When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (36 page)

In the distance, the mongoose saw Devasharman returning. Happy to see him, he ran towards him, stained with the blood of the snake. But when Devasharman saw the blood, he thought: "Surely he has killed my littie boy," and in his delusion he killed the mongoose with a stone. When he went into the house he saw the snake killed by the mongoose and

HUES' ELEPHANTS HEEP

his hov alive and sate. He felt a deep inner sorrow. When his wife returned and learned what had happened, she reproached him, saying: "VVTiy did you not think before killing this mongoose which had been your friend?"

This is what Jan Harold Brunvand {The Choking Doba-man) calls an "urban legend." He writes about the age-old folk fable of helpful animals: "A classic European manifestation of this legend is the Welsh 'Llewellyn and Gellert,' in which the faithful hunting hound Gellert is found bloodied and gasping in the hall of Prince Llewellyn's home. The dog is presumed to have killed the baby it was left to guard, whose overturned crib is seen through the open doorway. The dog is slain, but the baby is found unharmed; and the hidden intruder that Gellert had defended the infant from—a huge wolf—is found inside the house dead from the dog's defensive efforts." He notes: "Although revered by many in Wales as an ancient national legend—or even as history—the story of Llewellyn and Gellert is, as Welsh historian Prys Morgan phrased it, 'of course all moonshine, or more exactly, a clever adaptation of a well-known international folktale.' "

We cannot know whether the events really happened. The story is not so highly improbable. Mongooses are often kept as pets in India, and mongooses do in fact prey upon snakes, including cobras and other highly venomous species. But whether or not based on fact, such accounts exert a powerful hold on the imaginations of many different cultures: versions are found in Mongolian, Arabic, Syriac, German, an English ballad of William R. Spencer's, and others. They clearly speak to a sense of animal loyalty and clarity, of human arrogance and guilt, an awareness of the precari-ousness of human judgments. Can we be trusted to honor the deep bond that a dog or mongoose can form with us? The "legend," if that is what it is, speaks better for animals than humans.

Perhaps the most famous account testifying at least to the hope, and possibly the fact, of a bond of gratitude, friendship, and compassion between a person and an animal is the ancient account of Androcles and the lion. An early recorded version in Latin appears in the Attic Nights ofAulus Gellius in the second century. The

234

CONCLUSION

account is prefaced with a claim to authenticity: "The account of Apion, a learned man who was surnamed Plistonices, of the mutual recognition, due to old acquaintance, that he had seen at Rome between a man and a Hon. . . . This incident, which he describes in the fifth book of his Wonders of Egypt, he declares that he neither heard nor read, but saw himself with his own eyes in the city of Rome." Gellius then quotes Apion:

In the Great Circus a battle with wild beasts on a grand scale was being exhibited to the people. Of that spectacle, since I chanced to be in Rome, I was an eyewitness. There were many savage wild beasts, brutes remarkable for their huge size, and all of uncommon appearance or unusual ferocity. But beyond all others did the vast size of the lions excite wonder, and one of these in particular surpassed all the rest because of the huge size of his body. . . . There was brought in . . . the slave of an ex-consul; the slave's name was Androcles. When that lion saw him from a distance he stopped short as if in amazement, and then approached the man slowly and quietly, as if he recognized him. Then, wagging his tail in a mild and caressing way, after the manner and fashion of fawning dogs, he came close to the man, who was now half dead from fright, and gently licked his feet and hands. . . . Then you might have seen man and lion exchange joyful greetings, as if they had recognized each other.

The emperor Caligula wanted to know why the lion had spared the man. Androcles related how he had run away from his master into the lonely desert and hidden in a remote cave. A Hon came into the cave with a bleeding paw, groaning and moaning in pain. The lion, Androcles is reported to have said, "approached me mildly and gendy, and lifting up his foot, was evidendy showing it to me and holding it out as if to ask for help." Androcles took out a huge splinter and cared for the foot. "Relieved by that attention and treatment of mine, the lion, putting his paw in my hand, lay down and went to sleep." For three years they shared the cave, the Hon hunting for both. Then Androcles was recaptured, returned to

Rome, and condemned to death in the arena. Upon hearing this story, C.ahgula, after a vote by the people, freed Hon and man. They walked the streets together "and everyone who met them anywhere exclaimed: 'This is the lion that was a man's friend, this is the man who was physician to a lion.' "

Is this fiction, testimony to an ancient longing in the human heart to love and be loved by another animal as one longs to love and be loved by another person? It is not so far removed from Joy Adamson's account of the lion Elsa, whom she raised and then released; for years afterward Elsa returned from the wild to visit with her children and her mate.

