Читать книгу Diet for a New America 25th Anniversary Edition - John Robbins - Страница 24

I’m sorry to say that the point of view that animals are only machines, and thus incapable of suffering, is still very much with us today. It is part of our cultural heritage, and I am still frequently amazed as I discover how conditioned I am by it. In the culture at large, it is so taken for granted that it is rarely questioned.

I don’t know if the gentlemen of Kewaskum, Wisconsin, are still enjoying their annual Kiwanis turkey shoots. But I know that as of 1971 they had not felt any compunction about their annual “fun and games.” What, you may wonder, could be amiss in the “sport” from which the Kiwanis Club members derived so much amusement? Well, turkeys, those great birds who so astounded the Pilgrims when they first arrived in this land, may not be the smartest of God’s creatures, but with a dignity all their own they have long been a symbol of the New World for many Europeans seeking freedom. Dignity notwithstanding, at the annual Kiwanis festival they were tied into stalls by the legs in such a way that their heads were exposed as a target for the participants in the “gala” event. The birds couldn’t do anything to free themselves and they were shot at again and again by the drunken celebrants. In fact, they were tied in such a way as to guarantee that if they broke their wings or legs in their struggle to save their lives, as they often did, their heads would nevertheless be kept jiggling and exposed to the aim and merriment of the “brave” hunters.³⁰

Champions of the idea that other animals don’t feel pain as we do say that animals operate entirely from instinct. Thus the Kiwanis marksmen felt no more pangs of conscience than they would if the turkeys whose heads they gaily shot off were made of cardboard. They probably honestly believed turkeys don’t suffer.

But a reliance on instincts is very different from a lack of ability to feel pain. The capacity to feel pain has an obvious survival value to any species, enabling it to avoid sources of injury. It is with our senses and nervous systems that we feel pain, not with our capacity for abstract thought. The nervous systems of nonhuman animals are finely tuned to their environments. Their senses, in many cases, are vastly more sensitive and refined than our own. Physiologically, there is no basis at all for saying that animals don’t feel pain. In fact, in The Spectrum of Pain, Richard Serjeant writes:

Every particle of factual evidence supports the contention that the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations at least as acute as our own. Apart from the complexity of the cerebral cortex (which does not directly feel pain) their nervous systems are almost identical to ours and their reactions to pain remarkably similar…31

The senses of animals often make ours look pathetic in comparison. For example, the cells essential for smelling are ethmoidal cells. We have about five million of these in our noses. A German shepherd, by way of contrast, has about 200 million. And when it comes to hearing, once again we pale in comparison. The German shepherd can hear sounds clearly at 200 yards that we cannot detect at a mere 20. Even the much maligned shark has enormously sensitive hearing. An Australian named Theo Brown has taken advantage of this fact to develop a musical shark repellent. He conceived the idea when he discovered that if he played fox trots or waltzes the sharks were attracted from great distances, but if he played rock music they left at once.³²