Animal Envy

by Ralph Nader

  It was a remarkable story. It seems that a cluster of Chinese dogs, having lost some of their kin to contaminated Chinese dog food, had heard that some dogs in the U.S. were dying from the imports of the same food. The Chinese poodles and dachshunds swung into action. They contacted their counterparts in the U.S. to warn them and urge that they spread the word to all canines not to eat this contaminated Chinese dog food. They displayed the company logo on the affected cans to make it perfectly clear what to avoid when the master brought such food home from the supermarket.

  Like greased lightning, dogs all over America went on strike, refusing Chinese dog food imports. Their owners then swung into action, prodding Congress and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which, not acting with their usual slowness, issued proposed rules to regulate for safety not only pet food but also all animal feed. Presto! Dog power revealed to all domesticates some of whom could not wait to chide their critics—the wild hyenas and the wild dogs—by asking whether they could make such things happen against their predators.

  The triumph of the great Dog Boycott and the collaboration across national borders of dogs came to the attention of some Palestinian and Israeli dogs. “Why not,” said one Labrador retriever from Palestinian Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, to a pit bull from Tel Aviv, “get together with other breeds of dogs and show their human masters and mistresses how to make peace?”

  They agreed to put the word out to meet in the Galilee at a large clearing. Suddenly, all over Israel and its occupied and battered colonies of Palestine, dogs burst forth from their homes and refugee camps and headed for the Galilee.

  “What the heck is going on?” said Mordechai to Abdullah.

  “What’s bringing them all together?” said one aloft Israeli pilot to another as they witnessed the pack in the clearing getting larger and larger.

  As is their wont, once they were outside meeting other dogs, the Israeli dogs and the Palestinian dogs were sniffing each other all over. They were having a great time. Then the Labrador and the pit bull barked for everyone’s attention. They announced that their owners would learn a good lesson, were Palestinian dogs to go to the Israeli homes and Israeli dogs move to the Palestinian homes and insist that they be adopted as a gesture of peace between the two antagonists.

  It happened. Needless to say, the Israeli and the Palestinian press went wild with headlines, interviews, and pictures of the dogs and their new owners. The owners admitted that they did not notice any real difference between the sets of dogs other than their names. Certainly, the dogs, once fed and patted, took to their new masters.

  The one exception over time was the food. Palestinian dogs were used to nutritious scraps and bones and had a hard time accommodating to canned dog food and the more frequent visits to Israeli veterinarians.

  The bold example of cross adoption between adversaries was conveyed all over the world of dogs, who started contacting the dogs of their adversaries. A reporter for Canine Times called the White House press office to ask whether the Obama dog, Bo, a neutered male Portuguese water dog, was interested in switching with the Afghan mountain sheepdog Askar, owned by a Taliban leader, the secluded Mullah Omar. A formidable gesture of peace, the journalist suggested. He heard a click on the telephone lines, followed by the telltale hum.

  Caucusing

  This show did calm human viewers to some extent. Yet, the message was one that inspired while actually putting humans in a bad light. The program showed dogs were trying and succeeding at peacemaking, while humans still couldn’t get their acts together. Humans were grumbling.

  And, making matters worse, the animal kingdom, having enjoyed the hard-hitting programs that had appeared earlier, particularly the cats, who surprised with their defense of their wild sisters and brothers, wanted more of the same, no matter how offensive to delicate human sensibilities.

  The TRIAD was increasingly getting reports from the animal kingdom of species beginning to congregate to bring attention to their unique plights.

  The surviving tigers sent delegations for a meeting of these dwindling big cats in the Punjab in India. Two white Siberian tigers made the trip through China and over the Himalayas to the delight of their equatorial cousins. A snow leopard followed closely behind. Of course, the one and only subject was extinction brought about by poaching and human development of their habitats.

