with high-powered rifles and even helicopters. We are helpless. Let me make the case for wolves taken right out of your own ecological knowledge of our ways and impact. I am not going talk about our many skills but about our significant place in any natural system we inhabit.

  “Your greatest environmentalist, Dr. Barry Commoner, wrote that the first rule of ecology is ‘everything is connected to everything else.’ Look how we wolves are connected to so much that you hold dear.

  “Each creature plays a role in creating and maintaining the complex ecosystems we all live in. But carnivores are most often the head engineers that keep systems in balance. Without carnivores, ecosystems have a tendency to collapse.

  “The gray wolves of Yellowstone, for example, helped regulate elk populations, which in turn protected young plants like cottonwood saplings from overgrazing. But wolves were systematically hunted down in Yellowstone and disappeared from the park in 1926. Seventy years later, the ecosystem was collapsing: the elk population had exploded; young trees rarely made it to adulthood; birds, bugs, and other small animals had to compete for space; and soil was rapidly eroding, clouding streams and damaging fish habitat.

  “In 1995, biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began reintroducing wolves to the park. About ten years later, Oregon State University conducted studies to measure the health of the ecosystem. They found a direct correlation between the reintroduction of wolves and the recovery of Yellowstone’s nearly extinct cottonwoods. With wolves back, elk were less likely to forage in the open streamside areas, giving seedlings time to grow. With more cottonwoods and willows surviving, fewer areas suffered soil erosion, and birds, insects, fish, and other creatures benefitted from a larger variety of habitats for nesting and foraging. Park managers used wolves to help them restore habitats essential for the survival of hundreds of species.”

  The wolf added: “It’s not just about us. The same could be said about the buffalo and the ecosystem of the sprawling grasslands in the upper Midwest or how critical beavers are for watersheds.

  “One added plea if I can indulge in some myth busting. We do not attack humans. You can count on the fingers of your hands the number of humans killed by our wolves over the past century. Yet we are used as a symbol for the most violent of your thoughts and folklore, though there are some exceptions in your stories, such as intimate tales of wolf families raising a lost boy infant.

  “Please take us for what we are and can do for you, being natural environmentalists who may cost you a few cattle due to loss of our habitat yet bring you far more employment in the tourist industry by attracting happy city children and their parents to ‘watch the wolves.’”

  By now the Dolphin was feeling uneasy. The wolf had expanded the argument to point to the need for different species to keep the ecosystem in balance, that was the topic he said he would be focusing on, but then—you know how impetuous a wolf can be—he got into special pleading, even, implicitly, impugning fairy tales like “Red Riding Hood.” Certainly, he was telling hard truths, but the Dolphin didn’t think humans were ready for that yet. The Dolphin’s magnificent sensitivity and empathy let him realize and convey to the Owl and the Elephant that humans were starting to think they were being lectured to by self-serving animals using human knowledge to make their case.

  “What’s this,” said one human watcher, “the Discovery Channel in reverse?”

  The Dolphin advised they get off the “hard stuff ”—that is, reportage of scientific facts about the intelligence and ecological importance of animals—and get a bit touchy-feely, telling humans what their lives are like, where they live, how they fight for survival and raise the next generation. Being a subtle inhabitant of the ocean depths, the Dolphin believed that the best points can be made indirectly. After all, they were speaking to the human race and its big brains! Enough of them would get the point of the need for restoration or what the most alert of them call “re-wilding.” Seeing how animals interact in their environment would show both the need for keeping these natural habitats intact and the danger of tampering with them. To counteract the negative impressions created by the wolf, the Elephant thought about starting off big. She realized that humans loved disaster movies and stories about calamities, so bring on the Chernobyl beaver!

  The TALKOUT Gets
Touchy-feely

  Humans remember the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine in 1986. Then they forgot that 110 square miles are now an exclusion zone, completely depopulated of human beings, with empty houses and other buildings hauntingly disintegrating. The famous talk show host Phil Donahue took his crew there, at some risk, to show millions of his viewers what the blown-open reactor could do to human habitation. The Chernobyl beaver brought the situation up to date.

