Homo Sapiens and Other Animals

I am as sentimental about dogs as the next guy, maybe more so. My friendship with Joe Bob, my beloved McNab-border collie-kelpie, was so close that my late wife, Marylee, was just a bit jealous.

When he came into my life, Joe Bob had been the longest incarcerated resident of Sequoia Animal Shelter. A former ranch dog in southern Humboldt, he had all the skills necessary to herd cattle but none of the interest in the hard work required on a ranch. He got by on looks and charm. I loved him.

Back in the 1970s, my first wife, Susan, and I raised goats on our 40 acres on the subdivided Thomas Ranch in southern Humboldt. We milked them and Susan made yogurt and cheese. We bred them with an eye to improving milk production. Learning to castrate and butcher the kids was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’m sure it was even harder on those beautiful young creatures.

Once when Marylee and I were walking in a tiny, remote community on Chichagof Island in Southeast Alaska, we encountered a grizzly bear shuffling along looking for food. She sniffed the air in our direction for what seemed like a long time before moving on. For the first time ever, I had some sense of what it’s like not to be at the top of the food chain.

We call ourselves homo sapiens. Or rather, that’s what Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish biologist, namer and categorizer of all things in nature, decided in 1758 to call us. Linnaeus decided that it was human intelligence that distinguished us from our fellow animals. We’re the smart species.

My wife, Liz, has been at war for 40 years with generations of deer who have made themselves at home in her beautiful garden. She has tried to cultivate plants that deer are supposed to dislike, but deer seem able to develop a taste for almost anything, kind of like homo sapiens.

We seem to feel a deeper connection with our fellow mammals than with species like birds and reptiles and fish. I’ve noticed that the road to veganism often begins with the elimination of mammals from the diet. Many of us carnivores consume the flesh of our fellow creatures with a delicate seasoning of guilt.

I think Linnaeus got it wrong. If I were classifying our species, we would be animalea contradictoria.

Allan Katz muses about symbiotic relationships in Eureka.