  The ten thousand remaining blue whales sent their emissaries to a cove off the coast of Baja California. While protected by international treaty, these largest mammals in the history of the world—yes, the history of the world—were still being hunted illegally and, more seriously, were being accidently killed by giant commercial container ships from East Asia to the United States, who would accidentally strike them, especially at bloody cetacean death row off the San Diego coast.

  Also caucusing, the beautiful monarch butterflies, whose population was declining precipitously, paused during their migration from Canada to Mexico to lament the loss of their only food, milkweed, to human land uses. The butterfly delegates were pleased to learn that humans had protected hundreds of milkweed “gardens” on their migratory route and that more were on the way. Still, the butterflies were worried about human encroachment upon the small area in northern Mexico where they alight every year. And even worse, one butterfly noted that some well-meaning conservationists were planting tropical milkweed, the easiest to obtain, for monarchs to munch on during their pilgrimage. The humans didn’t realize that providing this tropical substitute instead of native milkweeds—on which the insects normally laid their eggs—increased butterflies’ liability to parasite infection as well as disrupted their breeding and migratory behavior.

  Further to the west, the sharks gathered at an atoll in the Pacific to plead against their use in shark fin soup, an issue raised earlier in the TALKOUT, which was pushing more and more of the dismembered species to extinction. More quietly, millions of sea stars flailing and without arms were dying off the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines, ravaged by a mysterious plague. Without the sea stars around, sea urchins, their prey, were exploding in numbers, devouring the dense kelp that fish visit for food and safety.

  These and other creatures, such as the Pacific leatherneck turtle, cod fish, grizzlies, rhinos, wolves, big-horn sheep, and cheetahs, were rapidly convening to make their case.

  And it wasn’t just animals in the wilds who were setting up caucuses and protesting their plights. There were barnyard and field demonstrations by small farm domesticates protesting the genetic engineering of turkeys, chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, and goats. These protests were being watched by the Human Genius, who wasted no time in conveying their critical worries to their animal welfare protectors and the general media, providing pictures of the gatherings though not the specific locations.

  A Silver Lining

  The TRIAD once again knew that they were losing control over the animals they represented, who were sick of their handling humans with (excuse the expression) kid gloves. Even so, they could see the caucusers’ point of view. Feelings were running high and for good reason.

  There was a silver lining, however. Polling showed humans were not being turned off by harsh reports, such as those broadcast by the Human Genius. The TRIAD began showing some segments put together by endangered species, the crisis survivors speaking eloquently to their predicament. Human viewership increased.

  This increase of human viewers was very important to the TRIAD because, after the time allotted to the forthcoming, admittedly sensationalized, animal/insect mating extravaganza, ratings were expected to reach nearly record levels. Such a heightened audience, the TRIAD hoped, would stick around for the final valedictory addresses by the TRIAD to sum up, evaluate, and urge advanced encores of interactions between the animal/insect and human kingdoms for the benefits of both.

  Coming Attractions, X-Rated

  The Human Genius understood this and more. He resorted to the most unique ways to publicize the “mating games,” as he described t
hem, and announced the show in lurid, voyeuristic modes to reach through the entire human kingdom with all its competing distractions, curiosities, and perversities. The TRIAD did its part by parading some of the separated lovers and showing one spectacular scene in its previews of coming attractions.

  Urged on by the Owl, who had seen these scenes from afar on many occasions, the TRIAD exhibited the incredible sexual energies of the male lion once he decides to take action upon the lionesses in his pride. Lion experts have reported that a male lion is capable of 150 acts of intercourse in one day! On to the color screen came a male lion mounted over a seated lioness. The male lion, apparently experiencing a climax, has his jaws wide open, showing his formidable fangs and emitting a jungle roar that could have frightened the Metro Goldwyn Mayer lion that tens of millions of theatergoers have seen opening thousands of MGM movies.