Reciprocity on the level of Androcies and the lion, this dream of equality, may be closed to us for now. But whether or not it can be realized, we do owe animals something. Freedom from exploitation and abuse by humankind should be the inalienable right of every living being. Animals are not there for us to drill holes into, clamp down, dissect, pull apart, render helpless, and subject to agonizing experiments. John Lilly, one of the first to work scientifically with dolphins, was recently quoted as saying that he no longer works with dolphins because he "didn't want to run a concentration camp for highly developed beings." Animals are, like us, endangered species on an endangered planet, and we are the ones who are endangering them, it, and ourselves. They are innocent sufferers in a hell of our making. We owe them, at the very least, to refrain from harming them further. If no more, we could leave them be.

When animals are no longer colonized and appropriated by us, we can reach out to our evolutionary cousins. Perhaps then the ancient hope for a deeper emotional connection across the species barrier, for closeness and participation in a realm of feelings now beyond our imagination, will be realized.

236

Notes

Prologue: Searching the Heart of the Other

xvii Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872; reprint, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1965).

xvii " 'WTio can say . . .' " Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man; and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 62, 76. Also see the discussion of animal emotions in J. Howard Moore, The Universal Kinship (1906; reprint, Sussex, England: Centaur Press, 1992).

xvii Donald Griffin, The Question of Animal Awareness: Evohitiofiary Continuity of Mental Experie?ice (New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1976). Griffin is the discoverer of bat sonar. In the bibliography are listed those of his books and articles that affected the thinking in this book.

xviii " 'When, in the early . . .' " Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, eds.. The G?-eat Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (London: Fourth Estate, 1993), p. 12.

xviii " 'A Hon is not . . .' " George Adamson, My Pride and Joy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 19. XX "Comparative psychology to this day . . ." Thus the Journal of Comparative Psychology announces in each issue that it publishes "research on the beha\aor and cognitive abilities of different species (including humans) as they relate to evolution, ecology, adaptation, and development. Manuscripts that focus primarily on issues of proximate causation where choice of specific species is not an important component of the research fall outside the scope of this journal."

NOTES

XX ". . . unworthy of scientific attention." In a much discussed article in Dcr Spiegel (Nr. 47, 1980, pp. 251-62) entitled "Tiere sind Gefuhlsmenschen" [.Vniinals .\re Feeling Creatures], Konrad Lorenz speaks of "crimes against animals" and says that anybody who intimately knows any individual higher mammal such as a dog or an ape and does vot believe that this creature has feelings similar to his own is crazy. ("Ein Mensch, Der Ein hoheres Sauge-tier, etwa einen Hund oder einen Affen, wirklich genau kennt und nicht da\()n iiberzeugt wird, dass dieses Wesen ahnliches erlebt wie er selbst, ist psychisch abnorm . . .")

xxi E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Ape Language: Ffom Conditioned Response to Symbol (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 25.

Chapter 1: In Defense of Emotions

2 G. G. Rushby, "The Elephant in Tanganyika," in Ward, Rowland, The Elephant in East Central Africa: a Monograph (London and Nairobi: Rowland Ward Ltd., 1953). Cited in Richard Carrington, Elephants: A Short Account of Their Natural History, Evolution and Influence on Mankind (London: Chatto & Wmdus, 1958), p. 83.

2 " 'arguably the most important . . .' " Savage-Rumbaugh, Ape Language: From Co7iditioned Response to Symbol, p. 266.

3 Jane Goodall, interview by Susan McCarthy, May 7, 1994.

4 Mary Midgley, "The Mixed Community," in Eugene C. Hargrove, ed.. The Animal Rights/Environmental Ethics Debate (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), p. 214.

4 Gunther Gebel-Williams with Toni Reinhold, Untamed: The Autobiography of the Circus's Greatest Animal Trainer (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1991), p. 28.

4 "trainers were startled ..." Personal communication, August 23, 1994.

5 " 'A loving dog-owner . . .' " In Schaller's foreword to Shirley Strum, Almost Human: A Journey into the World of Baboons (New York: Random House, 1987), p. xii.

5 " 'Intuitively I seemed . . .' " George and Lory Frame, Swift & Enduring: Cheetahs and Wild Dogs of the Serengeti (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1981), p. 156.

6 Anne Rasa, Mongoose Watch: A Family Observed (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday & Co., 1986).

7 "Female baboons kept together . . ." Thelma Rowell, The Social Behaviour of Monkeys (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1972), p. 79.

