What Animals Could Tell Us

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must learn that the prevailing'separate but not equal' worldview is killing the planet and us along with it.

This view, an alternative to orthodox science, is the basis of a growing ethical and ecological perception of nature. In many ways, it takes up a very old cause and recasts it, whether as conservation biology, deep ecology, or other terms familiar to its adherents, who hardly offer a united front: artists, animal rights advocates, scientists, philosophers, mystics, healers, ministers, telepathic pet owners. What they share is a compassionate, humble relationship with all organisms on planet Earth. They reject the anthropocentric society for a biocentric one, regarding nature's many 'parts' not as objects, but as relations--extended family, neighbors, each with a unique gift. The animals deserve our empathy, our compassion, and our ear, but that doesn't mean they talk to us in English. Nor are they human beings in animal suits.

Some who hold this biocentric view contend that interspecies communication is far more common in nature than biology warrants. Whether it occurs at any given moment has less to do with intelligence than with timing and sensitivity. It depends on how willing we are, as individuals and as a culture, to seek out the unknown, push beyond the quantifiable, and adopt new, ethically based ways for studying the possibilities. Orthodox scientists say this view of interspecies communication reeks of anthropomorphism. But perhaps this criticism is a handy obfuscation that serves to uphold the dogma that keeps humans above and separate from the rest of nature. Transparent communication is nurtured best in an atmosphere of mutual respect; if that means 'attributing human characteristics to an animal,' then so be it. Those who hold this alternate view are not unscientific; they stretch the concept of science. While scientists work to keep data free of personal interjection, interspecies communicators have goals that are experiential, ethical, and shamanic. By reporting back to the greater culture, they hope to reconnect ethos to mythos, culture to nature. In so many ways, the difference between the scientific and the experiential approaches to interspecies communication is best understood as a distinction of kind rather than degree.

Our society must learn that the prevailing 'separate but not equal' worldview espoused by anthropocentrism is killing the planet and us along with it. The millennia-old oral history of the Kalahari Desert bushmen reveals many instances of animals mauling or trampling humans, but not one instance of a lion killing a person or a person killing a lion. In the 1950s, Western anthropologists visiting the area noted the eyes of many lions glowing just beyond the cooking fire; the animals would cease their roaring when a bushman hunter sauntered off to the edge of camp and asked them to keep the noise down so the children could sleep. Human and lion shared a watering hole, one using it by day and the other by night.

This peaceful coexistence changed when ranching was introduced and cattle began to share the watering hole without regard to schedules. At first lions kept their distance, as if cattle were an extension of the human family. But eventually they attacked. Ranchers reciprocated by shooting the lions, and within a few years lions had killed several bushmen.

An ecological transformation is slowly settling over our lives, affecting all aspects of culture, including economics, politics, community, education, consumption, even religion. A biocentric vision, one that embraces interspecies communication, can help guide this process. Although it seems wildly revolutionary to some, it is mild in practice. It mostly insists that we start meeting nature halfway. Before we meet up with an animal as species, we have to open up to that animal as an individual. It is communion rather than data that finally reveals itself as the basis of a new worldview.

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