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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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SEPTEMBER 2005
BOOKS
Animal Rights In South Africa by Michele Pickover
Double Storey Books (Mercury Crescent, Wetton, Cape Town 7880, South Africa), 2005.
209 pages, paperback. 154 rand (about $22.00 U.S. .)
Pickover is a well-known and respected member of the pitifully small South African animal rights community. In a country where hunting cage-reared lions has become a significant rural industry, her book is an important contribution to the causes of both animal welfare and animal rights, between which she draws a sharp distinction.
Early chapters describe the harm done to wild animals by hunters, and analyse the so-called game industry, which facilitates the slaughter. Pickover then summarizes the 1998-1999 Tuli elephant scandal, involving the illegal capture of baby elephants in Botswana whose subsequent abuse in South Africa was finally brought to a semblance of courtroom justice in 2003.
Chapter 4 is a shocking expose of commercial exploitation of wildlife in Kruger National Park. Pickover exposes the South African National Parks Board as in essence a game farming operation, using the national wildlife heritage as a private stock-in-trade.
Pickover then discusses the growing South African vivisection industry and the lingering legacy within it of apartheid. She describes gruesome apartheid-era experiments upon primates, mainly wild-caught baboons, designed to test weapons for use against apartheid opponents.
A chapter on animals as food explains how South African agribusiness has shifted to factory farming.
Pickover stresses in conclusion her effort to show that the root cause of oppression––whether of humans or other animals–– is treating sentient beings as objects.
Pickover is at her best in researching and chronicling the exploitation of animals, cutting through propaganda to get at reality. She is somewhat less convincing when expounding philosophy, particularly where she draws an uncompromising line between animal welfare and animal rights.
Both the animal use industries and some prominent animal rights activists have tried to drive an ideological wedge between the concepts for more than 20 years, as if improving conditions for animals here and now might preclude ending exploitation of animals at some time in the future. Yet for most people, one leads toward the other.
It is certainly true to say that there is a vast theoretical difference between the animal rights ideal of empty cages, as opposed to more comfortable cages, a typical short-term animal welfare goal. But in practice, campaigns for either goal consist of exposing cruelty, seeking to end it. The argument that animals should have more comfortable cages leads to asking whether no cages might be preferable, and only in a world where that question is asked is the ideal of no cages within reach.
––Chris Mercer & Bev Pervan
[Mercer & Pervan are authors of For The Love of Wildlife and Canned Lion Hunting: A National Disgrace, available from <www.cannedlion.co.za>.]
Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge by Jeremy Narby
Tarcher/Penguin (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2005. 256 pages, hardback. $35.00.
Having been enthralled by Jeremy Narby’s The Cosmic Serpent (1998), I was pleased when Narby’s second book Intelligence in Nature came in the mail. It was not a disappointment.
Intelligence in Nature is more-or-less a sequel to The Cosmic Serpent, continuing to illustrate the parallels between “primitive” shamanic cultures and modern biology that Narby discovered in his study of botany. But whereas The Cosmic Serpent dealt mainly with molecular biology, particularly the structure of DNA, Intelligence in Nature covers a much broader spectrum, dealing not only with genetics but also with animal behavior and adaptation.
The ability of individuals to adapt to their environment, found in even the most primitive of life-forms, is described by the Japanese term Chi-Sei, meaning “to know.” Throughout the book Narby uses Chi-Sei to describe the apparent intelligence of everything from birds to slime molds.
Slime molds actually provide a perfect example of Chi-Sei. Lacking even a rudimentary nervous system, slime molds are capable of fusing with others to form what are essentially enormous single cells with thousands or even millions of nuclei. If chopped up and spread through a maze, these massive cells will rebuild themselves along the shortest route through the maze.
Other examples of Chi-Sei include orangutans recognizing themselves in mirrors; honeybees memorizing the location of food and then describing it to the other members of the hive; dodder plants, which can scrutinize potential hosts and “decide” whether or not to parasitize them; and even some advanced proteins, whose ability to react to other proteins and adapt to them forms the basis of life.
Narby also delves into the ability of some organisms to feel pain, and makes a very good case for the presence of this ability in even the simplest animals.
Narby outlines in detail the nervous systems of insects, particularly bees and butterflies. Apparently their outer exoskeletons are devoid of nerve endings, so that they may endure great external force without being hurt. However, when exposed to heat or electric shock, insects will demonstrate the classic signs of pain.
Narby goes even farther by describing the ability of plants to feel pain.
Why would an organism feel pain if, like a plant, it cannot move? Pain is generally believed to have evolved to enable mobile organisms avoid harm.
Narby challenges this idea by offering examples of plants responding to their environment in minutely sensitive ways, citing the ability of stilt palms to “walk” by changing the distribution of their prop roots, the elevation of calcium levels in tobacco plants when touched, and the behavior of dodder plants.
Narby then describes plant defenses. Lima beans, for example, will respond to an infestation of spider mites by releasing a chemical that attracts a larger mite to kill the attackers. The same lima beans will simultaneously “warn” neighboring plants to produce the defensive chemical, thus reducing the spread of the spider mites.
Although Narby generally refrains from passing moral judgment on the basis of his findings, readers will develop a greater understanding and appreciation of all life.
––Wolf Clifton