An Outpouring
“For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other Nations […]”
I have a confession to make. I’ve written this paper before. In elementary school it might have gone something like this, “I really really really [2] like animals. I want to help them when I grow up. I want to be a zookeeper and feed them.” Throughout our childhoods, we were asked the same scary question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” And, at least when we were children, our answers stemmed from our passions: girls who loved ballet were destined to become ballerinas and anybody who loved to sing was going to be a rock star. Today, my answer is even less coherent than it was in elementary school. What do I want to be? I know, or I hope I know, that my future still lies with my passions.
There are my passions and my Passion [3]. I have a passion for theater and musicals, for reading good books, for volunteering and learning and excelling. If passion may be defined as a “strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything [4],” I suppose I am passionate about laughing and having fun, about eating Mexican food, watching The Office and getting a good night’s sleep. When asked what my true Passion is, I know it, too: animals. But then I’m forced to stop and ask my audience, “Do you want the short story or the long?” Short story: I love animals, and I think they deserve more respect. Long story? Well buckle up, kids, I’ve got a lot I want to tell you.
I have always loved my pets. Here's Lady.
I have always loved animals. An only child the first seven years of my life, nature was a constant source of companionship. I knew the optimal toad-catching conditions [5] from an early age and took off invariably whenever I heard their distinctive peep peeps. Occasionally, I liked to keep one in my purple critter keeper for a night or so, serving as a hyper-vigilant concierge, making sure that every bit of dirt, every rock, each carefully placed leaf was to her [6] satisfaction. My neighborhood was teeming with other potential playmates, too: roly-poly’s on the front lawn, an enormous anole, Betty, whom I greeted each morning as she basked on the gate, dogs going for walks. I tried to form a connection with every animal I met, even bringing a feral cat into the house one New Year’s Eve! As I grew older, however, animals played a different yet equally important role in my life. I began to feel a deeply emotional, perhaps even spiritual, association with animals and the natural world.
I remember one such subtle connection I felt with my schnauzer, Annie. I see it now as though I were outside myself, witnessing a moment at once so inconsequential yet profoundly fundamental to my ideas. It was late spring and already hot gusts of air blew through the open windows of our van as we sped down the highway. My dad drove, unperturbed, as Annie pushed her way between the two front seats, claiming her traditional spot. I started to laugh as my hair waved tumultuously in strands like an octupus’ tentacles, covering my eyes and face. Annie seemed to enjoy the breeze too, her face upturned and eyes closed. This pure and uncomplicated coexistence is how I want animals and people to be. Annie and I were both happy, for similar reasons but I suspect in different ways: I could both connect with her and still wonder. I remain passionate about these moments.
I want to believe—no, I do believe—that I have formed emotional connections with animals, that I’m not simply projecting anthropomorphic tendencies onto my experiences. But, as an extreme rational [7], I have always demanded proof of animal intelligence and emotion. Opening Jane Goodall’s Through a Window in sixth grade introduced me to a world of proof. I remember reading it one night, soon after I had started. My mom had taken my sister and me to a park further away from home, one which we rarely got to visit. Yet I kept finding my mind being pulled away: I wanted to play, but I needed to know. I remember reading it then, struggling to see under the dim industrial lamplight, soaking in as much as I could before my mom could stop me, protesting, “Katherine, you can’t read anymore or you’ll ruin your eyes!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT4WiMrzByg&feature=related
If you want evidence of animal intelligence and reason, it’s in this book. Chimpanzees are able to make and use tools premeditatedly walking hundreds of miles to create the perfect tool for luring termites out of their mounds. They have even developed primitive cultures—geographically distinct groups of chimpanzees differ in some behaviors and tool use.[8] Chimpanzees and other great apes who have been taught sign language have exhibited an understanding of complex and abstract meaning, creating their own signs and even teaching others.[9] I have no doubt that animals possess rational capabilities far beyond what we credit them—that in this way, humans and other animals are inextricably connected. Claims that humans are the only thinking beings in this universe are ludicrous.
Why should we even measure worth by intelligence? While man evolved to depend on the intellect, other species developed different and equally impressive adaptations. Can we live deep underground without sunlight, hold our breath for longer than a minute underwater, carry 850 times our body weight [10] or fly? Each animal’s world is so different than any other’s. Our senses and capabilities are functionally incompatible, and we possess highly “different criteria of health and happiness.[11]” How can we assert that we have the “apparatus to understand all others, [12]” to condemn ways of life as inferior, when we cannot even understand their worlds? We are successful in a specialized, human way, and that is all we can be certain of. There is no contest to be won, we are not the best. The only game we can play is that of survival. 