  “I am a radioactive Chernobyl beaver, and there are plenty of us now that human predators cannot come around to destroy us. With several hundred thousand people evacuated—not counting those who have died the slow death from radiation poisoning—we beavers have had a paradise of freedom. The deadly engineering of Soviet-style collective agriculture we have now undone. We have restored one of Europe’s great marshlands, according to your film Radioactive Wolves. Yes, there are radioactive wolves, eagles who build nests in abandoned fire towers, dormice that pick their way through trapless ruins. Yes, the animals of Chernobyl are thriving when they aren’t dying. Radioactive levels in the bones of animal carcasses are so hot they shouldn’t be touched with bare human hands, say your naturalists who visit once in a while.

  “You may say that our animal life, not being bothered by the radioactivity, demonstrates how much lower an order of sentient life we embody. You would be having cancer epidemics, nervous breakdowns, and panic if you had been living here since 1986. OK, what we don’t know—until the apps came—can’t bother us. We take each day one at a time and now we know that we are a rare laboratory for your study of living organisms existing in a nuclear-toxic zone. The larger lesson may be what we can do for you if you just let us alone. Enjoy the marshlands!”

  The beaver didn’t simply exit the stage. He waved on his cousin, a beaver from a U.S. forest, who wanted to say a few words for his un-radiated fellows. “In the past you humans have completely misunderstood us. Your early colonists viewed our dams as major nuisances, impeding river traffic. Moreover, in North America we were slaughtered as ruthlessly as the buffalo to make fur coats and charming hats. Our numbers were depleted so they fell from in the tens of millions to a recovering six million at present.

  “Now, when scientists have finally begun to appreciate us, beaver experts are seeing how beneficial our free services are to the ecosystem. One academic report notes that we beavers are a major defender against ‘the withering effects of a warmer and drier climate.’ You humans have further discovered that we ‘raise the water table alongside a stream, aiding the growth of trees and plants that stabilize the banks and prevent erosion. They improve fish and wildlife habitat and promote new, rich soil.’

  “Furthermore, it’s being recognized that in the dry western United States, we are ‘hold[ing] back water that would otherwise drain away.’ Seeing all these good things we provide, you humans should want to attract us to various locations. As our admirer, scientist Jeff Burrell, has written, ‘We can spend a lot of money doing this work, or we can use beavers for almost nothing.’ This is just the point the TRIAD has been making to you humans.”

  Those two beavers left humans plenty to chew on.

  Sex and the Single Sow

  The pig got the next call. That last sensational topic had been rather depressing, so the pig was going to talk about the next favorite topic of the human public, right after disasters: sex. This would be much less threatening. She would build up to it slowly, and would remember to watch her words, having been cautioned by the Dolphin to stay away from the topic of pork chops, that is, factory-farmed pigs, which she might mention in passing but not dwell on.

  “I am a pig. I know you humans have given that word many meanings to describe some of your worst attributes: gluttony, greed, filthy habits, cruelty to the weak and powerless. I know that if I really had those attributes, I couldn’t control myself, and I would be giving you graphic descriptions of how we feel so cramped when we are fattened for slaughter that we can scarcely turn around in some industrial farms. We wonder sometimes why we were born other than to be chopped up and eaten. Just imagine how a young pet pig feels walking with its master past a butcher shop featuring ham hocks on sale.

  “But I’m not going to talk about that. I want to mention some other connections we have to human animals. Recently, your animal scientists have made discoveries about us. We are deemed quite intelligent. Our biology is good enough to be used to repair your bodies. And now you are starting to clone us for medical restoration of your bodies, so-called zootic transfers of entire organs such as pig kidney transplants.

  “Even so, you might be a little more careful about your exuberance here, changing the nature of nature has what you call ‘unintended consequences.’ Presently millions of our piglets are dying from a mysterious deadly virus and the carcasses are sometimes buried near shallow groundwater used for drinking by humans.

  “But I digress. I am here to speak of bestiality. I am a female pig in Germany. Humans have made advances to me and other sows. It has gotten so out of hand that the Bundesrat has voted to criminalize ‘using an animal for personal sexual activities’ with fines as high as thirty-four thousand dollars, as was reported in the New York Times. There is a big debate with zoophiles arguing that ‘as pair partners,’ we ‘are perfectly capable of expressing whether or not [we] desire sex.’ The law says that they are forcing us to ‘behave in ways that are inappropriate to [our] species.’ So, it’s not just pigs with whom the zoophiles want to copulate; it is any number of different animals that catch their fancy, including great danes. I may be speaking for more than the pigs when I say that we are not free to express our desires.