  The impact on the world’s humans was electrifying, as well as mystifying to the animal world that takes such mergers for granted without making a big business-like deal around this necessary act of procreation. Not so, for the humankind’s commercial mass media, whether print, over the air, cable, or Internet. Over and over again, the lion/lioness act was shown, a clip with a viewer “penetration rate” of almost 70 percent of all human men, women and children. The viewers were enthralled by the sight, sound, and noises of the male lion with his lionessesm whose facial expressions were totally blasé, amazing humans who interpret so much from their ecstatic human facial framework.

  It’s Sexy Time

  The animal/insect mating team who had put together the sex show—the Sturgeon, the Cheetah, the Chimpanzee, and the Cane Toad (the QUARTET)—now took over presentation of the program. The sequences, species by species, were both real and un-choreographed—as if any team could make these lovers playact such serious closures—and delicately treated. The QUARTET did not know that such moderate exhibits, where the action spoke for itself, actually aroused adult human viewers even more.

  The anticipation by human couples of this sudden vicarious orgy troubled religious and population control groups deeply, for different reasons. Various religious edicts were issued either banning viewing or urging that responsible parishioners exercise severe discretion with their children. Planned Parenthood placed television ads reminding couples to use condoms during this period without specifying why other than for the usual health and birth control reasons. Limburger, of course, was raving as he had never raved before, damning the obscenity of these animal lowbrows.

  Other commentators were not so reserved. One well-known aggressive, no-holds-barred sex writer, appropriately named Whynot Savage, wrote his column, using the mating program as a lead-in for his routine advocacy of multispecies human lovemaking. He viewed such acts as the natural extension of the sexual liberation movement. Throughout the human kingdom, the unfolding mating panorama became an excuse for the explosive release of what the ancient theologians ironically called “animal spirits.”

  In the midst of this copulatory epidemic among humans, scene after scene of different species mating came onto the screen. High-wire acts like giraffes were a big hit. Bulldozing rhinos and hippos seemed to shake the earth. A truly strange pair of dugongs or sea cows from Shark Bay, Australia, provided a treat. Each, weighing about a thousand pounds, after amazing foreplay such as “sit-ups” and “belly-ups,” clumsily propagated their species. Two cobras were pictured in intense action until a mongoose was seen approaching and, just like that, the cobras disentangled and rapidly slithered away—giving serpentine meaning to coitus interruptus—to save their skins.

  For some inexplicable reason, during the growing uproar by millions of hypogastric-centric humans, a flood of demands poured in asking that the TRIAD parade their personal mating techniques. The TRIAD anchors, by this time worldwide celebrities to humans, were astonished.

  “What are you all waiting for?” said one of many such messages. “Go for it.”

  To get this outcry over with, the TRIAD decided to pull a triple header, found their more than willing partners, and joined the mating game to the thunderous roars of human viewers. Many people thought their open engagements “humanized” them.

  Having had a short lunch, the TRIAD resumed their direction of the mating team and ordered a spate of primates into hot sex. First came the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee from the Congo River Basin. Bonobos are unique, and like humans, in that they have sex face-to-face, use their tongues to kiss and, during the act, the male bonobo will calibrate his thrusting depending on the facial expressions and outcries of the female receiving his brief but intense attentions. For bonobos are sexual recidivists without peer, and they don’t just have intercourse for sensuality or propagation, but also to solve disputes and further social solidarity. Wild, constant lovemaking, masturbation, and same-sex rubbing filled their day. All this was on display to stunned gasping humans, including parents whose children rubbed it in by saying, “Daddy, Mommy, they don’t look all that different from us.” The TRIAD quietly enjoyed the moments. Whynot Savage was exhilarated, tweeting madly.

  The mating teams were just getting warmed up. Onto the stage came the video of common chimps, scientifically known as Pan troglodytes, full of noisy sexual dynamite. Especially the female chimps, who did it with six or seven male chimps in minutes as if they were accommodating sound-bite television.

  Male chimps were fighting for supremacy to gain their females and if they had to kill the baby chimps to get them and dominate, so be it. Primatologists believe the rampant infanticide explains the promiscuity of female chimps.

