When I was young, I was told that animals didn’t have souls as we do, that they were just propelled by their instincts and were incapable of reasoning, let alone intelligent thought.
That was the theory at the time, but anyone who had a close relationship with a dog, or spent a lot of time around animals, knew better. They may not think the way we do, but they definitely think. I have an eight-year-old Australian Shepherd who has considerable problem-solving skills, recognizes hundreds of different words, and appears to share most of the emotions we think of as human, including joy and love, anger, irritation, jealousy and resentment.
Dogs have, of course, been bred for many centuries to have a symbiotic relationship with human beings. But a few years ago, Ron Kagan, a thoughtful scientist who has transformed the Detroit Zoological Society, told me that research has shown that sheep can recognize at least 50 other individual sheep by their faces alone.
The more you know about animals, the harder it is to justify treating them like machines, abusing them, or acting as if they were put on earth for our convenience only. We can do so because we live in a world where we seldom see the sausage being made.
Last week I talked about so-called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, otherwise known as factory farms. The vast amounts of untreated manure they produce are clearly contributing to the pollution and destruction of Lake Erie, for example.
But I doubt if they would be allowed to exist if people knew what really happened inside, or what the conditions are like in which animals are kept. I happen to believe that you don’t have to be a vegetarian or a vegan to hold all animal life sacred. Native Americans sometimes thanked and apologized to the souls of deer and buffalo before they ate them.
Two things have become clear to me over my life. One of which is that animals deserve respect, and exist primarily for their own purposes and not ours only. But another is that we cannot be fully human without the other species who share the earth.
Every religion I know about teaches that we humans have a role to play as stewards or caretakers of the earth. We’ve mostly done a poor job at this, when you consider the erosion and pollution we have caused, and think of the passenger pigeon and all the other species we have driven into extinction. I wish I could see Michigan four hundred years ago, when the lakes were pristine and so many now-vanished native species, plant and animal, flourished.
Today, there are efforts to preserve many different species, from their genetic diversity to their habitats, led by caring and intelligent scientists like Ron Kagan.
But they face constant attempts to undermine their efforts; the Michigan House of Representatives passed a bill last spring that would allow roadside zoos to breed large carnivores, which they apparently would be able to do without paying any attention to the need for genetic diversity and the carefully crafted Species Survival Plans reputable zoos follow.
We’re not alone on this planet, and I think its survival and our own depend on our recognizing that.
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