Brian Griffith's Blog, page 6

Coyote smarts

By 1930, naturalist Vernon Bailey noted the effect of extermination campaigns on coyote evolution: "After many years of persistent hunting … and the constant warfare of stockmen … who never miss an opportunity to kill a coyote, the numbers in most localities are apparently as great today as they were in 1889 … In full view of the evidence, then, man’s blind intolerance leads him to continue to kill coyotes … constantly selecting for intelligence in this species."
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

The greatest animal food source

Probably the most important source of food that we’ve tried to eliminate is insects. Insects make up at least 90% of all animal biomass on land. They are the plankton of the terrestrial food chain, but as food we typically view them as beneath our contempt. War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

Euroforming new worlds

Obviously, Europe’s colonists wanted far more than freedom to hunt and grow food on the Natives’ land. They were also bent on transforming the country into the likeness of the world they left behind. In “New Spain,” “New England,” etc., the foods, plants, animals, and landscapes of the Americas had to be systematically replaced with those of the old country. People wanted familiar things, and hoped to make the surrounding environment match their preferences. All this was a matter of taste, but thinkers like William Goldsmith made it a matter of religion as well. In his eight-volume "History of the Earth and Animated Nature" (published 1774), Goldsmith presumed that his tastes were those of the Lord: “God beholds with pleasure that being which he has made, converting the wretchedness of his natural situation into a theatre of triumph; bringing all the headlong tribes of nature into subjugation to his will; and producing … order and uniformity upon earth.”
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

The language of wolves

According to the rumor mill, the wolves of New England lurked at the forest’s edge, howling to rally their kind for attacks on human beings. Actually, when wolves howl they are communicating with other wolves, and. They are letting fellow wolves know where they are. To wolves of their own group, the howl says “come,” and to wolves of other groups it says “keep your distance.” But most European invaders assumed that wolf howls were directed at them—as if the wolves were shouting death-threats against humanity.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

The end of "militia's rights" in Japan

In his book "Upheaval," Jared Diamond points out that when Japan formed a modern, unified nation in the 1870s, it replaced the militias of feudal lords with a national army and police force. The traditional samurai militia were forbidden to carry their swords in public or to impose private punishments on others. This is just what the USA has failed to do with its numerous "citizen militias," who retain the right to carry military weapons in public and act as "deputies" to "enforce the people's will." It's as if Japan had allowed it's samurai militias to continue operating as independent forces of intimidation, with a legally protected right to brandish their military weapons in the streets. The whole practice of protecting "militia's rights" is a holdover from the feudal "order."

The ecocide frontier

In sum, it was the greatest case of multi-species ethnic cleansing in world history. In the wake of that ecocide frontier, Henry David Thoreau surveyed his New England landscape and confessed, “When I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here—the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear … I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.” In watching the forests vanish around Walden Pond, he added, “Thank God they cannot cut down the clouds.”

War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

Keeping America "pure"

Here's a letter from 1682 by the Rev. Cotton Mather of Massachusetts Bay Colony, concerning the need to keep "his" America free from the corruption of less godly people.

To ye aged and beloved, Mr. John Higginson,

There be at sea a ship called "Welcome," which has on board 100 or more of the heretics and malignants called Quakers, with W. Penn, who is the chief scamp, at the head of them. The General Court has accordingly given sacred orders to Master Malachi Huscott, of the brig "Porpoise," to waylay the said "Welcome" slyly as near the Cape of Cod as may be, and make captive the said Penn and his ungodly crew, so that the Lord may be glorified and not mocked on the soil of this new country with the heathen worship of these people. Much spoil can be made of selling the whole lot to Barbadoes, where slaves fetch good prices in rum and sugar, and we shall not only do the Lord great good by punishing the wicked, but we shall make great good for his Minister and people.

Yours in the bowels of Christ,
Cotton Mather

The Hero With a Thousand Faces

The market hunting bonanza

Without legal restraint on the right to profit from killing, people turned hunting into an enterprise like commercial fishing. “Market hunters” started running through resource after resource. It took over three centuries, but eventually they drove the beaver, bison, prairie chickens, whales, sea otters, Pacific sardines, and Atlantic cod so close to extinction that exploiting them further grew commercially unviable. They killed every Carolina parakeet, ivory-billed woodpecker, Labrador duck, and Eastern elk. They strip-mined the billions of passenger pigeons for cheap meat at two cents a bird till every last one was gone. As Edmunde Burke explained, “The laws of commerce are the laws of nature.” And as they traditionally said in Newfoundland, “If it runs, walks, or swims, kill it.”War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

Animals of God in Islam

Although Islam is more famous than Zoroastrianism for dividing all creation into good and evil sides, the Quran sometimes seems to eliminate any distinction between good and evil animals, and even any moral chasm between humanity and the beasts: “There is not an animal on the earth, nor a being that flies on its wings, but that forms communities like you” (Quran 6:38). According to Anas, Muhammad said “All creatures are like a family of God.” A prostitute was reportedly forgiven by Allah because she brought water in her shoe for a thirsty dog. Another woman went to hell because she caged a cat till it died. Abu Dawud claims the Prophet warned, “Fear God in your treatment of animals!” War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

On being a suspect in India

In the 1990s, as India's nationalists for a Hindu state grew more politically powerful, the Telegu poet Khadar Mohiuddin wrote of what it was like for himself and his fellow Muslims:

My religion is a conspiracy
My prayer meetings are a conspiracy
My lying quiet is a conspiracy
My attempt to wake up is a conspiracy
My desire to have friends is a conspiracy
My ignorance, my backwardness, a conspiracy
India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy