There are wild boar on Dundreggan estate. Well, semi-wild due to legislation only permitting their release into an enclosure. The sign on the gate warns to not enter and they are dangerous… yet my second day volunteering on the estate involved entering the wild boar enclosure.
Big cats are seen as a threat both to our own lives and that of our livestock, location dependant. Yet keepers who have reared lions and tigers from young have been seen to play fight with these ‘beasts’. Kevin Richardson aka The Lion Man is described on his website as: “Flouting common misconceptions that breaking an animal’s spirit with sticks and chains is the best way to subdue them, he uses love, understanding and trust to develop personal bonds with them.”
I am not advocating cuddling a tiger or approaching wild animals without caution. Needless to say the keepers of these animals, I include myself in this now, have a relationship with the animals that is known based on at least semi-domestication. Society appears to create a sense of fear over the potential threat that any organism beyond – and even including – humans has against us. This attitude creates a sense of isolation from all other species and the dangerous illusion that we can live independent of them.
The idea that we can hide in the safety of our homes, behind the safety of our guns and our traps, and truly disconnect, also disconnects us from the fact that we are animals too. The fact that these lives that we take and real, just like ours.
Russia attempted to created automatic weapons not unlike those in the movies that shoot upon movement. This was rejected based on the grounds that the machine could never appreciate the life that was taken. This was rejected, yet every day we disregard the life that is lost from others.
The examples I mentioned above are semi-domesticated, but this ability for us to connect does transfer to wild animals – organisms beyond other humans. Bear man lived with bears over summer for 13 years. True he did end up being killed by a bear, along with his girlfriend… but he knew the risk he took was too dangerous. In short, he returned to the forest when the food was becoming scarce and his death was highly avoidable. A documentary “Grizzly Man” described his relationship and interactions with the animals through the use of the videos he produced whilst living in isolation with the bears. It has been said that the best response to a bear is to stand your ground and show your size and strength. This approach was used by Bear Man, who then followed this with intimate interactions with the bears to show his respect for them. All of which were successful until the final mistake that was made due to him ignoring his own knowledge.
So why do we fear them?
I argue that knowledge and respect can overcome the barrier between humans and nature.
The failure of the relationship between man and bear was food scarcity. An issue which is not getting any less prominent with the destruction of habitat and removal of food sources. It is easy to ignore our role and claim that the animals are vicious purely because it’s nature.
Of course there will always be an element of viciousness, or perhaps assertiveness misinterpreted, as this is the way they must be in order to survive and compete for resources. However if we were educated into the impact of our lives on not only the physical ability for species to survive, but also on the behavioural changes that occur as a result of our actions, we will understand that we harm them far more than they harm us. And this harm that we do provides additional pressure and leads to an increase that harm will come to us.
If we step back from our laptops and our smart phones and really look at the world, we will see what we do. We will see what is there and what we are afraid of. And maybe we will see that the greatest fear is that which we created.
aquacultureandi 