Animal Envy

by Ralph Nader

  Nothing can stand in their way. All living beings who can, do take flight, no matter how ferocious they may be, such as the jaguar, or predisposed to dine, such as the anteater. These ants devour all plant life and their gigantic collective weight creates sound befitting thunder at the ground level.

  Luckily, a less divisive insect was up next. A centipede came onto the screen. “You’d better not ignore us. Without insects the life of the world would not exist and you know it,” it said, addressing the TRIAD as well as the human audience.

  The centipede stepped aside for the Mediterranean fruit fly who knows humans well since her breed is a prime subject for laboratory experimentation. “OK, I’m just a fruit fly and I know some of what humans do to insects, from sterilization to attractants, to get rid of them. What good has it done you? Backfire, backfire, backfire. You use many times more insecticides than you did in 1940 and you’re losing more crops to insect diners now.

  “And don’t think genetic engineering is the cure. In the fields and in storage our speed of mutation and adaptation is without parallel. You can kill billions of us, but we keep bouncing back. Sometimes you advance ten steps and have to go back due to unknown consequences. You can eradicate the screw-worm fly, but thousands of different insects can take its place in one form or another.

  “Look what you’ve tried,” said the fly, “applications of insect pathogens, parasites, and predators, yet overall, despite some victories and temporary controls, you’re still surrounded by us. Even eradication has consequences when our predators starve.

  “Simple as we are, we are sufficiently multicellular to be similar to analogous tissues in your own species. This is a great convenience for you humans. It means you can genetically manipulate us to identify the genes and pathways that control a certain biological process—such as ovulation—according to your scientists Allan Spradling and Jianjum Sun.

  “Don’t forget,” the fly went on, “in the environment, everything is connected to everything else.” He then buzzed off looking for a ripe, exposed banana.

  Agricultural school professors had to nod at what the fruit fly was saying. For years they have been trying to develop safer methods for using chemosterilants, which have been too hazardous to man and to animals for application outside the laboratories. Imagine, they said to each other, the irony of it all, the brainiest of all species is being fought to a standstill by the least sentient or intelligent of all species.

  Their conversation floated onto the Human Genius apps and somehow reached the insect world. The hubris infuriated them, though it certainly was not meant as such by the academic professors.

  The European corn borer was the next speaker. It has devastated billions of bushels of corn in Europe and in the United States and Canada. “What you humans will never understand, with all your intricate and penetrating research on us, is that you’re constantly outsmarting yourself and giving us new opportunities to live too. The opportunity you gave us corn borers was your foolish monoculture. That was manna from heaven for us. We went up to sixty thousand borers per acre. So you drive us back for a few years and we adjust or some other species moves in to multiply and live. Or you’ll harm the beneficial parasites and predators, which could have destroyed us. Or when you harm us, you’re also harming valuable insects such as bees. Humans, clearly you need a whole new game plan and you need to listen to your smartest ecologists, who are not paid to be so stupid, to obfuscate and to distract.”

  The boll weevil, the spectacular ravager of America’s valuable cotton crop, came to the screen. “You’ve thrown everything you can think of against us and our siblings, the cotton leaf worm and the cotton bollworm, plus other varieties of insects. We admit you’ve diminished our numbers, but you’ve also savagely disrupted the macro and micro environment. We are tens of thousands of species and are omnipresent: underground, in the top soil, sometimes in the air, and all over humans, their abodes, transport and other places. As a boll weevil, I am bloodied but unbowed, resilient and driven. So long as you have cotton, you’ll have me in one degree or another.”

  The weevil crawled away to be replaced by the all-important earthworm, the soil’s greatest benefactor and nourisher. In favorable soils, there can be several million earthworms per acre. They can be the dominant animal life in the soil. Sometimes their total weight exceeds that of all other soil-dwelling animals combined. This information was quickly sent by the TRIAD to all the animal kingdom to get them to pay careful attention to the earthworm’s message.

