Animal Envy

by Ralph Nader

  The animal kingdom was saddened as they learned about the plight of the locusts. To them pesticides were equivalent to genocides in the human world’s language. What were the crimes of the locusts? They were simply searching for forage or they would die.

  Humans Witness How Animals Negotiate

  Among Themselves

  For the first time in the TALKOUT the framework of reference between humans and the animal kingdom had become miles and miles apart. To humans, locusts were aerial vermin, so far down the ladder of sentient creatures as to be subjected to total elimination if possible. The locust’s testimony had done nothing to change that. To the animal kingdom, the locust was part of nature’s web with no evil intent; it was all about survival and reproduction. They were herbivores, not carnivores.

  The TRIAD was perplexed and called a brief recess. They couldn’t very well defend animals who were eating humans’ carefully tended food. They talked this over, on secure channels, with their animal associates. The Owl suggested that they express concern about the plight of the locusts but admit that there is little anyone in the animal world who can reach humans can do to go to the locusts’ defense in a persuasive way. Not a chance. The Elephant was advised to inform the locust that its species will survive such devastations, has for thousands of years, and they just have to live, or die, with this peril to their swarms. After all, the animals of nature devour one another but rarely to extinction; life goes on as many are fallen for dinner.

  Returning from the recess, the TRIAD related their private conversation to everyone on the planet. The locust, informed of the historical evolution of its species’ rise, fall, rise and fall, seemed to understand, and was given a potato leaf to munch on before flying back to its swarm.

  Millions of humans, watching with dropped jaws this interaction between higher forms of mammals and a locust, saw the wisdom of the TRIAD expressed under exceptional visibility as they handled the locusts’ unanticipated entrance on their stage.

  Not that this totally eliminated humans’ uneasiness. The Owl was pondering what they could do to rebound in the ratings. For the majority of human viewers had no empathy for the locusts and were even offended by the locust spokesbug’s (according to talk show host Rush Limburger) “unkempt appearance.”

  Shark in a Coal Mine

  Time to call out one of the big guns. The Dolphin decided to really excite the human audience and introduced the great white shark. The Nielsen ratings went off the charts. The imperious magnificence of the King of Sharks spoke for itself. Out of the four hundred species of shark, including the dwarf lantern shark, which is six inches long, this is NUMERO UNO. Humans have enveloped this species in deadly folklore—for shark attacks are exceedingly rare, around a dozen fatalities a year worldwide.

  “I am what you humans call the great white shark. I come from the war zone you have created in the vast oceans that have taken the lives of over seventy million sharks a year, not to eat, but to cut off our fins, which add nothing to the taste or flavor of something called shark fin soup. You cut off our fins and throw us back into the ocean where we promptly drown. If nothing else, you should not waste such protein.

  “I know you want to hear my story, ’cause you have a zillion TV shows about my activities. But now you are going to hear it right from the fish’s mouth, First, a little perspective. We’ve been around one hundred fifty million years; you’ve been around as Homo sapiens for some two hundred thousand years. You may outlive us if you continue to extinguish us, but odds are you won’t rack up two hundred fifty thousand, the way you are going. To reverse course you simply cannot continue to demonize us. Our genetic makeup and how we navigate and serve the oceans can teach you much.

  “At the risk of titillating you—and why not, you’ve given us much of your attention time—let me pick one example. Our sex life. First the dull part. Did you know that we are capable of asexual reproduction? In cases where males and females cannot get together, the female shark can deliver virgin births. It’s happened in your watery prisons (aquariums you call them) when the female sharks are isolated from males.

  “When we do get together to mate, as one writer put it, ‘the business is “very rough.”’ We males bite or corner the females during courtship. Marine biologists have learned to tell when a female has been mating. Her skin will be seared or bleeding.

