Ugly and the Beasts

You’re sitting in an airport and time before your flight seems to have slowed or perhaps slipped backward. Some engage with their cell phones, never looking up. Some sleep. Some chat with their companions or complain or visit the ticket agent over and over in case reality has shifted in their favor. But many of us just sit quietly, watching the people around us.

Now and then we notice how like some member of the animal, marine, avian, or insect kingdom certain fellow travelers are. We chuckle at someone’s strut or sigh with a parents’ disappearing patience with a disobedient brood. A few of us even know the plant realm well enough to compare behaviors there—territoriality, self-defense, repulsion from certain others. The final conclusion is one we generally avoid: We humans are animals—dressed up, linguistically talented, thumb-blessed animals. Humans are denizens of the same world with many of the same needs, the same origins from star stuff, and definitely much of the same DNA. The hard part is realizing what that means.

Only recently have scientists admitted that many other species feel emotions and pain. Yes, boiling water or blows by blunt instruments hurt. So do prisons and the destruction of families. We don’t care. Many creatures fashion tools of a sort that we didn’t recognize because they weren’t our tools. We ignore the inventors of some of our favorite conveniences if that inventor belongs to a group we don’t like. We can’t guess when an animal will kindly choose to defend or adopt a creature from another species—even a human. Humans adopt pets although some discard them in cruelty when the relationship becomes irritating. Human females who are key to the species are often treated as commodities, while octopus females throw sticks and stones to discourage suitors they find undesirable. The consensus now is that animals and plants are brilliant at doing whatever they need to do to survive. With our supposedly superior brains, humans don’t defend our clean water, air, or resources.

It’s past time we recognized the weaknesses we accept in other species are evident within ourselves. We can easily be distracted and mesmerized by shiny toys or emotional seduction. We fall for manipulators who know our trigger words and vulnerabilities. We chase the ball again and again, learning knee jerk responses. When we’ve erred or been bullied, we have an urge to cower like an indoor dog whose bathroom discipline has failed. Admitting mistakes is difficult. Often, we blame others for mistakes for which we should bear responsibility. The chimps would be proud.

We cling to misapprehensions for which there is abundant evidence to prove us wrong. Groups refuse to give up hatreds that are traditional even when the reasons for the hatred are counterproductive. We choose war when we could choose cooperation, beating our technological chests to prove we’re fierce with less provocation than a mountain gorilla requires. We don’t adapt as well as a household of diverse creatures (often of nonbinary genders) that embrace one another as family. Like plants, we refuse to flourish beside plants that annoy us. We’re willing to fight for territories we’ve stolen from others. We don’t like change even when it benefits us.

As we look around at the globe and history with a sigh, we may confess that we haven’t progressed as a species much if at all. Even if we ignore those who look for reasons to be dissatisfied, we know we haven’t stirred ourselves hard enough to try new ways of coping. We allow the most powerful to prevail. But we could. Our brains may not be as large as those of humpback whales, but they’re complicated. We don’t have to be lazy or greedy or hateful. Like dogs who chose to adapt to the dominant species or whales who defend the weak from a threat we don’t yet recognize, we could flourish in a world we understand and nurture.