  The earthworm spoke: “I am an earthworm, the subject of both truths and myths about what I and other earthworms do to the soil. It is a fact that we help provide nutrients and improve aeration and tilth. We make possible abundant bird life.

  “I am here, however, to make peace between invertebrate animals with a head, thorax, and abdomen, plus pairs of legs and some wings, and vertebrate animals whom the insect world accuses of marginalizing them during the crucial one hundred hours of education.

  “Let’s face it, the large mammals attract the largest audiences and provoke less fear than some of us do. A hundred-hour variety show is short, given what the TRIAD has been trying to do, and quite wisely in my earthwormy opinion. Still, what the insects originally proposed, a parade of bugs with me as grand marshal, would be the best way to show the world our variety and beauty. It would take less time and be more spectacular than what we have had so far, special pleading by this or that bug. I’m not talking just to our TRIAD but to all animals. Let’s bring on a huge Parade of Insects, scurrying across the screen with their names under them. The sheer variety, beauty, color, and mystery will make their own points and astonish the human audience, along with their ability to get along (even though many usually eat each other) when a higher purpose is before them.

  “Earthworms are no strangers to surprises—we are plucked out in the billions every day by the birds that consider us their most savory and digestible morsel. But I would be very surprised, given some nervy previews, if humans were not glued to their screens during this PARADE OF THE INSECT WORLD.

  “In proper respect, the selection of these insects must be of, by, and for the insects so as to maximize the representation of millions of species by what probably can be no more than five hundred strutting, crawling, or jumping bugs. It is offered to you respectfully, oh wise TRIAD, as part of this magnificent project to right wrongs and set in motion many good relationships that spell survival, animal well-being, and planetary balance.”

  The TRIAD did not have to go into executive session to decide its response, which was immediate. “Yes,” trumpeted the Elephant; “Yes,” hooted the Owl; and “Yes,” shrieked the Dolphin. And then in louder unison: “YES, YES, YES.”

  For a tension-breaking moment, as the logistics of the parade were being worked out, the TRIAD let a lemming onto the stage. “I know that we lemmings cannot be accused of either preparedness or foresight, but on behalf of all lemmings—some of whom are right now heading for the cliffs in Norway—thank you, insects, and thank you, in particular, earthworm, for the ability to foresee and forestall what could have befallen all of us.” Whereupon the lemming leaped off the stage to rejoin its fellow lemmings on their way, inexorably, to the sea.

  Life Goes On

  It was going to take some time to get the march organized, so another halt was called in the broadcasting so humans could go back to thinking, reading about, and viewing animals on their own mass media while the animals themselves, those not involved in parade preparations, were given some amusement, broadcast on a secure line, so humans wouldn’t be offended by the way animals laughed at them. The animal programming was about the American Gerbil Society’s annual pageant at Bedford, Massachusetts. The main event was a competition between gerbils to get around obstacles and race to the end of the track. Breeders won ribbons based on various kinds of agility.

  The pageant goes on for two entire days. So close to gerbils are the breeders that they see all kinds of personalities
as well as physical differences in their diminutive pets.

  All over the world, the rats looked on dumbfounded. One rat spoke for many when she said, “All we are required to do is be tested for humans. They never treat us as a luxury sport. And our tails are longer, to boot. It is sooo true: life is unfair.”

  One should not get the impression that the animal kingdom stopped what it had to do and all its members watched the gamboling gerbils. Not at all. Little oysters on a reef by the Choptank River were busy removing pollutants from the water with stunning efficiency. This oyster reef ’s contribution to clean waters is encouraging state marine officials to seed more reefs for a major oyster comeback after years of overharvesting. Oysters were overjoyed with the news.

  Going strong for 350 million years, household cockroaches were busy switching their internal chemistry around so that glucose, a form of sugar that is a sweet come-hither to countless forms of life, tastes bitter.

