I asked myself this question after watching Werner Herzog's "Grizzly man", a poetically told story of a man who loved animals so much that he would rather lead a dangerous life camping in the Alaskan bay than continue his alcoholic decay in human society. He managed to study bears for 13 years before he was eventually torn apart by one of them.
Herzog declares himself haunted by the fact that, in all the hours of footage of bears he watched to assemble this documentary, he never saw in their eyes mercy or understanding. Just indifference. Or hunger at most.
There's so much cruelty in nature. I oscillate between finding the bears sweet and cuddly and being shocked at their being capable of killing their own cubs. Moving on from bears, just underneath the grass-level melodic buzzing in the evening, there is a little world of insect carnage. And yet nature gives us a sense of harmony, and we often see animals as innocent and in need of protection. Maybe because we're even worse?
Herzog's hero, Timothy Treadwell, was unharmed for years and got as close as touching the bears and foxes. Animals are further present in our society as well, as we tamed some of them and made them part of our lives and households. In Nepal, during an yearly festival, people honor the animals that live around the their homes by blessing them with a "tikka" on their forehead and flowers around their necks.
Certainly there is the instinctual drive to survive that makes wild animals capable of harm and advises us to stay away. But I want to believe that, beyond the primordial violence, animals can feel love and kinship, if not for us, then for each other. And some have learnt to make friends even with humans.
Like Timothy Treadwell, I, too, love animals.
Herzog declares himself haunted by the fact that, in all the hours of footage of bears he watched to assemble this documentary, he never saw in their eyes mercy or understanding. Just indifference. Or hunger at most.
There's so much cruelty in nature. I oscillate between finding the bears sweet and cuddly and being shocked at their being capable of killing their own cubs. Moving on from bears, just underneath the grass-level melodic buzzing in the evening, there is a little world of insect carnage. And yet nature gives us a sense of harmony, and we often see animals as innocent and in need of protection. Maybe because we're even worse?
Herzog's hero, Timothy Treadwell, was unharmed for years and got as close as touching the bears and foxes. Animals are further present in our society as well, as we tamed some of them and made them part of our lives and households. In Nepal, during an yearly festival, people honor the animals that live around the their homes by blessing them with a "tikka" on their forehead and flowers around their necks.
Certainly there is the instinctual drive to survive that makes wild animals capable of harm and advises us to stay away. But I want to believe that, beyond the primordial violence, animals can feel love and kinship, if not for us, then for each other. And some have learnt to make friends even with humans.
Like Timothy Treadwell, I, too, love animals.
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| A more feelgood image - from Disney's "Bears". |
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