Landa talks rats and squirrels
The non-human animals get a lot of attention today as the hairless apes in the classroom discuss many of our conflicted attitudes towards the co-inhabitants of our many environments. Usually the scary stories of mistreatment and abuse, or bizarre notions that pop into the heads of unfortunate tourists who see this pride of lions or that formerly hibernating bear would make for an awesome family photo. Kedrick shared a heartwarming story of a backyard rat who who playfully greeted him each day, and his conflicted attitude towards the neighbour’s cat for doing what cats have been doing for millennia. Some animals, particularly horses, made the perhaps unwise despising to get to know humans a bit better, and so much of our civilization has been established by riding them to an early grave (and by grave, read processing factory). Kind of glad we didn’t get in to the Beatty Biodiversity Museum today, not sure I wanted to see every former living species on display.
Johnson and Okamoto try to empirically research the NHA and human connection, but it has always been an unfair comparison: the creatures that most resemble us get spare (unless too many of their chromosomes resemble ours, and then it is off to the laboratory they go) and those scary, non-human things get what they deserve. That’ll teach them for not evolving thumbs or grooming themselves in a more humane manner. Perhaps if I never got around to reading Timothy Findley’s The Wars, I could be a bit more positive in my outlook towards human/non-human interaction, but I am glad that we started to open up class discussion to include a more spiritual element. Without getting into a big debate about the transmigration of the soul, the fact that so many species have been ground between the teeth of unthankful human seems like karmic proof that most “decent” people will reincarnate as a cow. And the cats will soon be running the Internet.
Until then, enjoy this brief glimpse of caged animals let loose in the pre-CGI enviro-movie, Twelve Monkeys: