We don’t need to understand animals

When we come across people who are different, we either alienate them because we fear them or we make an effort to get close to them and make them feel at home. They remain a mystery for some time but their differences, aren’t they usually more interesting than threatening? Maybe don’t understand them, but do we need to? The more differences others have, the more they bring us out of our shell and the more we can learn from them - how they operate, how they see us and how they respond to us. The more we watch them the more we learn about ourselves. And that valuable form of learning isn’t confined to humans. Who hasn’t felt close to a creature, found them fascinating, learnt from them and tried to understand them? But surely the question is, why should we want to understand them when all we really want is to be close to them?
Most humans are fascinated by any kind of connection with an animal. Surely what we like most is them liking us. But more importantly, it’s that protective feeling we have towards them, and us ready to act as a friend or guardian to them, if they need help. And many do.
Because we see so much need for help, we’re vegan. But even for those who aren’t ‘animal people’, even if they eat them, for all of us guardianship comes quite naturally. It’s an integral part of human nature. We know animals are less powerful than us, and hopefully we look out for them, especially if they’re in trouble.
Humans are good at this. We do it well: coming close + getting involved. Dogs, with thousands of years being close to the human being, are also good at it. In fact they’re renowned for it - being protective of us and being loyal and friendly. We know less about other animals but probably they’re all like this, especially amongst their own kind, being protective of their young and acting for their wellbeing, guarding the vulnerable, creating safety and encouraging growth. In other words, this altruistic trait is characteristic of both animals and humans. In humans, altruism springs out of us naturally, instinctively, as it does animals. But there’s another element in humans that animals don’t have; we ‘do’ altruism. They don’t ‘do’ it, not intellectually or by design or to be correct. Altruism in humans is (not always) a response plus a reflection on that response - “oh, wouldn’t it be great if I were altruistic, not just for my kids and family but out of charity, beyond home”. That’s how, I think, animal rights advocates feel; they step beyond self interest to attend to the urgent interests of a repressed slave population. We certainly don’t need to understand animals to do that.