I love seeing different animals getting along peacefully. I think it's particularly awesome when they are of complete different species. This might seem like a simple idea, or at least a simple way of viewing a larger idea, but check it. Before you wreck it. Wriggity-wreck it.
Symbiosis is a form of this peaceful, yet unlikely, relationship. The reason we normally don't acknowledge these relationships in our daily lives could be because they are
so natural. Most people rarely notice the ivy growing along a tree's trunk even as they remark upon the tree's height or color. These types of symbiotic connections are most often comprised two or more organisms living a tethered existence. In these instances, one life-form doesn't seem to take much notice of the other, though they share a very common space throughout their day-to-day existence and generally benefit from each other's actions.
But what of the pairings that are anything but likely or natural? Accounts of adult female tigers adopting and nursing piglets, house cats and crows who seem to enjoy each others' company and even share food, and lionesses protecting young oryx as if they were their own offspring are but a few examples of these seemingly bizarre relationships. I know what you're thinking: "Dude, all of these examples have cats in them..." But I assure you, this is not the point I am attempting to make.
What I'm trying to convey here is that perhaps ideas like compassion or friendship, or even love for that matter, are not exclusive to those of us who call ourselves "human." If this is a possibility, we cannot rule out the chance that ideas like hate, greed, or depression are experienced by creatures other than humans as well. We see a mother crocodile protecting her offspring by keeping them safe in her jaws, but we don't often consider this to be a loving act as much as a survival instinct. We see primates physically battling each other for rank inside a troupe, but we see it as natural events taking place within a social group of animals, not as an act of anger, hate or spitefulness. When human beings behave in these ways, we automatically attach emotional labels to what we are observing or experiencing. But again, this is not the point I'm trying to make.
All of that said, I wish to make this clear: It is not that every other creature lacks the feelings and emotions that we have. It's that we as humans are far too caught up in our own self-importance and place in this universe (not to mention our egos...worst. evolutionary. development. ever.) that we can't see the fact that we are just another creature living on this rock. There are a lot of us, and most of our evolution has taken place in our brains, but ideas like love, hate, fear, greed, all of these things are just highly evolved survival tactics.
This is not a new idea, by any means. But I live in a place where these topics don't often come across the barroom table, so I like to get it out of my system somehow. Also, Elvis is not dead. He sold his soul to be reborn as Josh Homme.