  The QUARTET decided to skip the gorilla sex tryst—the male gorilla’s penis is an unsexy two inches—and go for the macaque monkeys from India. The male macaques were shown getting ready as the female macaques’ derrieres swelled up and became bright red. “Wow,” shrieked some humans. The hustle begins and culminates in a picture-perfect mounting with the female looking up serenely to the male who is looking seriously straight ahead as if—and he is—studiously possessed by what is going on below.

  The vicarious frenzy that this primate lovemaking was causing human males and females provoked a slew of desperate messages by leading religious clergy and birth control champions to beg and beseech the quartet to “change the species.” That faithful carrier of reactions from the human kingdom, the Human Genius, advised the TRIAD to heed them and shift the pictured animals. Things were really getting out of hand.

  Understanding the transmitted order, the QUARTET switched to the giant pandas, who spend most of their time eating bamboo. A mama panda can only conceive three days a year. But Westerners love these cuddly two-hundred- to three-hundred-pound pandas to such an extent that they pay the Chinese government up to one million dollars a year for each panda loaned to a zoo. So when two pandas were seen on the screen doing what comes so rarely to them, billions of humans forgot all about the bonobos and became transfixed by what they viewed as enthralling but lengthy proceedings. The bonobos finally got a recess.

  Still, the human critics were not satisfied. “Get off the mammals” was the gist of their reaction to the pandas.

  The QUARTET, fearful that their surefire ratings assignment might be in trouble, shifted gears by showcasing two magnified praying mantises and two barnacles trying for posterity. The female mantis ungraciously starts eating the male mantis until it reaches the sperm. By then, the female’s lethal hug has left nothing of the male mantis’s corpus but a meal. Next came the barnacles, which, tightly glued to whatever they are attached to, compensate by waggling a penis thirty times the length of the male body so as to reach the opposite sex. Talk about going the evolutionary last mile.

  Right after were the rattlebox moths whose trysts were described by the sturgeon. It seems that the male moth donates a doubleheader to the female. He not only transfers his semen to her but also provides some pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which shield her from the predator spider who, if he captures her and starts to eat his captive, then suddenly recoils from the
taste and cuts the female rattlebox moth from his web. “Imagine, spiders with taste,” mumbled a sports bar patron in Buffalo, New York.

  The Cheetah introduced two scorpions for whom mating is a dancing joust with not a little violence and suspense. But that’s just being a scorpion. They approached each other warily and grabbed each other’s claws to avoid being squeezed fatally by accident. The Cheetah noted that scorpions are not affected by their own poison although exposure to it may operate like Valium. The love dance is not to culminate in a clinch. That is not being scorpion-like. Instead, the dance is for the male to maneuver the female to alight on a sperm deposit that he discharged moments earlier.

  In case you think that bed bugs only have you on their mind, the highly poisonous Cane Toad disabused humans quickly. The Toad pointed to a male bed bug getting closer to the female, who has no sex organs. “Evolution comes through again,” bleeped the Toad, adding that the male bed bug stabs his consort on her side so that his sperm and her blood mix.

  “Aha,” remarked an insect scientist drinking beer in an Irish pub. “We call it ‘traumatic insemination.’”

  The next segment included a comment by marine behavioral ecologist Roland A. Lange of Australia’s Monash University, who has discovered a hermaphroditic seal slug with penile organs. One slug delivers the sperm to the female opening on a partner slug while the other is doing the same to its opposite number’s female organs. Then, after this simultaneous sperm transfer, each of these bright yellow, red, and white slugs stab each other around the eyes with a needlelike stylet that throbs there for over forty minutes.

  The tiny creatures were magnified one hundred times for the aghast human audience, one of whom, a smuggler of rare animals planning a transfer from the Ecuadorean seaport, snorted: “I got to get some more of those slugs for the American voyeur market.”