Highways. Seems we can’t live without them. The Romans were experts at building them. The famous Appian Way, for example. So were the Incas. Now us. It’s part of the need to connect and to transport all that we make. Highways also connect us to the past. Can’t build one in the United States without an archaeological survey. Don’t want to desecrate a significant burial ground or the site of a historic battle, politically significant event, or even a birthplace of someone like Abraham Lincoln. And we build highways everywhere, from coastal lowlands to mountain passes. The latter are germane here. The Pan American Highway allows us to travel along some high elevations, such as those of the Atacama Desert in Chile.
Get this: Whale bones locked in rocks standing 1,800 meters (6,000 ft) above sea level. Remember Darwin. He climbed into the Andes way back in the 1830s, saw marine fossils in rocks, and—prior to Wegener and subsequent researchers—concluded that the tall Andes once lay at sea level and below. They had been and were still in the process of uplift and volcanism. Cerro Ballena, “Whale Hill,” falls into that process. What was once a sea level site became the cemetery for beached whales millions of years ago, suspected victims of a poisonous algal bloom. Smithsonian paleontologist Nicholas Pyenson and colleagues hypothesize the algal bloom as a cause of the mass death. How did anyone find the fossils in such an isolated desert? Highway construction. Going into the high mountains meant going into the deep past. The highway was also an avenue through time; it connected us to life-forms now long dead.
Poor unsuspecting whales. Same thing happens in our time. Whales, once land animals in their early stages of evolution, return to an environment they can no longer roam. Beached whales: Their plight brings out feelings of compassion and helplessness. How does one drag one of the biggest animals back into the sea? And the feelings extend to other marine mammals. Traveling through Rhode Island with geology and oceanography students a number of years ago, I saw the same feelings emerge in my students. We were the first on a scene of a beached dolphin.
The students went to the aid of the animal—or so they thought. Moved by some empathy that can connect many life-forms, including you and your pet dog, they moved in unison to “save” the animal. But two uniformed men stopped them from helping the dolphin. Seems there is a law on the books that says such help is an interference in natural processes. That put some emotional stress on my students. And that incident makes me wonder about the depth of human empathy. How far back does this connection to other mammals—or even other life-forms—go?
There weren’t any humans around to witness the beaching at Cerro Ballena when it lay at sea level. So, was there any empathy? Did the beached whales look around at their helpless pod through empathetic eyes? Were there whales unaffected by the algal toxin anxiously swimming offshore, looking at the beaching through empathetic eyes? What are the roots of empathy? Do we see it in elephants as they examine the bones of a dead pachyderm? Do we see it in water buffalo chasing away a pride of lions that are attacking an elephant or another water buffalo?** There weren’t any cameras around millions of years ago to record the event of Cerro Ballena, but we can see what our ubiquitous cameras reveal on YouTube, where people post their observations of one species seeming to show empathy for another species. There’s even a video of water buffalo saving a lion that other lions attacked. Imagine: A lion, the predatory enemy of water buffalo being saved by its prey!
Does empathy derive from defense of life itself? Obviously, I can’t verify that “feeling” is involved in any other species, such as water buffalo. Such a notion wells up from my admitted anthropocentrism, and there are plenty of arguments (and arguers) against any such perspective. I’m pretty sure I saw cross-species empathy in my students. I don’t know whether or not I can interpret a herd of buffalo saving a lion from other lions similarly or validly.
Yet, there’s this inescapable notion that if not all life, then mammal life can be connected by some intangible feeling of mutual care, especially when a video shows some cross-species act that saves or cares for a life in jeopardy. Now, I begin to wonder about those members of my own species who seem to have no similar feelings, such as the gangs and mobs around the world who attack, injure, or even kill the innocent. If I were to see an MS-13 gang member in jeopardy while I know that members of such a gang have been responsible for atrocities, could I empathize? Would I be the water buffalo that saves a lion?
