As Europe resumes the ill-gotten idea of killing wolves, Indeera Menon of WWF-India says ‘This is what happens when you forget the tradition of co-existence’. I am currently reading Keggie Carew’s Beastly. This begins by telling a story about the relationship between people and dogs.
Carew reminds us:
‘… that the canine creature we most love is descended from one we have relentlessly persecuted. Our best friend and worst enemy.’
Are our leaders too disconnected from nature?
I fear that European leaders who condone killing wolves live in a society too transformed. They have long forgotten the importance of these connections.
I commented to my daughter who recently returned from a trip to London. For the first time she experienced highly-strung people living at density. ‘It’s hardly any surprise’ I said ‘that we have global conflict’. Adding ‘when most people making decisions live in places like New York and London, where they don’t experience a daily life of peace and co-existence.’
Recently I travelled on an extended trip to Fiji and spent time in a remote village who have their own tribal leaders. Each time I do this it fortifies my opinion about our real relationship with the natural world. Carew’s writing reminded me of my experiences with the local village dogs, which surprised me.
Pacific dogs run wild
Unlike in western countries, Pacific village dogs ‘run wild’ … given their own scope to be dogs while living among villagers. They are appreciated and (in the traditional villages) looked after quite well. The strangest thing though. In the week we stayed in a remote village we never saw one dog poo. Still haven’t figured out how that worked!
That’s not to say that dogs who are a threat are tolerated. The same can be said of people though. This notwithstanding, the level of cultural overlap and cooperation between dogs and people is remarkable.
When you visit their place among the islands the dogs greet you as any human would. Or indeed, as an animal might, recalling my encounter with a wild stingray a couple of years back.
From there on, the dogs accompany you as companions. As we left our village homestay in Qamea the local female rosy walked us to the boat, wagging her tail at us while lowering her ears and snarling at the other dogs. She strode ahead purposefully and made it her job to clear a safe path for us in the dark.
My partner spoke of walking an hour across another island in Fiji to snorkel. The village dogs would walk ahead, then wait patiently for two hours on the beach, before walking her back home. My son had the exact same thing happen on Vanuatu this year.
Denaturing dogs and our connection to everything
On the remote Pacific Islands dogs are given chance to be dogs. Their welfare seems to be more mindful in the places that retain cultural sensitivities. This breaks down in the cities where those values start to disintegrate equally, for both dogs and people.
Given chance, dogs quickly fall into a routine and live alongside people, who accept them into their own society. On both sides its instinctual … a choice we each make. Domestic dogs in western society, on the other hand, are groomed, caged and their natural spirit is broken. The more visceral instincts may only resurface when an owner is threatened and an animal jumps to their defence.
For the most part, westernised dogs are forced into a culture that is removed from the natural world. In this sense they have become as disconnected from nature as we are. And therefore, we’ve also come to treat dogs – even wild ones – as separate from nature. If we didn’t, European advocates of wolf slaughter might realise how important wolves are for humanity’s future.
Instead of living ‘with’ dogs (or wolves) we have fabricated ourselves a role of master and commander. It’s not because we fear being attacked, it’s because we fear losing control. We can no longer imagine a world of living among them. This might change things for us, so we criminalise their animality in the most brutal way possible. We indiscriminately* take their lives away. Even if they are posing no risk to us, or might even be rebuilding beneficial ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More.
*Culling is indiscriminate because we have no idea how this ‘management’ affects the natural balance of things. We can easily be making things worse, as our decisions out outwith any natural system.
Sacrificing our freedoms
The way we treat animals is similar to the way we fear foreigners dictating world policy. Such as the Pacific Island nations trying to hold European-Australians to account, for climate change and sea level rise. Just recently, the Australian government struck a deal with those nations. We will apparently afford them a new country to settle in, just so long as they give us more control over their political affairs. Politicians call this ‘mobility with dignity’.
The freedom those villagers in Fiji (and their dogs) have to live their traditional lives is something western powers cannot understand or abide. For them it is tantamount to giving into something uncertain. It’s relinquishing control and pandering to uncertainty and a method of rule that is unfamiliar.
