" A Pocketful of Musings "
by
Pat Fish

"Acting Like an Animal"

It's time for humans to address this phrasing -- "acting like an animal". And no, I don't propose more political incorrectness to drive us to distraction. I bring simple biological fact to the debate podium and the suggestion that perhaps it is us who SHOULD be acting like the animals.

The animals in our surround have emotions, just as the humans. "But this is not true," the nay sayers exclaim. "Everyone knows animals don't have emotions." Well animals DO have emotions only they are called instincts and cannot be manipulated via video or the written word. Indeed, these emotions so humanly cherished are naught but the instincts shared by all species and all spring from nature's urge to continue the species.

Don't believe? Let's choose one. How about embarrassment? "Surely animals are not embarrassed," the popular reaction might well be. "They are not mentally evolved enough to experience such a thing."

Consider the mourning dove that makes a clumsy landing. Landing at the same time might be several hundred other doves while a handsome hawk sits on a nearby branch to pick a singular prey. The hawk has many choices but its instinct is to choose the weaker to better the odds of a successful hunt. A dove that lands so clumsily might be crippled or otherwise impeded to make escape difficult. The hawk notices this dove whose behavior is so different from its many current colleagues. Hawk hunting behaviors spring to the fore and the clumsy dove is targeted as the easiest prey.

What about this dove? It knows it has made a clumsy landing and it knows that such weak actions tend to attract predators. The dove doesn't sit and ruminate on this truism, understand. This is an instinct manifested by adherence to behavior that is not different or more unusual than the rest of the flock. It's about survival. Don't stand out and the hawk won't notice.

Since the clumsy landing is a done deed, the dove can only do damage control at this point. The bird will hunch down, trying to make itself a smaller target or blend in with the flock. It will instinctively try to assimilate itself into the dove flock by doing everything physiologically possible to "shrink" away.

Is this dove embarrassed because of its clumsy landing? Well it reacts as if embarrassed though it is an instinctive survival thing that has nothing to do with fallen pantyhose or lipstick on the teeth.

Of course, unlike the higher evolved humans, this dove cannot reexperience this embarrassment emotion at a later hour by watching a video of the event or even in a passing mental musing.

Because humans can manipulate their instincts and emotions at will -- calling on the fear reaction to a scary movie or the reproductive urge by viewing provocative photographs -- does not mean that the animals possess none.

In their innocence and inability to maneuver their natural instincts, it would do humans well to pay a bit more attention to the less-evolved creatures in our eco-systems. We could certainly gain a greater perspective or our emotions and their original intent.

Most humans on this earth are far from the lowest rung on Mazlow's Hierarchy. With our basest physiological needs fulfilled; hunger, reproduction, shelter, then we move on to a search for self-satisfaction and our own brand of happiness. Some of us "love" our wives so much we kill them. Some of us get so angry with our children we discipline them inappropriately. The politicians and film makers know just the words and sights that will surge our emotions to an eventual delight that only they, goes the hype, can deliver.

We legislate that it is wrong for us to kill another because of anger. We establish it a felony to take the goods of others in our envy, and the animals feel this too. We either believe or eschew the emotion reaction the politicians would exhort through our electoral vote.

Humans are always dealing with emotions; assigning guidelines and punishments for excess. The bouts go on in our social ring and continue on into our very own marriages. What is an "over-reaction", an "appropriate" reaction, or an "unusual" reaction. Indeed we judge our criminals in the mass media based on the emotional reactions we expect.

I say it's time we took a peek at our animal friends, be they the garden birds, household pets or denizens of the wilderness. Humans are the highest evolved on this planet but we've achieved this through the same instincts as propels the creatures of our earth.

So let's stop with this "acting like an animal" analogy. I submit that if one were indeed, acting like an animal, then most likely their reaction was very appropriate.

Artwork from the WebMuseum ~ Paris
Art Entitled: Oak Tree

Artist: Kitaj,Ron B.

Kitaj,(1932- ). American painter and graphic artist, active mainly in England, where he has been one of the most prominent figures of the Pop art movement.

Before becoming a student at the Royal College of Art, Kitaj had travelled widely (he was a merchant seaman, then served in the US army) and his wide cultural horizons gave him an influential position among his contemporaries (he studied with Hockney and Allen Jones), particularly in holding up his own preference for figuration in opposition to the prevailing abstraction.

After a visit to Paris in 1975, he was inspired by Degas to take up pastel, which he has used for much of his subsequent work. Late 19th-century French art has been a major source of inspiration, as has a preoccupation with his Jewish identity, and he has said: `I took it into my cosmopolitan head that I should attempt to do C誣anne and Degas and Kafka over again, after Auschwitz.' Unlike the majority of Pop artists, Kitaj has had relatively little interest in the culture of the mass media and has evolved a multi-evocative pictorial language, deriving from a wide range of pictorial and literary sources-- indeed he has declared that he is not a Pop artist.