Aren't Humans Animals?

It is exceedingly rare these days to come across anywhere the idea that we — our species, our friends and family, you reading this, and me the writer (all members of Homo sapiens) — are, literally, animals. This essence of our animality (our being mammals, and primates) is like a shameful secret which we have been urged or conditioned to deny and forget.

Christianity told its followers (Gen 1:26) to go out and dominate the fishes, the birds, the cattle, and (just to be clear) the whole world (not forgetting that which creepeth), all of which quite conveniently cleared the way for the arrival of capitalism, which invited its practitioners to go out and plunder: treat everything in the world as nothing more than a source of riches. Go forth and divine a plan to make money from mountaintops, riverbeds, ocean floors, and genetic inheritances.

Lately I’ve been reading Becoming Wild: How animal cultures raise families, create beauty and achieve peace, by Carl Safina (2020). It’s both a wonderful book, as well as an impassioned plea for us benighted humans to think of our animal siblings as beings with their own claims to life, freedom from exploitation, and the pursuit of happiness on the planet.

So next time you’re inclined to think of yourself as sitting atop a pyramid of the animal kingdom, you are invited instead to realize that you are part of a circle of Life. And that bottlenose dolphins, monarch butterflies, humpback whales and hammerhead bats have the same right to their lives as you do to yours.

And don’t let those dusty old, false arguments about a supposed lack of consciousness on the part of our animal siblings let you think otherwise.