  “At mating time, females will sit in shallow water with their ‘vaginas’ pressed to the sea floor. Roving males still succeed in inserting what you call their claspers, or penis. These sharks have two penises behind their pelvic fins. Now comes the shocker, so I’ll quote one of your closest observers of shark sex: ‘A litter of fifty pups will have anything from two to seven fathers . . . [Also] a number of shark species go in for oophagy, or uterine cannibalism. Sand tiger foetuses “eat each other in utero, acting out the harshest form of sibling rivalry imaginable.” Only two babies emerge, one from each of the mother shark’s uteruses; the survivors have eaten everything else. “A female sand tiger gives birth to a baby that’s already a meter long and an experienced killer,” explains [expert] Demian Chapman.’

  “You can see just a glimmer of what you may want to study about us, especially our ability to detect parts per billion at long distances. From mutual interest, you need to know that we do not like your body for our meals. You have bones. We go for cartilage like a fat seal or sea lion, not a bony human. Most attacks on you by us are mistaken identities. That’s why we spit you out. We’re high in testosterone but we’re also easily frightened. Encounter us and start banging on our snouts to send us away, however temporarily.

  “We are not just startling the curious. We have an important role to play as early warning systems. Journalist Juliet Eilperin gave us meaning in her book Demon Fish. As the London Review of Books says, ‘Sharks [are] the canary in the coalmine. They reveal a great deal about the ocean: “how it functions, and why it is now in peril.” A pristine marine environment, certainly in the tropics, will be swarming with sharks; they help to keep mid-level predators in check, and the whole ecosystem healthy . . . As long-lived predators producing a limited number of offspring, sharks are very vulnerable to collapse due to overfishing . . . Sharks are facing an extinction crisis. That’s causing a jellyfish explosion.

  “Please stop being so scared of us. Don’t let writers of movies make more money the more they can terrify you. Jawbone Jaws for both our sakes.”

  Given the feverish pitch of interest in the white shark, it was satisfying to the TRIAD that the commentary from humans was actually sympathetic. They had no idea that they were the killers of tens of millions of sharks for a ‘tasteless noodle-like cartilage’ known as the shark’s fin. For decades, Mao Tse Tung called shark fin soup a bourgeois value and banned it, becoming the shark’s best friend.

  Canary’s Turn

  The Elephant immediately sensed a double-downing opportunity and introduced a real life metaphor:

  A bird flew up and assumed a place on a wooden perch. “I am a literal canary in a coal mine—a small, old one—in Kentucky. (Note, the new, automated mines have detectors and the coal companies don’t want to be bothered with maintaining and carrying us down the shafts.) We canaries in the coal mines have never been able to tell our story. Until now. Tens of thousands of canaries have given their lives to be an early alert system when the deadly gases reach levels that are lethal for us but not yet for the miners. Of course, coal miners have also lost their lives for the profit of companies and their executives in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and London. Over four hundred fifty thousand lost lives, due to lung diseases and mine collapses, is the estimate since 1890, or about the number of Americans lost in World War II. Their widows and children mourn them.

  “Who mourns us? Yet we filled an important life-saving function. When we droop, the miners get the hell out of that mine before the gases overcome them. It is precisely because you knew something about the level of gas lethal to us but not yet to humans that you were able to
use us for your humanitarian purposes.

  “The knowledge of the animal kingdom helping is true in our case. Moreover, the modern environmental movement has turned us into a metaphor for any deteriorating ecological conditions that provide an early alert signal for humans to wake up. The decline in frog species is just the latest use of comparing those creatures to a “canary in the coal mine,” except now the “coal mine” is the planet.

  “The miners cared for us to a degree that could not be exaggerated. That was because their fate was intertwined with ours. If we are fit enough to do our job—and not droop for other than gaseous causes—they can feel safer while they are working and not have to totally rely on the mine’s bosses above ground for warnings concerning the crucial time of escape. Also they love us because in the cruel, dark, dank underground mines—that nonminers have no clue about as they use their electricity—we remind them of the ‘cool green Earth’ and colorful birds flitting and chirping through the trees. Enough about us, Elephant—over to you.”

