So, I was thinking…if you know me, you know, when I start with- I was thinking…that’s trouble…not in a bad way though. I wrote this back in June, but here I am. Posting now.
I’ve had a few random thoughts, obviously steeping from work, and, you know, life. They are arbitrary, and all over the place, so bare with me please. It’s a two part series of blogs. Here’s the first.
I was driving back home, winding down the village road; it was a pink dusk day. It was gorgeous. And, street dogs darted across the road, jumping into the bushes, and swiftly getting lost into the hilly jungle. And I thought, look at them, so smart to master running on roads with cars, maneuvering their way, learning to fend in an urban jungle, adapting to the environment. And it occurred to me, who declared us the superior species? For surviving, are we up there? Curiosity made me Google stuff, and well, here you go: We aren’t really a significant part of the food chain, “…right above them are herbivores, such as rabbits, cows and deer, which have a trophic level of 2. Next come the omnivores that eat a mixture of plants and herbivores. That’s where humans rank, with a trophic level of 2.2.” They simply explained it as: “Humans are somewhere between pigs and anchovies in the food chain.”
What???? Anchovies???? really??? Hilaaaarious!!
Let’s talk beyond food chain, shall we?
I quote Alun Anderson, Senior consultant, New Science
(Source: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/12021)
“The idea of human superiority should have died when Darwin came on the scene. Unfortunately, the full implications of what he said have been difficult to take in: there is no Great Chain of Being, no higher and no lower. All creatures have adapted effectively to their own environments in their own way. Human “smartness” is just a particular survival strategy among many others, not the top of a long ladder.”
“…It took the new science of ethology, created by Nobel-prize winners Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch, to show that each species had the abilities it needed for its own lifestyle and they could not be not arranged on a universal scale. Human smartness is no smarter than anyone else’s smartness. The question should have died for good.”
Isn’t it smack-our-faces funny that we strut around the planet being SUPERIOR? Cause we can voice what we think and feel? But look at us. Are we adapting? THIS is adapting to the environment and contributing to the eco-system? THIS is survival? What we doing to the planet…smart (asses), we are!!