I wouldn't want to be any other kind of animal than a human. You know what it's like to be a non-human animal? Imagine you had ticks and fleas and intestinal parasites. You're itching all over, but you can't scratch yourself in many spots. Depending on your species, you can't scratch yourself at all with your hooves or whatever you have instead of hands. All you can do is stand there and itch and make frustrated noises as you get bitten by fleas and pestered by flies and stung by mosquitoes while hundreds of roundworms crawl through your guts.
Imagine you're standing there in the winter cold. Your fur keeps you warm enough that you won't freeze to death, but it's not enough to make you feel comfortable. You feel like a human who sits naked in the woods on a chilly autumn day. In the summer, your fur turns from a boon into a burden. You can't sweat as much as a human, so you can't regulate your body temperature as effectively as humans do. If you don't find a shadowy place and lie down, you might die of a heat stroke. You have no central heating and no A/C, no means whatsoever to change your environmental conditions. And if there is a shortage of food, you'll starve and watch as your offspring dies of starvation. There are no grocery stores in nature.
Now imagine you spot a predator. You start running, scared to death, your heart beating in your chest like a hammer. But there are no safe places for you to run to. They can follow you wherever you go. You'll never be able to feel safe, ever, because there is nothing but the wide open landscape around you and you have no concept of things like buildings or fences. If you survive this encounter, you'll spend the rest of your life as a nervous wreck, sleep with one eye open, and jump at every noise. But for now, all you can do is keep running until your legs are about to give out and your lungs feel like they're going to burst.
And then you stumble and hit the ground. You feel a sharp pain as one of your legs breaks and jagged bone shears through flesh. You try to get up, but your leg doesn't support you and the pain becomes unbearable. There is no one you could turn to for help. You can't call an ambulance. Only humans have these luxuries. You can't even comprehend what has happened to you. All you know is that you're in a world of agony that might never end. And you may indeed lay there for a subjective eternity and take days to die. But it won't come to that. Suddenly, there is another excrutiating pain as sharp teeth pierce and rend the flesh of your thigh, and all you can do is tremble in terror and SCREAM at the top of your lungs as you're being eaten alive.
That's what life is like for a non-human animal. Some people have this silly romantic idea that nature is like a Disney movie, that there is a loving god who created all this and provides all creatures with everything they need, and that all animals would live happily ever after if only humans stopped eating and exploiting them. But being shot by a hunter was one of the least terrible things that could have happened to Bambi's mom. Life as an animal is uncomfortable, terrifying, destitute, full of pain and suffering, and usually rather short. We humans are the privileged 1% of nature, and I wouldn't want to trade places with any other species.
18 Apr 2012, 3:10 pm
