In Gunung Leuser National Park, a World Heritage site, I was assured I was part of a reciprocal exchange. Ecotourism here, say both UNESCO officials and local people, is a way to protect these forests for the orangutan, to provide a livelihood for locals and so lessen the drive toward deforestation for palm-oil plantations. It was also, I learned, a vital way to take care of abused and mistreated orangutans, the most terrible case of which was a female orangutan who had been captured, kept in a brothel in Kalimantan, shaved, and chained for sexual purposes. The national parks sought to protect both animals and the forests themselves.
The parks, I soon learned, did not always live up to their promises. The guides constantly called out to the orangutans, who don’t like being disturbed. Stressed by the shouts, they move away and the guides can catch sight of them. “We do it because they don’t like it,” one of the guides said candidly. The guides want to make the tourists “happy” by making the orangutans unhappy; it is not a good exchange.
Breaking one park regulation after another, the guides gave food to the orangutans and then brought a large group of tourists not only far too close to a mother orangutan and her child but between them. One of the guides then began provoking the mother, leaping at her, goading her, and laughing. Another stood over her with a stick, waving it in her face. She was distressed. I was angry and walked away, telling the other tourists that none of us should be there. I’d never knowingly been complicit in an act of gang cruelty, and I was upset.
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Animals find unexpected ways to let us in: the honeyguide bird knows where the bees’ nest is, but it cannot actually get the honey out on its own. It needs human hands to break open the hive, while humans need the bird to guide them to the right tree. Hence the honeyguide rule: a happy human-animal relationship depends on reciprocal exchange. The honeyguide is an emblem of the best kind of relationship between humans and the more-than-human world, leading the psyche to sweetness.
If humans deliberately call for help from honeyguides, the birds will directly respond. Such communication between animals of different species is rare, but other examples include the relationship of the orphaned baby hippopotamus looked after by an Aldabra giant tortoise 130 years old. The two vocalize together in neither typical hippo nor typical tortoise ways.
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Loneliness is, we know, a root cause of unhappiness, while a sense of community enlivens us and makes us happy, but there is more: interspecies community matters. Animals are crucial for our happiness because as a species we crave companionship. But this is the age of our solitude, and many humans feel estranged from the world in this species-loneliness, outcast from the intensity of the fully thriving world. The nonhuman world of plants and animals is the only other life we know of in the universe; without them, how silent and foreboding the loneliness of humanity. The philosophy of human exceptionalism, that arrogant and ultimately self-injurious idea that humans are a species both separate and superior, reaches its apogee in mass extinctions.
- The Loneliest of Species
The parks, I soon learned, did not always live up to their promises. The guides constantly called out to the orangutans, who don’t like being disturbed. Stressed by the shouts, they move away and the guides can catch sight of them. “We do it because they don’t like it,” one of the guides said candidly. The guides want to make the tourists “happy” by making the orangutans unhappy; it is not a good exchange.
Breaking one park regulation after another, the guides gave food to the orangutans and then brought a large group of tourists not only far too close to a mother orangutan and her child but between them. One of the guides then began provoking the mother, leaping at her, goading her, and laughing. Another stood over her with a stick, waving it in her face. She was distressed. I was angry and walked away, telling the other tourists that none of us should be there. I’d never knowingly been complicit in an act of gang cruelty, and I was upset.
[---]
Animals find unexpected ways to let us in: the honeyguide bird knows where the bees’ nest is, but it cannot actually get the honey out on its own. It needs human hands to break open the hive, while humans need the bird to guide them to the right tree. Hence the honeyguide rule: a happy human-animal relationship depends on reciprocal exchange. The honeyguide is an emblem of the best kind of relationship between humans and the more-than-human world, leading the psyche to sweetness.
If humans deliberately call for help from honeyguides, the birds will directly respond. Such communication between animals of different species is rare, but other examples include the relationship of the orphaned baby hippopotamus looked after by an Aldabra giant tortoise 130 years old. The two vocalize together in neither typical hippo nor typical tortoise ways.
[---]
Loneliness is, we know, a root cause of unhappiness, while a sense of community enlivens us and makes us happy, but there is more: interspecies community matters. Animals are crucial for our happiness because as a species we crave companionship. But this is the age of our solitude, and many humans feel estranged from the world in this species-loneliness, outcast from the intensity of the fully thriving world. The nonhuman world of plants and animals is the only other life we know of in the universe; without them, how silent and foreboding the loneliness of humanity. The philosophy of human exceptionalism, that arrogant and ultimately self-injurious idea that humans are a species both separate and superior, reaches its apogee in mass extinctions.
- The Loneliest of Species
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