The Wisdom of Animals

 It’s surprisingly difficult to obtain real facts about animals. Much of what we read, and think we know, owes more to imagination than to science. Rumour, gossip and folklore have, over the years, taken the place of solid research. Surprisingly little accurate research has ever been done into the way animals live and behave.

In the case of wild animals, this is not, perhaps, too surprising. Studying wild animals properly means following them for years in their natural habitat – a difficult if not impossible task which requires superhuman dedication and would, in the end, probably produce research of questionable value because the very presence of the human observer might well alter the behaviour of the animals. Studying “wild” animals in the entirely unnatural conditions of the laboratory, zoo or safari park is as likely to provide useful information about the way animals behave naturally as studying prisoners would about human behaviour. One thing we do know for certain is that wild animals kept in captivity behave very differently from wild animals living in their natural habitat.

It should, of course, be much easier to observe farm animals. Cows, pigs, sheep and other animals are easy enough to watch. And since the observer need not alter the animals’ routine the observations should be of value. But very few proper studies have been carried out on farm animals, and vets and farmers are invariably quite mistaken in their beliefs about animals such as sheep and cows. Instead of watching these animals in their natural surroundings, men and women in white coats cage them, stick electrodes into their heads, sit them in metal boxes for weeks at a time to make them depressed, separate them from their families, sew up their eyes and inject chemicals into their brains while they are awake. The knowledge obtained in such a barbaric way is never of any value but is simply added to our ever-growing library of pointless “discoveries” and “observations.” In a generation or so our descendants will look back at the meat traders, the animal transporters, the hunters and the vivisectors and wonder not just at the sort of people they were, but at the sort of people we were to let them do what they did.

The truth, sadly, is that little or nothing of value has been written or broadcast about pigs, cows, sheep and other farm animals because the meat industry doesn’t want us to know that the animals which are reared and killed for us to eat are sensitive, thoughtful and intelligent....<<<Read More>>>...