Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals (Macsci)

257 Pages·2010·1.838 MB·English

by  Jonathan Balcombe

second nature
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Also by Jonathan Balcombe and Palgrave Macmillan:
Pleasurable Kingdom:
Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good
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second nature
the inner lives of animals
Jonathan Balcombe
Foreword by J. M. Coetzee
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SECOND NATURE
Copyright © Jonathan Balcombe, 2010.
Foreword copyright © J. M. Coetzee, 2010.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–0–230–61362–1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Balcombe, Jonathan P.
Second nature : the inner lives of animals / Jonathan Balcombe.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–230–61362–1
1. Animal behavior—Anecdotes. 2. Animal intelligence—Anecdotes.
3. Animal psychology—Anecdotes. 4. Social behavior in animals—
Anecdotes. I. Title.
QL791.B26 2009
591.5—dc22 2009030770
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: March 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
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To hyenas, spiders, bats, snakes, whip scorpions,
and all the other beings deemed foul and loathsome—this one’s for you
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contents
Foreword by J. M. Coetzee ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Part I Experience
One Introduction 7
Two Tuning In: Animal Sensitivity 15
Three Getting It: Intelligence 31
Four With Feeling: Emotions 45
Five Knowing It: Awareness 61
Part II Coexistence
Six Communicating 83
Seven Getting Along: Sociability 103
Eight Being Nice: Virtue 121
Part III Emergence
Nine Rethinking Cruel Nature 143
Ten Homo Fallible 163
Eleven The New Humanity 185
Notes 205
Index 231
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foreword
It used to be thought—and probably still is, in some quarters—that
what set man apart from mere beasts was the possession of reason.
The argument was a subtle one, with profound implications. Reason—
God-given reason—was what the mind of man had in common with
the mind of God. It was only because his mind was like (even if infi-
nitely inferior to) his creator’s that man was able to comprehend, to
however minuscule an extent, how the world worked. Mere animals
might be able to respond and adjust to the world in which they found
themselves, but they would never, properly speaking, be able to under-
stand it because their minds lacked the active principle infusing the uni-
verse, namely reason. They (together with their minds) would always
be merely part of nature; they could never be masters of nature.
From the point of view of animals, it is one of the darker ironies of
history that the role of being the expert authority on them has fallen
not to (say) husbandmen or hunters, but to scientists, the ultimate prac-
titioners of (human) reason and therefore, in a sense, their hereditary
enemies. Do fish feel pain? Can parrots think? For an authoritative
answer, a respectable answer, an answer we can believe in, we must
resort to science: to the expert on the piscine nervous system, the expert
on the avian cortex.
Ordinary people do not need to have something proved to them
scientifically before they will believe it. They believe it because their
parents believed it, or because it is accepted as so in the circles in which
they move, or because figures of authority say it is so. Mostly, however,
people believe what they want to believe, what it suits them to believe.
Thus: fish feel no pain.
Only a tiny minority are prepared to believe only what has been
proved to be scientifically true, and of that minority only a fraction will
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