Charles Darwin: Spinning in his grave?

If evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin were still alive, he would have turned 200 years old on February 12—proving his “survival of the fittest” theory beyond a doubt. Much of Darwin’s work sought to substantiate the role of animals in the evolution of Homo sapiens and his 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, was one of the earliest science-based works to recognize our shared emotional experiences.  

Given the vast array of scientific and anecdotal evidence available about these issues today, Darwin would surely be appalled to witness the profound disconnect between modern man and the animals with whom we share the planet.  

We once thought that some “human traits” were as rare as the dodo bird in other species, but we now know that’s not the case. We know that animals of all species live in rich, complex and often difficult worlds that closely parallel our own, yet we continue to imprison them in zoos and circuses to amuse us, intentionally hurt them in painful and invasive experiments, and subject billions of them to hideously cruel lives and deaths to feed ourselves. We poison insects and put birds in cages. We clothe ourselves in animals’ skins and drink milk meant for calves. We treat animals as if they are inanimate tools to use for our own purposes.

Like us, animals inherently want to live their own lives in freedom and without interference, to avoid pain and to embrace comfort. To spend time—or not—with family and friends and seek pursuits and pleasures.

We now know that dogs can understand 200 or so words of human speech without being taught, polar bears in zoos can sink into deep depression, fish can tell time, cows have a “eureka moment” when they figure out how to open a new gate, octopuses can learn to unscrew jar lids by watching other octopuses and monkeys in laboratories choose not to shock other monkeys. Bees have intricate levels of communication and crows devise elaborate tools to gather food. Scientists have recently documented the previously unrecognized concept of self-awareness in animals after observing Happy, a 34-year-old Asian elephant at the Bronx Zoo, examining a blemish on her forehead in a mirror.

Using special recording equipment, researchers have shown that rats laugh out loud in frequencies that can’t be heard by the human ear and young rats giggle when they are tickled. During the 300 million years that they’ve been on Earth, even much maligned cockroaches have evolved into democratic societies in which conflicts are cooperatively balanced for the benefit of all.

We allow ourselves to eat, wear, experiment on and be entertained by animals only by separating “us” from “them.” We purposely blind ourselves to what actually happens to animals before they end up on our plates or on our backs and convince ourselves that animals don’t value their lives as keenly as we value our own. Darwin himself said, “Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.” But nearly two centuries after Darwin’s words, it’s time for humans to look in the mirror and deep into our hearts.

If we accept, as we must, that animals feel pain and joy, love and grief, and fear and longing, we must protect them and reject hunting them for “sport,” slaughtering them by the billions for their flesh, skinning them alive for their fur, and beating them with metal rods and whips for our amusement. Are we disciplined and innovative enough to evolve, or will Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” inevitably come to mean “survival of the meanest”?