Animals Are Stupid

In a recent interview with Larry King, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain quipped that it was OK for humans to kill and eat animals because we've been designed to chase down "smaller and stupider creatures." Never mind that cows and pigs, two animals that are slaughtered by the millions for food, are most certainly bigger than we are. It was the "stupider" remark that caught my attention, and not just for Bourdain's obvious grammatical shortcomings.

I think many of us feel that animals are dumb; that animals lack the intelligence we humans seem to have so abundantly. I believe this looking down on animals plays a big part in what allows us to treat them in the most heinous ways -- from factory farms to fur farms to laboratories to circuses. We believe that because animals can't write a book, compose a symphony, or do algebra that we're so much better than them.

What a load of bullshit.

Did you know, for example, that pigeons can fly thousands of miles to find the same roosting spot with no navigational difficulties? Some species of birds, like the Arctic Tern, make a 25,000-mile round-trip journey every year. Many species use built-in ferromagnets to detect their orientation with respect to the Earth's magnetic field. Can you do that?

Dolphins have a very distinct language that scientists now refer to as "dolphinese" which humans can't decipher. For all our human knowledge, we have no idea how to understand what should be, according to Bourdain, a "stupider" means of communication.

Salmon are born in rivers, but swim thousands of miles to the ocean only to return to the exact same spot upstream to die.

Elephants communicate with each other subsonically, using low rumbles that can travel for miles underground. They also mourn their dead and have been seen cradling the bones of family members that have passed on.

Butterflies are now thought to have the equivalent of a GPS system in their antennae.

Pigs have the mental capacity of a four year-old human child and have beat humans in memory games.

So, perhaps animals are not stupid. Perhaps it's we who are stupid for not recognizing the amazing things animals can do, many of which we can't do ourselves. Perhaps it's we who are dumb for not being able to circumnavigate the globe without instruments as albatross do, or find our way home across thousands of miles of ocean as Blue Whales do.

Maybe humans can actually learn a thing or two from these "stupid" animals. How about we start with this: animals don't create trash. Animals don't build nuclear weapons to annihilate each other. Animals don't conjure up religions and then kill each other in the name of their Gods. Animals with white fur don't discriminate against animals with fur of a different hue or color. Animals only take what they need. Animals are self-cleaning and don't waste water -- my cat has NEVER had a bath yet he'd smell better than any human who didn't shower. Animals don't gay bash homosexual animals. Animals don't screw over other animals for financial gain a la Bernie Madoff. Animals don't breed other animals to be prettier, fatter, or tastier. Animals don't systematically torture and abuse and kill billions of other animals (or each other) the way humans do. Animals don't commit Holocausts, they don't factory farm, and they don't ethnically cleanse each other. Animals don't cheat. Animals don't front. Animals are their authentic selves.

Yes, humans can do some amazing things: we can cure diseases, we can build skyscrapers, we can figure out how to travel into space. But only human arrogance would suggest that we're better or smarter than animals. The animals of the world evolved to be just as they are. They exist for their own reasons. Only an idiot would call them stupid.

 

 

Follow Ari Solomon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/VeganAri

Comments

[AnimalLover6]

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. 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 caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."

Henry Beston, The Outermost House

[patianneb]

If "stupid" was the criteria for the justification for killing and eating animals, at least half of us would be cannibals.

[denbeath]

The Anthony Bourdains of the world that profit off of the misery of animals need to belive that animals are 'stupider' and not deserving of life to attempt to justify their maltreatment of animals. To admit that animals are sentient would pose an ethical dilemma them and that would get in the way of profits. , What are we doing with our intllegence? We are destroying the planet, wiping out species after species, creating 'super bugs' in factory farms by cramming animals in small spaces & pumping them with antibiotic­s.......No­..... People are 'stupider'

[Soliel]

Excellent but I want to add more.

We humans have so much free will. We can be saints or we can be the lowest of the low. It's our choice.