What is the depth of my empathy? Would I take the high road of human compassion? And what about you?
*https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/algal-blooms-created-ancient-whale-graveyard?mode=magazine&context=1741
**Water buffalo save elephant baby under attack from lions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm7plUOkVk4
Water buffalo attack pride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqxTd995EYE
Get this: Whale bones locked in rocks standing 1,800 meters (6,000 ft) above sea level. Remember Darwin. He climbed into the Andes way back in the 1830s, saw marine fossils in rocks, and—prior to Wegener and subsequent researchers—concluded that the tall Andes once lay at sea level and below. They had been and were still in the process of uplift and volcanism. Cerro Ballena, “Whale Hill,” falls into that process. What was once a sea level site became the cemetery for beached whales millions of years ago, suspected victims of a poisonous algal bloom. Smithsonian paleontologist Nicholas Pyenson and colleagues hypothesize the algal bloom as a cause of the mass death. How did anyone find the fossils in such an isolated desert? Highway construction. Going into the high mountains meant going into the deep past. The highway was also an avenue through time; it connected us to life-forms now long dead.
Poor unsuspecting whales. Same thing happens in our time. Whales, once land animals in their early stages of evolution, return to an environment they can no longer roam. Beached whales: Their plight brings out feelings of compassion and helplessness. How does one drag one of the biggest animals back into the sea? And the feelings extend to other marine mammals. Traveling through Rhode Island with geology and oceanography students a number of years ago, I saw the same feelings emerge in my students. We were the first on a scene of a beached dolphin.
The students went to the aid of the animal—or so they thought. Moved by some empathy that can connect many life-forms, including you and your pet dog, they moved in unison to “save” the animal. But two uniformed men stopped them from helping the dolphin. Seems there is a law on the books that says such help is an interference in natural processes. That put some emotional stress on my students. And that incident makes me wonder about the depth of human empathy. How far back does this connection to other mammals—or even other life-forms—go?
There weren’t any humans around to witness the beaching at Cerro Ballena when it lay at sea level. So, was there any empathy? Did the beached whales look around at their helpless pod through empathetic eyes? Were there whales unaffected by the algal toxin anxiously swimming offshore, looking at the beaching through empathetic eyes? What are the roots of empathy? Do we see it in elephants as they examine the bones of a dead pachyderm? Do we see it in water buffalo chasing away a pride of lions that are attacking an elephant or another water buffalo?** There weren’t any cameras around millions of years ago to record the event of Cerro Ballena, but we can see what our ubiquitous cameras reveal on YouTube, where people post their observations of one species seeming to show empathy for another species. There’s even a video of water buffalo saving a lion that other lions attacked. Imagine: A lion, the predatory enemy of water buffalo being saved by its prey!
Does empathy derive from defense of life itself? Obviously, I can’t verify that “feeling” is involved in any other species, such as water buffalo. Such a notion wells up from my admitted anthropocentrism, and there are plenty of arguments (and arguers) against any such perspective. I’m pretty sure I saw cross-species empathy in my students. I don’t know whether or not I can interpret a herd of buffalo saving a lion from other lions similarly or validly.
Yet, there’s this inescapable notion that if not all life, then mammal life can be connected by some intangible feeling of mutual care, especially when a video shows some cross-species act that saves or cares for a life in jeopardy. Now, I begin to wonder about those members of my own species who seem to have no similar feelings, such as the gangs and mobs around the world who attack, injure, or even kill the innocent. If I were to see an MS-13 gang member in jeopardy while I know that members of such a gang have been responsible for atrocities, could I empathize? Would I be the water buffalo that saves a lion?
What is the depth of my empathy? Would I take the high road of human compassion? And what about you?
*https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/algal-blooms-created-ancient-whale-graveyard?mode=magazine&context=1741
**Water buffalo save elephant baby under attack from lions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm7plUOkVk4
Water buffalo attack pride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqxTd995EYE
RSS Feed