Don't Be So Serious
Animals have little regard for humans and little in the way of useful-to-humans wisdom. Even so, observing animals can teach us to take ourselves less seriously.
Conclusion First: Everything we learn from non-human creatures comes from psychological projection, not the inherent wisdom of the animal. But there’s nothing wrong with learning what we can from any text we are offered.
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Naturalist Training
In 2022, I became a certified Tennessee Naturalist. During twenty hours of instruction, twenty hours of field work (catching salamanders, identifying trees, studying pelts, wading waist-high in meadows filled with summer insects), and forty hours of volunteer work, I barely scratched the surface of what the natural world has to offer in our beautiful state.
The program rearranged my thinking about so many things. Geology became—surprise—actually interesting. The fragility and importance of water systems, watersheds, and soil drainage became visible to me everywhere I looked. (Now it’s hard not to see how much we’re screwing this up.) And my position on what Amos Clifford calls the “more-than-human world” shifted too.
When it comes to “more-than-human” living creatures, my naturalist training helped me recognize and remove myself and my human emotions from my perception of their existence. This realignment in the way I observe animals has helped me understand natural systems more clearly and removed the emotional pitfalls of engaging with systems that don’t recognize emotion. For example, I don’t love creating roadkill with my stupid big SUV, but now I see a dead squirrel as vulture food—not something for me to cry about.
Even with my naturalist training, I can’t help but project a bit when it comes to the animals I see day to day. It’s ingrained in us from an early age to do this. From the time we are very small, we are exposed to media that anthropomorphizes animals. The Berenstain Bears wear clothes and live in a tree and sometimes eat too much junk food. An old lady rabbit knits and waits for a kid rabbit to fall asleep in a big red bed in Goodnight Moon. Stuart Little drives a funny little car and gets adopted by humans who treat him, weirdly, like their actual son. This way of telling stories makes us incredibly adept at ascribing human characteristics to all animals. It really only becomes problematic when it puts us in danger.
An extreme example of this danger was Timothy Treadwell, a conservationist and bear enthusiast who died while living among the grizzlies of Katmai National Park in Alaska. Treadwell believed his presence among the bears protected them from poachers and that he had actually gained the bears’ trust to the point that he could approach and pet them. In Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog’s documentary, the German filmmaker concludes that Treadwell was too sentimental in his views about nature. That sentimentality clouded his thinking and led him to underestimate the danger of being so close to these massive predators. Treadwell and his girlfriend were both killed by a grizzly in the fall of 2003.
No Wisdom But Survival
Almost everything that animals do is an act of survival. Yes, even the domesticated animal in your house right now. It’s rubbing your leg to get food or to stay in your good graces so it can get food later. Anyone reading this who knows me well might project that I believe this because I have a cat and not a dog. But our cat is not stingy with his affection. He’s a big, fat idiot who would never survive outside. He tolerates my need to bury my face in his warm, fluffy belly because I feed him every day at precisely 5:30am and 5:00pm. I harbor no illusions that he wouldn’t be just as happy if literally any other human with a warm, dry house and a can opener did the job.
The Birds of the Air
My naturalist classes taught me, above all, to be a good observer. We were trained to take in and record what we witness in nature without judging what we see. All that I can judge is my own reaction to what I’ve witnessed in the wild. My reaction tells me little at all about the animal, but it tells me plenty about my inner workings as a human being.
The best animals to observe are birds—simply because they’re always around, and it’s easy to attract more of them with a cheap feeder or two. In the New Testament, Matthews tells us to be more like the birds—not filled with worry for our next meal. I don’t think Matthew was much of a naturalist because I think the next meal is just about all that birds think about.
[25] “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? [26] Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Matthew 6: 25 - 26
A mockingbird lives in the holly bushes that line the parking area of my driveway. This bird, like all mockingbirds, is an unmitigated asshole. (Why did Tennessee choose it as the state bird? Because it will always volunteer for a fight?) Mockingbirds steal and sing other birds’ songs. They scream at me if I walk too closely to the bush where they roost. And they fight with hawks as if they weren’t three times their size. Mockingbirds are just exhibiting the behaviors they’ve evolved to survive. But when I see them in action, I give myself permission to take a stand when needed. To fight the big guys even when I might lose. To scream a little if it feels right. And, yes, to be an asshole if my survival warrants it.
