BENGALURU: The recent bushfires in Australia brought along shocking images of destruction. The sky turned orange, reminiscent of a dystopian Mad Max movie. But the most heart-breaking images were of dead animals. The images of baby kangaroos and koalas haunted me all night. But the next morning, they triggered a thought. We are affected differently by the death of different creatures. Some animals move us deeply, while we are unaffected by the death of others. We reserve our emotions for only a few creatures.
Take for example, creatures without limbs and eyes – echinoderms, mollusc and sponges. The depletion of coral reefs does not move us despite millions of creatures getting wiped out. We have no sympathy for arachnids either, with spiders generally being demonised in horror films and ghost stories. Even though he lived in a post-Voldemort era of fear, Ronald Weasley’s biggest fear was spiders!
Insects have not earned our love, but they have our respect. The importance of bees to our ecosystem is only recently being recognised. Ants are known to be hardworking team-players. Cockroaches are resilient creatures that can survive atomic wars. And yet, walk into any supermarket and you’ll find one spray to end them all! Reptiles too, do not find a place in our evolved human hearts. Snakes are worshipped in India, but generally feared. The harmless lizard is the subject of hatred and prejudice. If all the alligators in the world went extinct, we wouldn’t even shed crocodile tears!
Human beings are generally compassionate towards birds, but we favour birds that are ‘cuter’ looking. Flightless birds like ostriches elicit a special interest, perhaps due to a misplaced sense of sympathy in us. We have made movies on penguins and their struggles, even if we are largely ambivalent to issues like global warming and glaciers melting.
But as a species, our sympathies lie largely with mammals. We love mammals so much that we hunt them, capture them, put them in zoos, and then bemoan their dwindling numbers. I sometimes wonder if human beings only connect with creatures that have emotive eyes, an expressive mouth, and are able to make a clearly distinguishable sound. It is hardly surprising that the most popular animals fall in the above category – dogs, dolphins and pandas.
Another surprising fact is our affinity for wild animals. The larger and wilder the beast, the more humans seem to be concerned about them. Our mythological stories are filled with gods riding wild beasts, or monsters transforming into beasts, only to be defeated and tamed by the gods. Perhaps these myths of taming the untameable make us go on hunting trips to forests, where we load guns, set traps for wild animals, shoot them down, and pose for pictures. Our perpetual fascination with tigers and lions is proof of this, as is our relentless pursuit to domesticate cats.
I remember a prayer we were taught in school. This prayer was chanted at the end of every session, as a summary to all our requests to the almighty. Loka Samastha Sukhino Bhavantu – let everybody in the world be happy. However, in our pursuit of happiness, we have trampled over other creatures. The prayer needs to be updated in view of the climate crisis. It should read Samatha Food Chainaaha Sukhino Bhavantu. It is the only way we can mutually co-exist on our beautiful planet.
The author is a writer and a comedian.