Humanimal

Please view this CLIP before reading on:

We exist in a big circus and don't seem to mind as long as we get our fix of entertainment. I was sleeping.

Coral Reefs are plundered for their exotic species everyday and wild Fish and Invertebrates end up in aquarium shops across the world. Rainforest Songbirds are lured into traps to then be sold in the same fashion, where they may sit on Tree branches in a storefront with a chain on their ankles or caged for public viewership. Iguanas and wild Reptiles are captured and placed in cages so we can feel a sense of companionship at home. I used to 'own' an iguana...we adopted Spike. I never met the person our family inherited him from--I wonder if he was a PetCo purchase or a product of the exotic trading market. Even though through owning Spike I learned the daily process of care-taking Animals at the age of 6, even though after school I would open his cage door to let him crawl around my room like a playground, even though when he died I shed tears on his rostral horns, despite all these things I would associate with love, the truth is Spike lived predominantly as an extension of my human needs.

Towards the end of high school, I decided to invest in setting up a 20 gallon saltwater Fish tank for my senior project. Because 'I loved animals', right?! (I'm almost certain sure the fish store I bought 'my' 'Nemo' Clownfish--I was basic af as a high schooler--from was involved in this trading.) Within 2 years, all of the organisms ended up dying from eating one another or dying from unstable water properties. Water temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, nitrate levels and much more all affect the life quality of these Marine Animals. When some of 'my' Fish went missing, I noticed the Hermit Crabs scavenging on their remains under the rocks. But I found no trace of Nemo...Nemo was a mystery. A year later, when I officially turned off the water pump, retired the aquarist dream, and gave the tank and its remaining organisms away (mostly 'live' rock covered in Red-Algae slime), slipped between the wall and the tank's stand I noticed a knuckle-sized, ovular, desiccated, orange, white, and black disc covered in dog hair. It was Nemo. For over a year, Nemo had been tucked away here, preserved through the saltwater curing process. SMH. Maybe Nemo got in a fight with 'my Dori' the Yellow-Tailed Damselfish and made a costly mistake? Maybe the Anemone I bought for Nemo was the wrong species and they (Clownfish are protandrous and gender non-conforming examples we can emulate) didn't like it at all? Maybe the water quality was so unbearable from their vantage point (it looked great from mine!) that they took that leap of faith to find a better future? I will never know the answer, but when I looked at the dried out, mouth-opened, hair-covered Nemo in my hand, I put myself in their shriveled scaly 'skin'...and really saw the entitled dumbassness within who I was. I imagined being placed in a container where my air quality was sub-par, where the air temperature was too unpredictable, and the oxygen levels were less than I needed. Then I imagined not being able to do anything to change that, let alone move to find a space more suitable to my comforts and needs. Damn. I was solely responsible for this outcome. If Nemo (and all of the other organisms) were Human, I should be locked up for negligence.

The reason we see more equatorial Fish species migrating into northern and southern waters, is because, as the sea temperatures warm globally, their biological range naturally is pushed poleward. Most of these species are ectothermic (cold-blooded), meaning the water temperature directly dictates their internal functioning. We all have an optimal range of temperatures to thrive. As global warming gets worse, we can expect to see these species free to move go beyond the traditional boundaries where we knew them to exist within.

But what happens to all these Animals we lock up? When unpredictable environmental disasters occur, like floods or extreme heat waves, these organisms that are confined are likely left to die. Last year during the Hurricane Matthew flood in North Carolina, at minimum 10,000 Hogs and 5 million Chickens and Turkeys were reportedly drowned in a two day time period. No one opened their cages...

As someone who genuinely loved Animals, I hit a point where I realized there was nothing loving about this cycle of pet ownership, pet exhibitionism, animals as commodities, animals as circus tokens under the banner of conservation, and any Animal Agricultural meat-eating system that I participated in. There were crucial moments while this was also a long-drawn process. Sure, I woke up and changed 'my pet's' water bowls and ensured they had food. I would speak to them like they were my friends. I cried when they died. But I had to ask myself, serious, what gives me the authority to own someBODY outside of myself? We like to pretend that slavery ended within our own human race, and we know it did not. It's been so difficult for me to bring up issues of racial equity within Humans and also insert a speciesm analysis given our current deplorable rate of non-human species genocide and enslavement. Are we separate from other Animals or are we not? Do we consider ourselves fundamentally biological beings? What denotes sentiency? Did Nemo kill themself to spite me? Maybe they was actually more intelligent than I.

This clip is just another example of the ways we have lost touch of our own Humanity in disrespecting the sacredness of Life and Beings' rights to be free. Because Dolphins are charismatic, mammalian, and intelligent from our perception, this clip hopefully has caused the non-sociopaths among us to shudder. Once in captivity, they are bred through an internal trading network and genetically selected for traits we find valuable (docility, trainability, etc). I remember reading about a captive Mother Dolphin who actually drowned her own newborn. She did not want her baby to be born into the world a slave. She could not bear to witness that. I think about Black Human Mothers who endured these very conditions only 150 years ago. How dare we/me/you/they? How dare we still?

I think about Nemo and their last respiration before leaping and dying between my wall and the tank stand. Their resistance was fatal. And I took note. Dolphins, air-breathing, marine animals, are gateway species of Water and Land. In their intelligence, some of us may think they are gateway species between Humans and Animals, though We are all sacred. Each breath a Dolphin takes is a conscious decision. So when a Dolphin in captivity takes its last breath and stop living, it has made a decision, and has made a point. Chattel slavery has never ended for non-human species across the world, in all of the ways. Please understand that we have to be the voices and bodies to call out injustice when we see it. Let Respect For Life be a barometer we can lean into and trust in.

I hope we will choose to fight for freedom across species, cities, villages, and environments. I am waking up.