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When I was a child, we spent our holidays in a boarding house on the island of Ahvenanmaa, or Åland, which lies between Finland and Sweden. One day a Swedish lady arrived at our lunch table, with a long, drooping nose, a small chin and a wrinkled neck. 'Camel,' my younger brother breathed. From her considerable height, the lady fixed us with a melancholy gaze. Who among us has never seen the shape of an animal in a fellow human being? In folk tales from Finland and elsewhere, animals have human characteristics. The sly fox, the shy or clever hare, the honest but stupid bear. In fables, animals dramatise human characteristics and social situations. The transition, and the distance, allow the narrator the opportunity of examining our behaviour, and even offering instruction. Hannele Huovi's animal tales for children are modern fables whose animal figures also express features characteristic of our time, for example the cheetah's gym-trained narcissism – or the rhino's attempt to make her skin wrinkle-free in a beauty salon in order to find a mate more easily (Gepardi katsoo peiliin, 'A cheetah looks into the looking-glass', pages 98-107). The explanations of nature documentaries, on the other hand, often reveal that despite the scientific approach, the world is built from a human perspective: animals are given names, and their antics are depicted with phrases familiar from soap operas. The viewer begins to see the crocodile that lurks in the river as a baddie, and the gnu ending up in its jaws as a victim. The Finnish biologist Jussi Viitala's work Inhimillinen eläin, eläimellinen ihminen ('Human beast, bestial human', Atena, 2003) is an interesting study of the capacity of animals to process information and share it both among individuals and through entire populations. Algae of the Euglena family can move on the basis of light. The species of a particular genus of fish can sense weak electric fields, and generate them with their bodies. Birds can sense ultra-violet light, and with its help 'read' colour patterns whose signals are important in communication, including the choice of a mate. People cannot hear high-frequency sounds like bats or small rodents. The low infra-sounds of the elephant are inaudible to human ears. An extreme example of long-distance communication is the low sounds of the whales, which, in water, may carry across entire oceans. To the experts, these facts are perhaps familiar, but they give the layman pause for thought. Animals' social systems are complex. The killer whale and other whales are social, and schools remain together over generations. The world of chickens and cattle is hierarchical, as is that of wolves and hyenas. New to me was Viitala's study of the behaviour of bank voles. Females living close together shared the same piece of bread and warmed each other. Voles tried to live in peace, surrounded by friends. Young voles set up home as close to their mothers' territory as possible. When the animals in the test area were moved, populations made up of friends grew twice as fast as strangers. Viitala also ponders mate-choice, collaboration and ethics in -human society as well as the evolution of language. After reading the book one does not need to sign up as a 'social biologist' – the phrase has an unattractive ring – but it would be arrogant to deny human bestiality, as do the most impassioned Christian fundamentalists. Truth or fable, one can try to understand both voles and men. Kristina
Carlson |
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