Animal Instincts

It's not my idea to be up at two, four and then six a.m. each day. If I have any dreams it's for a night of uninterrupted sleep. But the creatures poking my face, playing with phone cords and using the bed as a trampoline have an agenda and an inborn taste for nocturnal activity that can't be argued with. Doors between us only make the noises worse. These early morning feline wakeups make me issue threats I'd be horrified to follow through on. They remind me of something I read recently in a New York Times Magazine article called "Pill Popping Pets":

People’s willingness to employ behavior-modifying medications stems in part from a growing desire for more convenient, obedient household animals. “Our expectations are really going up," says [pet industry analyst David] Lummis. "Owners want their pets to be more like little well-behaved children."

What compels me, then, to forgive, kiss and clasp their little bodies each morning as if hanging on for dear life?


Like the rest of nature, animals are unapologetic about what they are: of the earth in ways we humans have rejected. Animals are a bridge between the "lower" world of the seemingly inanimate - trees, rocks, ground – and the "higher" world of the self-conscious. Animals are a reminder of where we came from and what we're made of. They are the bearers of our ancestry. As much as contemporary life asks us to think and behave otherwise, deep, forgotten parts of ourselves are embodied by animals, and thus, most of us are fascinated with them.

Another of their roles in the mystery is to represent layers of the world that humans are not designed to perceive:

• Cats see ten times better in the dark than we do, and dogs hear sounds far above human range.

• Bees can see ultraviolet light, revealing yet another layer of reality beyond our own. Click on the flower names on this site to see how the world looks to them.

• Elephants and whales communicate via low-frequency sound and seismic waves that carry up to six miles. Furthermore, says one researcher, "when it rains in Angola, elephants 100 miles away in Etosha National Park start to move north in search of water. It could be that they are sensing underground vibrations generated by thunder."
  

So what are your own reminders of your origins? What in the natural world especially calls to you? Have you ever had an experience in or with nature that is unitive – i.e., made you feel connected to it at a visceral, unspoken level?

More on this in the next post.