  “First we are under total coercion, sensing what might happen if we persist to resist. After all, what are they raising us for anyhow? Second, there is no attraction there, no matter what the aggressor looks like. And they dare to call themselves zoophiles. Zoos to us are prisons. Please listen to the animal kingdom. There are signs among you humans toward normalizing animal contacts, buggery, sodomy. Where are your veterinarians?

  “The way I see it, this sexual fascination some humans feel for animals is no more than a perverted version of real, platonic affection that naturally appears when humans and subhuman animals live in close contact.

  “This purer love was brought to my attention by recent articles by two accomplished writers, who went into emotionally intimate details about singles who lived for many years with animals, one a riveting, possessive owl named Mumble and the other an intuitively alert, jealous, self-regarding cat. Shall we say that those two animals occupied a major part of the humans’ life at home?

  “Here is what the Marie cat lover wrote in the New York Times: ‘I lived with the same cat for 19 years—by far the longest relationship of my adult life.’ He admitted to several casual affairs with women, in front of his cat. ‘Under common law, this cat was my wife. I fell asleep at night with the warm, pleasant weight of the cat on my chest. The first thing I saw on most mornings was the foreshortened paw of the cat retreating slowly from my face and her baleful crescent glare informing me that it was Cat Food Time. As I often told her, in a mellow, resonant, Barry White voice: ‘There is no luuve . . . like the luuve that exists . . . between a man . . . and his cat.’

  “Mr. Kreider fed our imaginations when he described how ‘I loved to bury my nose in her fur when she came in from a winter day and inhale deeply of the Coldcat Smell.’ There are many ways to make love without penetration, you should know.

  “Wait and see. Your legal scholars are making great headway in arguing that animals—at least mammals—should have legal personhood, which would give them legal rights. The first cases are entering the courts with primates as plaintiffs. The animal care and protection business will, of course, be very supportive of any prospects of profits when siding with the mammals. Already states are considering allowing pets to be buried with their owners. Mark my word, multispecies weddings are on the way, regardless of our own preferences to stay wi
th our kin. I, the pig, rest my case.”

  A collective gasp rose from a viewing mass of humans who had not heard of these developments.

  A horse, who also believed in platonic feelings between humans and subhumans, but didn’t take it to the extreme that the pig did, pranced forward. She gained immediate attention due to her noble bearing and glossy coat. Some viewers thought they recognized her.

  “I am Rachel Alexandra, the first filly in eighty-five years to win the Preakness Stakes. My racing days are over—too soon I think—but that is not my decision. I am now what my masters call ‘a foundation mare,’ or what to me is a foal factory. There has to be more to life than just making babies.

  “Please allow me to speak about a very sensitive subject, which the pig introduced. Look how far those humans have progressed in the hearts of their fellow human beings with normal man/woman instincts. The advance of tolerance and understanding of formerly condemned and attacked relationships brings me to my subject, now entering open controversy in Germany. As the pig has already mentioned, following months of debate, the German Parliament has passed an amendment criminalizing ‘using an animal for personal sexual activities or making them available to third parties for sexual activities and thereby forcing them to behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species.’

  “Zoophiles object, saying that their relationships with their pets or ‘partners’ are fully mutual. The group Zoophilic Engagement for Tolerance and Enlightenment argues that animals are perfectly capable of indicating whether they like this kind of sex. Zoophilia is seen as the final stage of the sexual liberation movement.

  “You see I love Brent. When I was very sick after giving birth to my filly, Brent sat outside my Stall 13 for fifteen hours a day. He groomed me, walked me, fed me, gave me my medication, and even checked my Facebook page. My affection for Brent was noticed by the New York Times whose reporter, Melissa Hoppert, wrote that I ‘had a bit of a big crush on Brent,’ according to Dr. Bonnie Barr, a physician at the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital. Brent Comer finds her ‘totally inspiring,’ with a great will to live. My last foal was so complicated with my illness that it probably ended my ability to produce another offspring at the famous Stone Street Farm. When I saw Brent, he ‘was in tears.’ When I returned from the hospital, my heart went out to him. If it is totally a matter of both of us being in love, what’s wrong with making love to one another if that should happen? What’s wrong with, dare I say it, being married? Who does it hurt? Can we at least discuss multispecies relationships?