NATURE WRITES THE SCRIPT

On why natural history has to be led by science not anthropomorphism

The stability and richness of the natural world are uniquely comforting. There is grandeur in its infinite variety and scale, mystery in its whys and wherefores, and spectacle in its creations and events.

The story is there.

In her recent book ‘Why Animals Matter,’ Marian Dawkins addresses the difficulty of asserting consciousness in animals. Emotions have three parts – the behaviour; the physiological occurrences and the subjective emotion.

We know that animals have the first two, but we don’t know whether they have the third. You may think ‘if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck,’ but everything we know from neuroscience tells us that, while animals differ as to what extent, they do not feel emotions in the same way that humans do.

For example, hybrids of one kind of weaver bird with other species are born with the ability to make a nest, but not with the ability to carry out the mating behaviour necessary to lure a mate. So such individuals merely build a nest and deconstruct it again. This is an example of how complex behaviour can be genetically ingrained, and does not necessarily require thought or knowledge of purpose.

But does it matter whether an animal can ‘think’ or not? Feeling an urge to run away from a painful or dangerous stimulus may be just as valid a reason to respect their condition as if they were capable of a more complex assessment of the situation. We don’t know how much a baby can think, but that doesn’t make its ill treatment any less abhorrent than that of an adult – a baby has nerves after all, and can sense and respond.

However, most animals cannot think to the same extent that we do – they do not contemplate relationships and consequences in the same way, and dealing with abstract tasks and concepts is typically impossible, even if for their own survival advantage. For example, a mother duck often doesn’t know how many ducklings she has, because she cannot count, and so often does not react if one of them goes missing.

As such, describing a bear cub as ‘little Mickey, cuddling up to his Mum, fearful of the future challenges he must face in order to keep the family alive’ is just wrong – misleading, because neuroscience says animals probably do not think to that depth – and lazy, because there are so many interesting stories to tell about how, why and what animals DO think and do.

The natural world is a treasure trove of information and stories. Let’s revel in that storytelling resource by doing away with the frame of human platitudes.