Correcting natural injustice would really consist of giving food to the anxious mice in compensation for what we’ve just put them through. Scientific research demands suspension of judgement.
To show Irena how much he loves her, Mr Reed wants to give her a pet. He takes her into a small pet shop in town, the animals all become restless in their cages, they panic and howl as if something were threatening to kill them. When Irena leaves the shop, the animals immediately calm down. You are almost relieved: Irena Dubrovna’s metamorphosis into a big cat must be imminent.
We can do the same kind of experiment on rats as we did with the planarians. We train the rats to develop an aversion to darkness by a very simple method. We give them a choice between a transparent box and a dark, unlit box and every time they go into the dark box, we give them an electric shock. When the rat has acquired the aversion to darkness, we kill it, mince its brain and inject extracts from this into new rats. We observe that the injected rats acquire their aversion to darkness much more rapidly than their non-injected fellows. From this we conclude that there is a molecule that may be responsible for transmitting fear of the dark.
Biological research shows that we can isolate a range of molecular carriers of the fear of darkness, of the intention to contract, of anxiety or stress. We would hope that other molecules will lead to happier discoveries.
Irena Dubrovna is showing signs of weakness. Slipping her hand with its long, polished nails inside the cage of her little canary, a gift from her husband, Mr Reed, she accidentally kills it, whether by mistake or by instinct. It is doubtless this killer instinct that makes her feed her pet bird’s body to the nearby zoo’s black panther, which she visits and admires increasingly often and which paces relentlessly around its cage. You are almost relieved: Irena Dubrovna’s metamorphosis into a big cat is imminent.
Foundational research sometimes allows us to make unexpected and game-changing discoveries. For example, a researcher working on canary song, trying to understand why some male canaries sing all year round while others only sing during their courtship displays, carried out a range of interventions and transplants on these two groups of canaries. He realised that following a courtship display, the canaries that sang intermittently showed significantly reduced neurones in the cortical region which regulates their song, and that during the subsequent courtship display a large number of neurones returned. Thus, he discovered that the cortex harbours a germinal zone, and that’s how he was able to show the existence of stem cells. Research can take us much further than studying birdsong would suggest.
Irena Dubrovna is jealous. When she realises that her husband is staying a little too late at work with his colleague in the evenings, she cannot help but sneak into the office and, in a manner alien to her usual poise, to pursue, threaten, even attack the woman who risks usurping her place at her darling husband’s side. You fervently hope that Irena will spare herself the pain of killing her rival. And that Mr Reed will be strong enough not to demand that his wife sleep with him. At the same time, you’re almost relieved: Irena Dubrovna’s metamorphosis into a big cat is imminent.
In California, the animal rights militants are growing more aggressive, more accurate and therefore more dangerous. On 22 April 2009, they went after J. David Jentsch, who studies schizophrenia and drug addiction by experimenting on vervet monkeys. This time they managed to set fire to his Volvo, which was parked near his home in Westside, Los Angeles. Jentsch, who belongs to UCLA’s ‘Pro-Test’ organisation, has stated that abandoning animal experimentation would be a disaster for research both pure and applied in the field of human healthcare. But when this scientist decided to take a stand, others refused to testify and laid low. The same happened to another UCLA researcher whose name we will not reveal, who, after months of harassment and threats, decided to give up his work for fear of reprisals and sent an email to the associations for animal liberation which read: you’ve won.
One evening, you forget the curfew when you absolutely have to be back home. You return after midnight, your parents are waiting for you on the doorstep. To calm their nerves, you point out that you haven’t yet turned into a pumpkin.
When a chick is born, like all nidifugous birds, in the first hours of its life it must learn to follow its mother, otherwise it will be killed and eaten by birds of prey or foxes. This is what we call pursuit behaviour. In the labs, we’ve worked on imprinting, that is, on very early behaviour training. We’ve had chicks hatch in incubators, we slept on camp beds to be sure that we’d be there when they were born. Because you have to start working with them exactly sixteen hours after they hatch, otherwise it’s too late. We teach them to follow moving coloured balloons rather than their mother. And we’ve shown that chicks injected with particular molecules learn more quickly than other chicks to substitute a balloon for their natural parent; in short, there are molecules that improve learning.
Despite your wish to escape the family fold, learning to follow bobbing balloons rather than your mother does not represent sufficient progress for you to submit to this kind of experiment. You need to find another trick to break away from your mother.
I should expand this imprinting narrative to include the aspect of sexual imprinting. On reaching adulthood, male chicks will seek their sexual partners among objects that resemble the object they followed in the very earliest stage of their development. Therefore, if we manoeuvre things such that a chick follows balloons instead of its mother, as an adult chicken it will prefer to partner with a balloon. From this finding, eminent psychoanalysts have been able to state that the same kind of behaviour can be found among men who sometimes seek to couple, not with their mother, exactly, but with a woman who resembles her.
