Variation on a Theme

Fortuitously, two pieces of reading material arrived in the mail room of my apartment complex this past week: one, a free copy of Smithsonian magazine that was left by some generous subscriber on the table designated for items donated to any passer-by; two, a book called Fear of the Animal Planet, which arrived after only a few days’ wait. (I purchased the book online after reading a piece by its author, Jason Hribal on Counterpunch. Thank you, Sarah, for sending me the article.)

In Smithsonian I found an article called “Crisis In The Caves”—an overview of scientific theories about an epidemic among the bat population called white-nose syndrome. The book, Fear of the Animal Planet, is about the history of captured zoo animals resisting their imprisonment. Naturally (pun intended), these two texts overlap—not just with each other but with last week’s post, based on Neil Evernden’s argument in The Social Creation of Nature: humans, either well-intentioned or ill, assume agency over all other species and cannot resist the urge to control them—cannot simply let anything be.

The Smithsonian article gets the ball rolling nicely. The subtitle is, aptly, “Can scientists stop a new disease that is killing bats in catastrophic numbers?” From the beginning the assumption is that the disease is a problem for experts to solve by running tests, by “experimenting.” The question is not “Can you stop a new disease that is killing bats…?” or, “Can we…?, or, better yet, “Should we?” No, the problem isn’t habitat destruction, the creation of pesticides that poison some species and mutate others, or any other human-related (more precisely, capitalist) activities. So the answer isn’t to scale back, to slow human reproduction, to cease the production of chemicals for agri-business (better yet, just cease agri-business altogether)—in short, to lessen our negative impact as much as possible and retreat to let the bats and other species (the fungi included) restore their balance. The answer, of course, is to further our march of progress, to yank bats out of caves and test (i.e. kill) them, to control the temperatures inside caves (by “changing the shape of entrances to direct airflow,” for instance), to continue invading their spaces and polluting their world with our lights, sounds, and instruments.

The article describes the collection of bats for testing. “The other bats collected today will be returned, ruffled but unharmed, to their hibernation perches” the author assures us, “but this one will be euthanized for laboratory tests…One bat sacrificed, in hopes of saving another million of its kind.” Even if one doesn’t find it ridiculous that scientists are capturing bats (while they’re trying to sleep, no less) and killing them in order to save them (especially considering that the scientists themselves identify human visitors to caves as one of the potential causes for the spread of disease among bats), it should at least be apparent that the choice of whether or not to sacrifice is never, at any step of the process, the bat’s. This self-appointed power may not pose a problem to you, but judging by the reaction of the bats to being captured—“letting out a stream of tiny, infuriated shrieks, baring its sharp white teeth in protest,” according to the article—they find it problematic.

At the conclusion of the article, one of the lead scientists manipulating the bats says: “There’s a sense of helplessness. But I don’t feel like we can say, ‘Well, we’ve got it, so we give up.’ We’ve got an obligation to move forward.” Her sentiments are somewhat admirable; she just wants to help the bats. But if it truly is our obligation to help them, we need to start by treating them as sentient and equal beings.

Perhaps there is no solution except to let this disease run its course, much like the bubonic plague did in medieval Europe. Perhaps the best way to help the bats is to leave them be. Instead of controlling and tinkering with them, maybe we should ask deeper questions about our impact on other species and take steps to mitigate our own harmful actions. Maybe we should stop attempting to manage them and instead try to improve the ecosystems on which they (and we) depend. I don’t mean altering the shape or temperature of their caves. I mean using less oil, returning more space to the wild, limiting our overpopulation problem via contraception and education, and ceasing the production of plastic. These steps are all difficult to even think about, let alone achieve. Instead, we continue to “play god” (for lack of a better phrase) with this species or that, stealing and torturing animals for testing—with the ultimate goal being not restoration but conservation and control.

This tendency to tinker with animals in the name of scientific research is of course not just confined to bats. I watched a show this weekend about an aquarium trying to overcome the challenges with white sharks in captivity (they stop eating) by implementing all kinds of experimental measures to “ease” them into life in a tank. The efforts of the marine biologists involved were not necessarily malicious. Those involved were, to the best of their ability, trying to lessen the stress on the sharks. But if they really care for the sharks, why are they capturing them in the first place? Didn’t they ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, animals don’t like being stolen from their families and habitats and put in man-made prisons? Doesn’t it ever cross their minds that the best thing for the sharks would be for us to just leave them alone and stop destroying the oceans?

In Fear of the Animal Planet, which documents the history of animals resisting capture and captivity, Hribal addresses the contradiction of enslaving animals to “increase awareness” of them or to promote research about them. He writes: “The zoo industry is full of such contradictions. It helps people learn about the importance of animals, but not what is vitally important [sic] to the animals themselves. Sea mammals, elephants, and primates are capable of so many amazing feats, but they are incapable of demonstrating their intentions and making their own choices. The industry encourages you to think that these animals are intelligent, but not intelligent enough to have the ability to resist.”

Fretting about the bats, DeeAnn Reader, a biology professor at Bucknell University in central Pennsylvania, says in the article: “Who’s going to live, and who’d going to die? That’s the big thing I think about all the time.” Clearly she’s worried about the bats, and that worry is a good thing; it means she cares about other species. But tinkering with them or managing them as a resource will not ultimately be of any help. We should all ask ourselves what kinds of actions would really help the bats. The answers might not be convenient, but if we really care about other species (and our own, since all species are connected), we will need to be ready for a long look in the mirror.

Reposted with permission from ex pede herculum