7 Hope Ryden, God's Dog (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975), pp. 87, 92-101.

8 "The female Tasmanian . . ."J. Maynard Smith and M. G. Ridpath, "Wife Sharing in the Tasmanian Native Hen, Tribo?iyx mortierii: A Case of Kin Selection?" The American Naturalist 106 Quly-August 1972), pp. 447-52.

8 " 'There are willing workers . . .' " Robert Cochrane, "Working Elephants

238

NOTES

at Rangoon," quoted in The Animal Stofj Book, Vol. IX, The Young Folks Library (Boston: Hall & Locke Co., 1901).

8 "Theodore Roosevelt . . ." Quoted in Paul Schuller}^ The Bear Hunter's Century (New York: Dodd, xMead & Co., 1988), p. 142.

9 David McFarland, ed.. The Oxford Companion to Animal Behavior (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 151.

9 " 'It is surely . . .' " Quoted by Sydney E. Pulver in an excellent overview of the topic: "Can Affects Be Unconscious?" International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 52 (1971), p. 350.

10 ''alexithymia ..." Robert Jean Campbell, Psychiatric Dictionary, 5th ed. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 24.

10 "Psychological theorists speak . . ." Carroll Izard and S. Buechler, "Aspects of Consciousness and PersonaHty in Terms of Differential Emotions Theory," in Emotion: Theofj, Research, and Expedience, Vol. I: Theories of Emotion, Robert Plutchik and Henry Kellerman, eds. (New York: Academic Press, 1980), pp. 165-87.

10 "One psychologist compiled . . ."Joseph de Rivera, A Structural Theory of the Emotions (New York: International Universities Press, 1977), pp. 156-64.

10 "William James defined . . ." ]une Callwood, Emotions: What They Are and How They Ajfect Us, from the Basic Hates and Fears of Childhood to More Sophisticated Feelings That Later GoveJTi Our Adult Lives: How We Can Deal with the Way We Feel (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1986), p. 33.

10 "Behaviorist J. B. Watson . . ." Robert Thomson, "The Concept of Fear," in Fear in Animals and Man, W. Sluckin, ed., 1-23 (New York and London: Van Nosnand Reinhold Co., 1979), pp. 20-21.

10 "Modern theorists . . ." M\c\\2.Q\hQVf\s, Shame: The Kxposed Self Q>ifv/YovV: The Free Press/Macmillan, 1992), pp. 13-14.

11 Anna Wierzbicka, "Human Emotions: L^niversal or Culture-Specific?" American Anthropologist 88 (1986), pp. 584-94.

11 Levy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales da7is les societes inferieures (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1910). It was pubhshed in the Bibliotheque de Philosophic Contemporaine, under the direction of Emile Durkheim. Levy-Bruhl contrasts the primitive mentality' with that of the "indi\adu blanc, adulte et civilise" [the white, adult and civilized individual] (p. 2). One proof (p. 31): Cherokee Indians believe that "fish live in a civil society like men, and have \allages and roads in the water." These same "primitives" beUeve in expiatory rites before killing animals (p. 32). Moreover, "they" cannot generalize, and "ever\^ species of monkey and palm tree has its own name" (p. 192) and we "must not be led into believing that these delicate distinctions in the same species of plant or animals demonstrates an interest in objective reality" (p. 198). The text was much read and cited for many years.

13 Gordon M. Burghardt, "Animal Awareness: Current Perceptions and Historical Perspective," American Psychologist 40 (August 1985), pp. 905-19.

14 Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 25.

15 "Grossly oversimplified . . ." For an accoimt of the problems with correlating testosterone levels and aggressiveness, for example, see Alfie Kohn, The

NOTES

Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 1990), pp. 27-28.

16 "The part of the brain . . ." See Gordon G. Gallup, Jr. and Susan D. Suarez, "Overcoming Our Resistance to Animal Research: Man in Comparative Perspective," in CoTnparing Behavior: Studying Man Studying Animals, D. W. Rajecki, ed. (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1983), p. 10. They note: "The basic biological principles governing the metabolic, endocrinological, neurological, and biochemical activities in man are basically the same in many other organisms. Behavior, therefore, has become the last stronghold for the Platonic paradigm. . . . If we accept the proposition that, in the last analysis, behavior is nothing more than an expression of physiological processes, then to admit the biological but deny the psychological similarities between ourselves and other species seems logically inconsistent and indefensible."