This tells us nothing of the adult sexual lives of the female chicks and children who, in order to escape the threat of predators have, of course, just like their male counterparts, learnt to follow their mother.
Irena Dubrovna lives entirely alone in America. But now and then she happens to recognise a familiar face in a woman she comes across. Like everyone else in the cinema, you admire the strange and feline face of this passing woman on the screen, the intense gaze she directs at Irena, you listen to the strange, incomprehensible and seductive words she speaks to her, words with which she marks her and Irena’s belonging to the diabolical world of panther-women. You are my sister, you are my sister, she says, in a language that sounds like Serbo-Croat or Moldovan. You read the translation that appears below the picture. You don’t know if this declaration should be understood as good news or a terrible situation. Still, upon learning that there are several panther-women in the United States, you realise, without entirely understanding why, that instead of being terrified you are reassured. You are preparing.
In Tourneur’s Cat People, you side not with Mr Reed, the disappointed and frustrated husband, but with Irena, you worry over her fears, her fear of coming to prey on the man she loves. Having identified first with a gorilla who ravishes women, you now identify with a woman who’s prepared to eat men and who, for this reason, refuses to sleep with her lover. All in all, you haven’t made much progress since King Kong. You even wonder if you may be regressing.
The improvement of animals’ living conditions lies less in the experiments themselves than in what surrounds them. Animals must enjoy the best possible living conditions, they must eat well, drink well, be kept at the right temperature, the idea is that animals be treated optimally between experiments. Suppose for example that we wish to observe the effect of liver cancer upon glucose levels, we would have to cause the animal to have liver cancer and measure its glucose levels, we couldn’t do otherwise, the experiment demands it. Nonetheless, we could ensure it dies comfortably.
You are convinced that science and scholarship demand sacrifice. You don’t yet know of what, you will discover this little by little.
The word euthanasia appears repeatedly in texts on the use of animals. Yet, whi
le its etymology suggests gentle death, it is more often applied, in current usage, to the act of provoking death in those desperate to put an end to their intolerable physical suffering. Although they don’t expressly wish for it, animals may benefit from euthanasia. On the other hand, even if they express a keen wish for it, people are never accorded the right to such a treatment. Offering one’s opinion therefore does no good at all, so it’s better, as animals do, to stay dumb. To ensure zero confusion over the line between humans and animals, we are subject to horrifying inconsistencies.
Irena Dubrovna has no illusions about herself. The world she lives in was not made for her. You don’t wish to be like her. And yet, when she’s weeping in the bath because her first metamorphosis has actually happened, you weep too.
If, as a result of poor treatment or lack of care, captive animals are found to be seriously ill or injured or in a state of poor psychological health, the police commissioner can order that they be put down or euthanised on the spot.
At twenty-two, you meet a sweet, gentle young man who likes you. You agree to make love with him, you say very little, show as little as possible, continue your studies and remain beneath your parents’ roof, where he is obliged to join you in order to embrace you once or twice a week.
When for whatever reason during transport the delivery of captive animals is delayed or interrupted, or if the relevant authority finds that the facilities in place for in-transit protection are insufficient, and should appropriate care measures not be possible to enforce, the police may order that the animals be put down on the spot.
I have occasionally saved rats and brought them home with me rather than leave them to some sticky end. Because it’s never nice to kill things. You can soften the sting by deciding that humans would be happy to die in a few seconds like that, but it’s not nice. And it’s even harder when you’re killing by means of a brain aneurysm instead of gassing them, even if you try thinking that it’s much quicker than gas.
Killers spend the rest of the time trying to feel better about killing.
Your studies will go on for a long time. In order to stay with you, the mild and modest young man who would like to share your life is obliged to share your and your parents’ roof. He asks you to move in with him. You delay the moment. Your metamorphosis is imminent.
Most of the physical methods allow us to kill animals without cruelty. Decapitation, for example, consists of separating the body from the head. Specially designed guillotines are required in order to carry this out. This method’s advantage lies in the animal’s rapid loss of consciousness. On the other hand, the procedure is aesthetically unpleasant and can cause injury to the handler.
Your desire for humanity is about equal to your desire to be animal. In fact, it’s quite impossible to tell the two apart. You are afraid.
For younger or smaller animals with softer skulls, it can be acceptable to deliver a blow to the head. Then the animal’s death must be confirmed. It is essential that the person in charge of the operation have the required training and skills for the act to be carried out without hesitation and very swiftly.
You envisage in the future settling down with the mild, modest and loving young man who lives with you at your parents’ house. This gives you time to imagine how life might be as a wife and what you will become. You delay leaving home, you find excuses. Your metamorphosis is imminent. You are afraid.