  Menhaden As Canary

  The Elephant didn’t know much about the sea but after the Dolphin whispered in his ear, he agreed to let the overlooked menhaden, a small fish, take the mike. The fish was justly complaining that the great white shark had gone “overboard” in self-promotion. The menhaden brought forward claims that he, not the shark, was most often labeled the sea’s canary in a coalmine.

  The chief of the menhaden was not in a conciliatory mood. “We’re tired of just being around to be eaten by the larger fish, who get all the attention and defense of the ocean conservationists. ‘Save the sharks,’ ‘Rescue the dolphins,’ ‘Protect the whales,’ even ‘Recover the cod,’ are the cries that are repeated everywhere to humans. But never do they say that we, the menhadens, are the most critical fish in the ocean, because we’re the ones that eat the plankton, and without us as food, you can kiss both your marine mammals and sea birds goodbye.

  “Also, we are what you humans call the ‘canary bird in the mine,’ only in our case, we’re the canary bird in the ocean, the authentic ones. Because as the climate changes and warms, due to humans’ combustibles, there are fewer plankton and so there are fewer menhaden. Our numbers are already going down around Antarctica and so the larger fish are decreasing.

  “We demand respect for our small silvery selves—not only for our survival ego—but for the whole chain of species’ survival that relies on us. We want public recognition, commemorative events, instruction to youngsters in schools, and all kinds of graphics showing us as the capstone species from below. We, the menhaden, want to be a major reason given for replacing fossil fuels and adopting the sun, yes the sun, which gets us started by photosynthesizing our own food. We, the menhaden, want a global ‘Save the Menhaden Day’ with music, banners, buttons and human celebrities, parades, replicas of ourselves (no ‘fish fries’ please) and all behind an agenda of aquatic salvation starting with the plankton and then the menhaden.”

  The great white shark was muttering, “Never gonna happen.”

  While the pollsters were telling the TRIAD that what the humans took for the hubris of the menhaden—humans were often more aware of a speaker’s attitude than whether his or her message was significant—was quite a turnoff.

  The Dolphin told his cohorts that he had set up a team to look for some of the funnier animals. The anteater, seahorse, and hummingbird had been holding stand-up auditions. Maybe now was the time to bring out a segment produced by one of their better jokesmiths.

  Gull Humor

  The gulls had a report that would delicately poke fun at humans while allowing them to get a few grievances off their feathered breasts.

  The report came from one of the gulls swarming around the parking lot of a giant shopping mall in Waterbury, Connecticut. It seems that the gulls—far from sea but enjoying the droppings of shoppers and their children—noted police hustling away a dozen demonstrators with placards urging Walmart to pay their one million workers the inflation-adjusted equivalent of the 1968 minimum wage, or $10.50 an hour.

  The seagull appeared in the screen: “We gulls could not wait to tell you humans that we are more privileged scurrying and fluttering around in the shopping mall than you humans with all your asserted constitutional rights. Under Connecticut law, shopping malls are considered private property, prohibiting shoppers or visitors from holding signs, demonstrating, protesting, pamphleteering, or petitioning for signatures on any subject. The mall’s owners have a direct police line to get the police over to enforce protesters’ eviction. It didn’t matter that there were only a small number, hardly a dozen people, and that they were keeping away from any internal vehicle traffic or pedestrians going to or coming from their cars at the mall.

  “Now we know you call us ‘birdbrains’ to signify how little you think of our intelligence. But it did not take long for all our seagulls to notice a peculiar double standard, this time to the disadvantage of you humans. Here we are every day, seagulls descending onto this mall in the many dozens. We affect traffic. We and the cars have to keep getting out of each other’s way. We talk freely to one another and make lots of noise together. We let loose our droppings whenever the urge comes. We’re probably lousy with bacteria and vermin. We pay no taxes to subsidize the building or operation of these huge shopping centers. Yet the police leave us alone. Hey, what’s not to like? Some gulls swore that they saw some of the ejected protestors looking back on us with visible envy. In a perverse way, you can be proud of how well you’ve treated us on land, since the quantity of fish was depleted by overfishing and pollution in Long Island Sound. Thank you.”