Animals have such interesting adaptations, such as this pelican's bill.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/manu-claude/309587314/When dog owners buy expensive dinners for their pets or chase after their dogs as they run, carefree, in a park, people often ask, “Now, who’s the real master here?” Working at the zoo, we joked about that, too. There were times when I hastily reached up to brush aside my hair with marmoset-jelly [13] covered fingers, trying to cut the pygmies’ meal supplements just so or spilled entire bowls of water down my shirt as I reached for Succotash the sloth’s favorite perch. By the end of the day, my shoes and socks were generally drenched, and I never really wanted to know the nature of all the questionable mud and scratches on my legs. But it was all done to help the animals of Natural Encounters have a better life. Animals need our care—in large part due to hardships we have placed upon them. But this doesn’t mean we are given license to subordinate them. I believe we are all equal. We are all here. We are all just trying to exist. Isn’t that enough? Desiring world superiority, humans have created an extreme hierarchical system, a mindset I believe is unjust. My anthropology textbook even acknowledges that human chauvinism is a hurdle that colors how humans are classified. [14] We are not as unusual as we would like to think. I wish to see myself as less entitled, as simply a co-occupant in this world. In this way I believe we may become less selfish, less self-centered and more focused on pure living. Moreover, if all living things are equal, how much easier does it become to accept all people and attempt to understand different viewpoints and ways of life? “We [must] stop and face what’s right before us. We [must] look at 
what is.” [15]
Who needs hierarchies?
This all sounds pretty out there, right? Communion with nature? Humans as nothing more than animals? People have told me I’m too radical and ridiculous. But what is ever wrong with respect? The answer is clear from all angles. Even if man “has dominion over all things in the world,[16]” as Covey and many others suggest, doesn’t that give us the responsibility to treat the Earth appropriately? Humanity is one trait that is definitively ours—why don’t we use it? Why do we feel the need to qualify our accomplishments and dismiss others’? Understanding animals and their proper place in nature is my passion. I believe that animals cannot be treated better until they are respected and cannot be respected until they are understood. I am a Witness to their lives. I choose to be receptive to their worth, “to remain quiet and open, [17]” to their needs.
This is my truth that sets me free—free from hierarchies, from unreasoned judgments, from boundaries. Impassioned, I hope to teach others my views about animals and initiate respect.
Word count: 1,562
(Without quotes) 1, 538
[1] Kelly Stewart, “Other Nations,” in Kinship with Animals, ed. Kate Solisti and Michael Tobias (San Fransico: Council Oak Books, 2006), 47.
[2] I really liked ‘really’ when I was little. My first grade journal entry written the day after my sister was born said, “my sister is really, really…cute.” Really to the 26th power! Sounds like something straight out of an exorcism to me, but apparently it was my rhetoric strategy of choice.
[3] I read Locke’s Treatises of Government for my seminar class a few weeks ago, and he constantly used capitals while he spoke of “Nature” and “Government” and “Man.” I’m sure it was a standard of his time, but it gave me the sense that he meant business. I am just as serious about my Passion.
[4] Ask.com. “Passion.” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/passion
[5] From experience I’ve learned that toads abound whenever it first gets dark the evening after a storm.
[6] My toads were always girls (of course!)
[7] My personality type, INTJ, was indeed described as “the Rational.”
[8] Jane Goodall, Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), 19.
[9]One chimp Lucy creatively combined signs when she asked for a “listen drink” in place of an Alka-seltzer and invented her own sign for “leash” by hooking her index finger next to her neck, indicating that she wanted to go for a walk. Another chimpanzee who knew sign language, Washoe, was given an infant, Lousli, to raise who was never taught by humans. By the time Lousli was eight, he knew fifty-eight signs! Washoe had been observed teaching Lousli, sometimes by repetition and sometimes by forming Lousli’s hands into the motions. (Goodall, 20-21)
[10] (Like the rhinoceros beetle) Planet Ozkids, “Weird & Amazing Animal Facts,” http://www.planetozkids.com/oban/animals/weird.htm
[11] Stephen R. L. Clarke, “Understanding Animals,” in Kinship with Animals, ed. Kate Solisti and Michael Tobias (
[12] Clarke, 110
[13] Marmoset jelly is a supplement used for the pygmy marmosets in Natural Encounters. It’s an odd, gelatinous and messy substance (and it smells really good!)
[14] Robert Boyd and Joan B. Silk. How Humans Evolved: Fifth Edition (
[15] Ram Dass and Paul Gorman, “How Can I Help? Stories and Reflections on Service,” in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (
[16] Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (
[17] Dass and Gorman, 187.
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