But building mutual trust begets certainty. The outcomes are beneficial. Otherwise, a persistent narrative about our conflict with nature (for what else is this, other than our relationship to all animals and each other) is wrong. Even popular wildlife documentaries are strewn with examples of hostility between animals when the reality is more peaceful and cooperative.
I read a complaint somewhere (perhaps as a letter to BBC Wildlife) that Natural History films give a disproportionate amount of time to hunting sequences relative to that which predators actually spend hunting and even more so relative to that which the prey spends being hunted, given that prey animals are far more abundant than their predators.
Mark Ambrus, via LinkedIn
Conflict bias permeates our culture
This bias, where we assume conflict is the predominant force of nature, is found throughout science, policy and media. It undermines the integrity of important findings and forces us to make the wrong decisions.
For instance, a scientific paper on the history of people’s relationship with Australian dingoes surmises that ‘individuals were taken from wild litters before weaning and raised by Aboriginal people.’ But the relationship was likely to be more nuanced, as experiences with Pacific island dogs show us.
Throughout history, western civilisations have sought to control others as much as possible. That extends to all animals, other nations, even our own communities and in how we treat women too. Of her book Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future, author Riane Eisler says:
‘… the myth of a “naturally violent” human nature is a false story that helps maintain a top-down, male-dominated, unequal system backed up by fear and force. The evidence shows the opposite: a more just, gender-equal way of life was the human norm for millennia.’
How cats can create conflict
Recently I wrote about our fascinating relationship to cats … and dogs’ relationships to cats. Living with cats has given the brain parasite toxoplasmosis a chance to thrive. The parasite makes people more aggressive … and it affects humans and dogs. A higher than average proportion of our world leaders and business leaders are infected.
It makes me wonder whether the success of Australian first nations people – and their generally peaceful way of life and cooperation with nations and other animals – was in part to do with a complete absence of cats from the continent at that time. Since then, people with their cats and dogs, have marched across the Earth. Maybe our planet’s cultures have become a little more hostile?
We need more respect for animals
So, how can we learn the true value of dogs, wolves or any animal for our own survival?
Science doesn’t have all the answers. In Beastly, Carew speaks of the cruel experiments done by early scientists on animals in vain effort to reveal their true nature. While one might hope this has changed, I don’t think it has.
Scientists now dissect the brains of jumping spiders to ‘prove’ they can develop plans and have the ability of memory, forethought and even dreaming. Many of the experiments are terrible and the results are publicised as groundbreaking, monumental discoveries. But anyone who spends five minutes with a spider can see this happening.
You can literally see jumping spiders calculating the route most likely to yield a successful predation attempt. They are a sophisticated and successful group of animals that clearly has a sense of understanding, even empathy for its surroundings – and that includes people, with whom they are able to seek cooperation. There are Facebook groups of people who breed and keep jumping spiders as pets and they clearly develop trust as they would a pet dog or cat.
We know spiders are sophisticated because they form the basis for some of the most biodiverse habitatsWhat is habitat for animals and people? Habitat, hence the word "habitable" describes the natural surroundings in which any animal (or human) lives, that houses basic needs, such as food and shelter. Vegetation, for example, is habitat for animals. On its own, habitat is not necessarily stable or sustainable, which is why it differs from an ecosystem. Habitat in disrepair More on Earth. It’s impossible for animals to be this successful without being complex organisms, able to think and develop their own culture. Their actions sequester carbon at higher rates, meaning humans have soil in which to grow food. We don’t need to experiment on spider brains to understand this.
What dogs teach us about our own survival instincts
You’d think, of all the animals in the world, we’d be able to understand dogs best as we live with them every day. Given the chance, dogs will choose to live among humans as a survival instinct. They’ve learnt not to ‘bite the hand that feeds’ but all relationships are two-way.
The freedoms that we deny ourselves are the same freedoms enjoyed by more remote communities. That’s not to say they don’t have strict laws. But these are designed to benefit the community as a whole.
The way we treat each other and the way we treat wild animals are strongly connected and we can see that when we observe people and dogs interacting the way they always have. In our western society, it’s fear that makes us think we need to be killing wolves but that also denies our community the chance to discover greater benefits. It’s that we don’t know what we stand to gain from living among them.