Administered at a high enough concentration, all the inhalant anaesthetics in use today (halothane, isoflurane) may kill an animal. Tests (preferably carried out on rodents) show that the product these animals are least averse to is halothane. It has the advantages of being easily vaporised and causing little irritation upon inhalation. It must nonetheless be administered inside a sealed room so the gas can be evacuated without the handlers being exposed, for it is extremely toxic to humans.
You complete your studies. You have no further excuse not to leave the family home. Despite your efforts, you still don’t know how one distinguishes and divides love from dependence. In your experience, the two are closely connected. You hope your metamorphosis is not far off. You are afraid.
Administered in high doses and intravenously, all derivatives of barbiturates tend to be excellent agents of euthanasia but they can induce respiratory distress in the patient. Generally, we prefer to employ concentrated solutions of pentobarbitone. This method has the advantage of being cheap, reliable, rapid and gentle. On the other hand, it has the inconvenience of requiring a vet’s authority, these products being highly restricted on the market. Moreover, as the product remains in the animal’s body, the cadavers are not suitable for processing within the agri-food industry but must be kept beyond the reach of scavengers and safely disposed of.
You’re leaving the family home at last but you don’t feel the relief you anticipated. Your metamorphosis has not yet happened. You are afraid.
For some animal liberation movements, the rights of all potential claimants should be granted without restriction. This should be extended to all living beings that cannot express themselves, including to animals, children, those with mental disabilities, the comatose and embryos. Animal rights militants are very often also anti-abortionists. For them, nature is always right.
You want to be like everyone else. You believe that being like everyone else makes people happy. You believe everyone is happy. You decide to get married. You instantly forget that, in Cat People, the wedding precedes the metamorphosis, and you’re also forgetting that the metamorphosis heralds the heroine’s unhappy ending.
I don’t think I’d have been able to do experiments on cats or primates, luckily the question never came up, but I don’t think I could’ve done it, except if I’d actually been forced to, I guess you can get used to anything and as I’m from a different generation I would surely have struggled to rebel, I’m the eldest in a large family, psychological tests show over and over that the older children are more obedient than the younger ones, I’ve always done what was expected of me, I’ve followed a completely classic path.
You are no eldest child but you have taken a very classic path. You’re indifferent to your own desires, you neglect them, you ignore them. You watch Tourneur’s Cat People with pleasure and alarm. Like everyone else who sees it, you’re afraid of Irena Dubrovna, at least you say you are. You’re afraid of her wildness, her metamorphosis, her needle-sharp claws, her cruelty. You’re afraid because you’re like everyone else, you need peace and quiet, you want to look alike to everyone, to have an orderly life, to build a home, to have children, to nurture a family, to make love on a regular basis with a regular partner whom everyone honours and respects. Yet at the end of the film, when the big cat has completed her transformation, when at last she is killed, when Mr Reed finds another, civilised, American woman, when order is re-established, when you ought to be congratulating yourself, you sink into your armchair and you weep, and weep on, you weep pointlessly, endlessly, blindly. You’re still afraid. You’re not reassured, not cured, not consoled. You are weeping.
IV
You like animals but that no longer matters at all. You have long been used to not having any, you can live with it, you can even see the advantages, you declare to whoever will listen that keeping a pet would destroy your freedom. This lets you put things in perspective or to ignore all the many other constraints you live with, though you don’t know it.
Since childhood, I’ve always had animals in the house. My parents were country people. We raised farm animals, they stayed in the family, they weren’t sold to outsiders, we slaughtered them regularly for our own consumption, it’s natural to slaughter animals.
Despite your gestures of independence, you copy your elders, you repeat the behaviour of other members of your species since at least the first centuries of the Christian era. You’ve become an inadvertent enthusiast and practitioner of human ethology. You are well brought up and you’re getting married.
We
kept poultry, hens, chicks, we used to have them laying for twenty-one days, after that they fancied some action, you had to have a good cockerel, and then they’d have their chicks. Now that’s all over, we buy our chicks already hatched, and we can’t sell the eggs ourselves any more, for fear of spreading a disease, I don’t remember the name of it but it’s a disease you get from farm eggs, anyway if it means I have to get to market with my basket it’s not worthwhile, I’d rather raise my own poultry for myself, you can’t make a living off them but at least you can eat well.
You’ve heard that happiness has its price, you accept this, but despite your weak grasp of maths and economics you sometimes sense that the cost is higher than the benefit. You can’t clearly distinguish what you owe from what you’re owed, you’re progressing in the dark, the contract binding you rules from on high and its precise terms remain obscure. You are struggling to extricate yourself, to understand yourself, to be your own person. You are well brought up.
Animal husbandry can be defined as the process of farming animals. The moment animals appear as an asset in your accounts, you’ve got a farm on your hands. This factor is necessary but not enough by itself; establishments where animals feature as stock (current assets) may fulfil the definition of a farm.
To Leave with the Reindeer Page 9