I drive through the intersection of two busy streets four times every day taking my daughter to and from school. Crows have decided that the crisscrossing wires and swaying streetlights that fly above these five lanes of traffic belong to them. I suspect the sumptuous offerings of the nearby gas station have something to do with it.
American crows are terribly smart and can hold a grudge for generations. If someone or something treats them poorly, they will teach their young to avoid them for decades. If someone treats them well, some crows engage in “gifting” behavior that is ill-explained by science. This is, of course, just a matter of survival for the birds. They don’t love the people who give them gifts. But they seem capable of learning that dropping a shiny item on a doormat yields more food in the future. So they do that. Crows survive by believing you are what you show them, the first time you show them. There are no second chances with these birds. Humans probably deserve more grace in their interactions, but if you have problems with being a pushover, look to crows for inspiration.
Motherhood, Humanity, and Being a Part of the Food Web
We own a trail camera that has captured abundant videos of the animal life in our suburban backyard. We’ve seen rabbits, armadillos, groundhogs, squirrels, mice, chipmunks, house cats, skunks, possums, racoons, and foxes. I’ve learned about all kinds of animal behavior through this mode of observation. But above all, I’ve learned about motherhood and how to take myself less seriously.
We have been lucky enough to pass one spring with a nest of rabbit kittens to observe and another spring with a den of fox kits nearby. I found the rabbits in the corner of my strawberry patch, tucked into the earth near the brick border. They were tiny and nearly hairless—seemingly so vulnerable in the cold spring air. Their cuteness level was so off the charts that it took almost everything I had in me not to scoop them up and snuggle them when I retrieved the camera.
Rabbit mothers have no concept of their babies’ tender adorableness. This mother dutifully came once a day to feed them, cover them up, and then leave. The twenty minutes she spent with them left her vulnerable and the babies’ location exposed to predators. As a matter of survival, her time with them was extremely brief.
When the fox kits appeared the next spring, they were already older than the rabbits when we first found them. The foxes were already learning to hunt, and mom sure was no nonsense about it. Not one touch of sentiment and only a begrudging amount of attention once those babes could run for prey. We caught one kit attempting to nurse during what was obviously hunting practice time and mom would not allow it. The kits were not as cute as the rabbits, but their dog-like behavior did tug at my heartstrings. Watching them imitate mom’s regal “listening for prey” pose or her pouncing behavior made me think of all the ways my kids watch and imitate their parents. While the fox does it without sentiment, our burdens of responsibility are similar.
Animals do not love their babies the way humans do. Human parents need their babies almost as much as their babies need them. Do we form these deep bonds with our children because they are so vulnerable when they are born? Or are they born vulnerable in order to form emotional bonds? Is emotion key to our survival? Or are the two things so bound up together that we can never untangle them? This is no matter for a rabbit or a fox.
While humans project all kinds of emotions on these creatures, a rabbit and a fox are, at their most basic, nodes on the path of turning sunlight into the energy that flows through all living things. When we as humans pause and consider ourselves as part of that same system, maybe we’ll learn to take ourselves less seriously.
“Take for example the fox, whom the inhabitants of Thrace use when they want to undertake to cross some frozen stream over the ice, turning him loose ahead of them for this reason. If we saw the fox at the edge of the water bring his ear very near the ice, to hear whether the water running beneath sounds near or far away, and draw back or advance according as he finds the ice too thin or thick enough, would we not have reason to suppose that there passes through his head the same reasoning that would pass through ours, and that it is a conclusion drawn from natural common sense: “What makes a noise, moves; what moves is not frozen; what is not frozen is liquid; and what is liquid gives way under a weight”? For to attribute this simply to a keenness of the sense of hearing, without reasoning or inference, is a chimera, and cannot enter our imagination. We must make the same supposition about the many sorts of ruses and tricks by which the animals protect themselves from the attacks we make upon them.” — Montaigne
“How do you know I don’t love Tom, and you do? Maybe you’re being sentimental about yourselves. My love might be perfect love.”
That fox video is fantastic. The little fox seems to go through all the dilemmas humans go through with regard to their parents. How do I get their attention? Should I follow? When should I leave? Did I choose the wrong path? Is it too late? Psychological projection my foot. Can't anything be said to be psychological projection?