Animals are wonderful beings. They give us delight and friendship and often help. Even so, it is true that we humans can do more and be more.

I think being human gives up privileges but also responsibilities. It's up to us to be responsible humans.

Here is the question: Are we going to choose to be our ideal and exercise all of the noble qualities we have within and not harm other beings or are we going to choose our more base, low desires (kill for flesh, etc).

To me, that is the question.

[AnimalLover6]

Fanned.

[alcmudgrdn]

Thanks Ari, we need more intelligent thinkers like you.

[MyVesta]

Brilliant - thank you for that!

[aukandortolan]

Let's not forget that scientists of another era attempted to provide "evidence" that non-whites and women were considered stupid and less than human, in a paradigm justifying slavery and oppression.. it's no different now, with non-human animals.

[reedu]

This is so beautiful and believably on point. Thank you Ari for writing this and sharing it with the world...

[amber15]

I really like your article. If you REALLY make an effort to tune in to the animals world you will find they are at a MUCH higher level of spiritual understanding. I know many people who can communicate with animals and have discovered that some animals have an innate ability to heal the energy of others. And if you spend time with any species you can discover that their relationships for the most part are based on the language of love. So how stupid is that??

[NancySeymour]

Ari, love your point. Straight, effective, heart felt. Great job.

[Melissa6262]

If animals are "stupider" than humans, there aren't many humans "arroganter" than this former "chef" that is more known for the gross stuff he ingests than what he actually cooks...struttin' around on the Travel Channel like he's some sort of badass. "I just ate a baby seal's eyeball, you can't stop me." Oh, I forgot, he used to do drugs too and then quit! Wow, could a cow or pig ever do drugs and then quit? Thank you for this article, Ari.

[FeatheredFriend]

I rescue parrots and cockatoos. Knowing these incredible creatures with 200 million years of evolution on their side, not the measly 5 million of the human species, I have learned a few things. Parrot poop doesn't stink or stick to their bodies like ours. Their lungs are more efficient, their skin more resistant to infection, their pharynx can vocalize longer and better, their feet have opposable toes (a feature of the human hand), they live longer than us, they mate for life (unlike most humans), they care for their young for up to five years and maintain a family relationship, and flight is the best exercise in the world.

Almost all parrots live in flocks of hundred without hate or war. Until we came along they were literally the highest form of life.

Do hands or language make us better? What built the atom bomb? What mixed the chemicals to make napalm? They often make us arrogant but not better than the noble parrot.

Perhaps Agent Smith in the Matrix was right. We are not truly mammals. We are a virus that destroys everything it touches.

Ari, you give me hope. If it weren't for people like you I wouldn't give penny for the worth of the human race.

As for the distinguished Chef, I can only hope that a "higher" form of life decides to colonized the Earth. Perhaps they will take him at his word and invite him over for dinner. Pass the fava beans.

[peacekitten]

i could not agree with you more, ari.

and it think it is that same prejudice against animals that allows humans to look at each other as lesser because there is something "different" about them.

i am very glad that animals are so patient with us in our bungling and that i have been blessed with so many beautiful cats around me that are my friends, my companions and give everything they have to me because they choose to. i learn something new from them each day, and look at them with wonder and happiness that they live with me.

i hope someday that the human race finds its way back to the natural world. we have missed so much by moving away from it, and it is a marvelous, honest, and amazing place to live.

[Anjushri]

Just an additional comment to my other comment. Here is just another reason to adopt a plant based (vegan) diet.

In a recent report “Livestock and Climate Change,” Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang deduce that "livestock" and their byproducts annually account for at least 51 percent of global GHG emissions (way above common estimates).

http://blogs.worldwatch.org/datelinecopenhagen/new-report-livestock-account-for-at-least-half-of-annual-global-ghg-emissions/

[theknightb4]

I am a veteran vegetarian, being so for the past 12 years and Vegan for 1 1/2. I should have followed my rant below saying so.