How aware are animals of their existence?

How aware are animals of their existence?

When we ask that question, we generally frame it in terms of how animals relate to their place in OUR world. We might look at a pheasant in a cage and ask “Does he know that when he’s freed from that cage he will be blasted out of the sky by shotgun pellets?” Of course he doesn’t. How could he know what some self-serving human intends to do to him. He has no more idea that he will be shot for some human’s amusement than does the human that he will accidentally shoot himself in the foot before the day is out. (Karma baby!).

Consider the behaviour of a pair of birds in Spring:

• they are driven to mate
• they are driven to build a nest
• they are driven to sit on their eggs until they hatch
• they are driven to feed their young until they are self-sufficient

Are these drives purely instinctive, triggered by seasonal, hormonal changes in the birds’ physiology? It would be difficult to argue that these reproductive processes of birds are anything but the result of primitive drives, which require no considered awareness. To further support this view, their behaviours are clearly synchronised with the seasonal development of plants and trees.

But what about behaviour which is not tied to seasonal changes? Let’s return to the pheasant, and instead of considering his failure to read highly specialised signals from his human captors, place him in the open countryside, and see how he interprets the intentions of an approaching fox. Any self-respecting pheasant will fly out of harm’s way at the first sight of a fox. Is this purely instinctive behaviour, the fight or flight response, fueled by adrenalin, or is the pheasant responding to an intelligent appraisal of the situation? Watch a pheasant foraging in the presence of wood pigeons, or rabbits, and you will see that, in certain company, it has no fear of being eaten. The pheasant knows the difference between a fox, a pigeon and a rabbit. Is it likely that the pheasant’s measured response is purely instinctive? I suggest that it is not.

I further suggest that, in the natural world, animals are very aware of their mortality. The fact that they cannot interpret the way human society operates should come as no surprise.

How would any of us humans fare if confronted by members of a superior alien intelligence, whose gestures, language and motivations were completely indecipherable to us? I suggest that the aliens might consider us to be very stupid indeed.

Many humans value animals’ lives as a lesser currency than human life – on ALL fronts, they deny animals an equal right to life. The generally held view is that animals are good to eat, their fur looks good on us, and they don’t count for much beyond what we can get from them.

This arrogant view has led to the extinction of species, inhumane farming methods and untold animal cruelty on a massive scale.

It’s time for humans to realise that animals are the same as us. They WANT to live. They FEEL pain. They ARE aware of their own mortality.

Humans don’t have dominion over animals any more than they have dominion over each other.