June 3
We are all heirs — and our inheritance comes to us in two ways. It comes in the genes we inherit from our parents and it comes in the culture we inherit from our parents and everybody else we encounter. I was always taught that the great division between humans and “animals” is that we have culture and they don’t.
And that’s wrong. Chuck a tame chimpanzee or a scarlet macaw out into the wild and they won’t have clue what to do. They haven’t acquired the culture of the place and the community in which they find themselves. They won’t survive. They don’t know how.
This border country – the Badlands that lie between human and non-human animals (and we’re all animals together are we not?) — has long fascinated me. I’ve just read the latest from the American writer and scientist Carl Safina: Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.
I wrote about the book for this week’s Spectator, and they also asked me to take part in a podcast. Carl was able to join us from Long Island; I had visited him there to discuss a previous book and gone for a fine dog-walk with him as well.
So we talked about the way the songs of whales change, the way chimpanzees use wooden tools in one community and stone tools in another, and how the idea of human uniqueness is an illusion that we cultivate “because of our deep insecurity,” Carl said.
Every difference between human and non-humans animals is one of degree, not of kind. Darwin said that, but we’ve spent the last 160 years trying to avoid and misunderstand the inconvenient truths he revealed.
Read Carl’s book. Learn about the culture of sperm whales, scarlet macaws and chimpanzees – and by doing so learn about what it is to be human.
Eddie’s blog Wild June 3
will do xx
Eddie. Really enjoying your latest wildblog again this year and learning things from it like you. Glad you’re loving the natural world so much, like me. We need to help it more than ever. Best wishes Mike
Eddie’s blog is great. So colourful and more importantly informative. I didn’t know hemlock was similar to cow parsley and am going to look them up myself. Keep it up please.
No cricket ,no tennis,thank goodness for your blog Eddie.Your photos are brilliant,and your dad’s writing is pretty good too.(Have I got that in the right order?).
Somehow,I think the natural world is revelling in our current discomfort.Is it me or are the birds singing a bit more joyfully this year?.Keep up the good work.I love hearing about your natural world in Norfolk,a place dear to my heart. Geoff
Another lovely blog Eddie. Who wouldn’t enjoy an unfurling fern?
A belated thank you Eddie – for your wonderful pictures. I don’t live in the UK and really appreciate the clear photos and descriptions of all of the flowers that you posted. I do hope that we don’t have to wait too long for more.
Loving your blogs Eddie. I agree Simon, we humans would be culturally richer for dropping the superiority status. Perhaps a bit of human humility might enable us to celebrate rather than dominate this shared Earth. Thank you both for sharing your glorious part of it so generously.
Penny Woollams