  The elephant was pleased that the seagull comedian had injected his humor with actual newsiness. Such up-to-theminute reporting tends to hold the audience, especially those used to pressing the off button because of their fascination with violence, sex, and nanosecond action programs.

  Meanwhile the polling of humans was continuing. The cat, even if some of the things he said were downers, had gotten high ratings. A sub-poll had been established to see what animals humans would like to see. Probably because a film version of Swan Lake had recently played around the world, the swan was in big demand.

  Swan Talk

  The Elephant smiled to herself, realizing the swan segment might puncture humans’ romanticized notions of this bird.

  The great female swan with its eight-foot wingspan gracefully moved to center stage, inviting mass murmurs of admiration by humans. One human blogger said the bird symbolized “love, grace and transformation.”

  “You have a noble image of swans,” the bird said. “There are no signs around lakes saying ‘Beware of killer swans.’ We could substitute for your doves of peace.

  “Still, I would like to reveal a little-known side of my species. Get anywhere near us—up to a hundred yards even—during our swan-hatching season and we become fearsomely territorial and protective of our young as you would be in a similar situation. Regardless of intent, you humans come close enough to make us feel threatened—say in a kayak—and suddenly we can surprise you with our ferocity, our speed of attack, and our knowledge as to how to tip you over and drown you. For water is our ally. Our powerful wings and hardened beak can only do so much, assuming you are not armed. But even if you are armed, we are not deterred when you are close to our eggs.”

  Human bloggers quickly dredged up actual reports of drowning caused by attacking swans so that mama swan’s story was given credibility. The point she wanted to make is if you idealize animals—giving certain species just the opposite of the human image of wolves—humans who approach maternally protective animals can be lulled into a false sense of complacency until it is too late. Beware.

  Here was a lesson learned. Ratings plummeted, and this for a show that was created by adhering to humans’ request to hear from swans. Now the TRIAD knew: you can’t give humans what they think they want, not if you are going to reveal aspects of reality that go against their animal stereotypes. The TRIAD argued
about what to do next, stay light or, given the dire straits of the world, press on with other serious topics?

  What Is to Be Done?

  The TRIAD agreed they needed an extensive break before continuing almost helter-skelter toward the hundred-hour allotment of communication to humans. They had something of a plan, but concern with humans’ reaction to what they had been shown and the occurrence of emergencies seemed to be derailing it. It was time to refocus.

  They announced a long weekend respite to reorganize and to determine better what humans wanted and needed to hear. The human feedback to what had transpired had been massively piling up without full review and filtering, notwithstanding the help of many owls, dolphins, and elephants and their trusted friends, three rhinos, two porpoises, and one eagle.

  The consensus of some hard discussion was that there were two things that had to be done in tandem for humans. Stroke their egos and assuage their fears. Each aspect had inherent problems. Too much stroking and the real issues might be forgotten. Too much assuaging, which had to involve revealing the dangers that needed to be addressed, could lead humans back to the swamp of despair. The animals decided the latter danger was greater, so upbeat first.

  Ego Stroking

  The Dolphin, taxed with coming up with something especially life affirming, led with a green sea turtle from Baja California, who would tell his story of rescue and recovery.

  “I am known locally as Tortugas prietas or ‘black turtle.’ My ancestors go back millions of years. In recent decades we have been hunted for our meat and our eggs. Thirty years ago our nests counted twenty-five thousand. Fifteen years later, we were down to less than five hundred nesting females in the midst of habitat devastation, poaching and fishing nets.