  As the Washington Post reported, trillions of termites, a hardy species if there ever was one, are busy eating damp wood and building their impressive mounds, which presently are being studied by robot construction scientists. Male frigate birds on the Galapagos Islands were occupied with their mating rituals, which included inflating the skid beneath their necks to the size of a balloon. Beavers were damming streams everywhere they could. Meanwhile, deer were having a lark running around Rock Green Park inside Washington, D.C., spreading tick-born Lyme disease and butting into cars, oblivious to the coming culling of their density by park rangers. Nearby, all kinds of aquatic life were performing at the National Aquarium in the downtown Department of Commerce building headquarters, soon to be told by the staff that the aquarium would be closed by September 30, 2013, due to budgetary restrictions.

  Over in the Rocky Mountains, wolves were running for their lives, pursued by unleashed hunters who have killed 698 wolves in the last two seasons just in Idaho, a number larger than their estimated population in that state. Protectors of wolves are trying to educate the local populace about the animals’ keystone species role in keeping down the number of denuding, vegetation-eating prey.

  In New York City, according to a New York Times report, protected pigeons were frolicking around Grand Army Plaza beside a statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman and degrading the protective wax coating the memorial with their acidic droppings and claws.

  Down in Baltimore, known by Eastern Shore rodents as a rat-friendly city—there are sixty rats per thousand residents compared to only ten rats per thousand residents in 2002—the rats are thriving so much that they’re getting in each other’s way. One resident-writer, Karen Houppert, says, “Baltimore gives the rats free housing, free food, free rein,” as with “overflowing garbage cans in the dark back alleys.” Of course, the rats love it—it’s rat heaven.

  The American eels were busy swimming from the Sargasso Sea, south of Bermuda, thousands of miles up to the little freshwater creeks to spend their lives, often cut short by predatory birds and animals along the East Coast. The eels just want to make sure that they are in fresh water. Animals have work to do every day. The star-nosed mole is catching and devouring an insect in less than a fourth of a second. Bats are devouring hordes of insects for their nocturnal meals; snakes are catching mice and voles. Nonetheless, most in the kingdom are finding time to watch the great TALKOUT, from the giant clams to the gentle dugongs to the coral trout, which start life as females, then morph into males, to the swift black noddies of the Great Barrier Reef.

  I Love A Parade

  With the time approaching for the Great Insect Parade, the TRIAD talked to the grand marshal, the Earthworm, and instructed it to secure its own TRIAD. Promptly the Earthworm invited the beautiful Monarch Butterfly and the productive Honeybee. They both accepted, knowing that beauty and honey would attract good ratings and diminish the inevitable biases of human animals toward insects. The INSECT TRIAD put the finishing touches on what could be a logistical nightmare.

  The Human Genius was observing this development with no small alarm. The Insect Parade could go wrong in many ways and jeopardize the whole great TALKOUT that the unique apps made possible. So the Human Genius made sure that the basic knowledge, fears, and emotional reactions by humans to various major insect categories were transmitted to the INSECT TRIAD for their educational uses as they saw fit.

  So, for example, humans knew of the connection between mosquitoes and malaria and the Zika virus, and between ticks and Lyme and other serious diseases. They knew how merciless insects are about eating each other or destroying trees and crops, and feasting on insect corpses. They viscerally recoiled from cockroaches, tarantulas, and millipedes, but thought Japanese beetles or ladybugs were “cute.” Millions of humans eat insects, which are becoming more and more a source of cheap protein. Plenty of supply. The Encyclopedia Smithsonian estimates there are 200 million insects for each human being on earth.

  The INSECT TRIAD was appreciative of this information, which they put to use immediately in planning their signs, selections, and sequences in the parade.

  With the announcement of the Insect Parade imminent, the INSECT TRIAD went about preparing its signs so as to create a good impression for the human animals.

  First Sign: Seeking Respect for Insects. We are a big part of the invertebrates that make up about 90 percent of the globe’s animal life.

  Second Sign: Humans have crushed, burned, poisoned, sterilized, dissected, and even eaten us in the trillions.

  Third Sign: Insects have no animus toward humans. Any harm is genetically driven or due to parasites in us or self-defense. We do not start wars.

  Fourth Sign: We insects give you food, ecological benefits, and medical discoveries and provide sustenance for birds and other animals you treasure. Insects offer you beauty with or without your microscope.

  Fifth Sign: Humans learn about humans and other animals by learning more and more about insects and their world. Think of the fruit fly.

  Sixth Sign: Three hundred thousand beetle species must be doing something right in adaptation and evolution.

  Seventh Sign: Humans: Give your curiosity an opportunity.

  The INSECT TRIAD secured the services of eusocial worker ants, worker bees, and worker termites to carry the signs aloft with spectacular tiers of themselves that left human viewers agape. The insect workers moved very slowly in a circular motion to allow viewers several sights of the signs as they passed.

  The animal TRIAD allowed the Insect Parade two full hours of prime time. The parade began with the signs to the tune of crickets rubbing their legs against their wings, a symphony well known to millions of humans that begins at dusk. Only this concert had a rhythmic beat that was much more dramatic in effect than the usual vespers. Hissing Madagascar cockroaches joined in at synchronized moments by pushing air through spiracles in their bodies.

  Adding to the music, swarms of bees produced a sweeping sonic swell that tempered the harshness of the crickets. Human musicologists began e-mailing their peers to tune in to this building crescendo. The birds found new respect for insects and joined with their melodic chirping. Then the larger mammals, infused with the sense of fairness related by the original TRIAD, melded their growls, trumpets, and eerier calls.

  For about ten minutes, with the music serenading, the signs slowly carried in wider and wider circles made quite a spectacle as the human audience grew by the minute in heightened expectation. This clearly was the day in the sun for the arthropods. No other collective group of living creatures has been as adaptive to almost every habitat on earth, except the oceans, as the arthropods. They have made it on the coldest mountains and in the hottest jungles, from the dampest bogs to the driest deserts, always surviving against relentless predators in the microbial, insect, plant, and larger animal worlds.

  The INSECT TRIAD had welcomed the dispatch of the Human Genius, who had provided them with orderly descriptions of different kinds of insects to guide them in structuring the parade so as make it un
derstandable to humans.

  Humans have catalogued over one million insect species with many more to be discovered. Insect specialists are gradually coming to the realization that humans could not live without the many services insects provide in the global ecosystem.

  Still, this is not something the INSECT TRIAD planned to make much of in that humans have internalized far more deeply the knowledge of the diseases, damage, and discomforts associated with some insects. Humans know too well that the insect world is the only animal kingdom they have been unable to conquer and they are resentful.

  The parade must accentuate the positive and show that the negative actions of insects are done without mens rea (criminal intent).

  Other organizational details the INSECT TRIAD had turned its attention to involved providing special magnifiers so that the parading insects could be seen in their brilliant colorful detail. Selection of the paraders was accomplished by putting out tenders in the following categories taken from standard textbooks by humans:

  Bristletails, silverfish, mayflies, dragonflies, gladiators, cockroaches, termites, mantids, rock crawlers, webspinners, stick and leaf insects, earwigs, stoneflies, crickets, zorapterans, booklice, thrips, parasitic lice, bugs, snakeflies, alderflies, lacewings, beetles, fleas, strepsipterans, scorpionflies, flies, caddisflies, butterflies, bees, wasp ants, spiders, crustaceans, and millipedes.

  The finest and quickest specimens that arrived at the INSECT TRIAD’s website were chosen by the INSECT TRIAD acting as final judges. There simply was no time for appeals, reconsiderations, insect arguments, or other forms of human due process. The winners would physically, at least, be good representatives of their species. Insect character, personality, compassion, etc., simply could not be taken into consideration in making selections. In any event, the INSECT TRIAD provided humans with an explanatory text to impress on them the purposes of this exercise in internal harmony, which had been allowed to take place partly to head off an insect uprising against the original TRIAD of the Elephant, the Owl, and the Dolphin.