Oh, my, I just read a very disturbing article published by the National Geographic about our pets. It was titled “Would your dog eat you if you died? Get the facts.”
This piece was a little like reading a Stephen King novel from the era when he was still using LSD. The title was a little misleading, however, because it was not limited to just your pet dog. It explored your feline friends as well. To save you the gory details, the answer was, yes. Yes, your pets will definitely eat you.
How is it possible that your loving, kind, beautiful, well-behaved pet would eat you? Well, let’s be honest, we’d probably do the same thing if the situation warranted it.
Remember the Uruguayan Air Force Chartered Flight 571 that was carrying 45 people, including a rugby union team, their friends, family, and associates? It was the basis of the movie “Alive.” The plane crashed in the Andes in 1972, and the survivors began eating those who did not make it, like the Donner Party on their trip through the Sierra Nevada Hasting Cutoff.
It was certainly a graphic depiction of anthropophagy, but the pet story reminded me that we are all animals, and we spend most of our human lives trying to not only suppress that fact, we spend our lives doing everything we can to hide from it. Dogs come from wolves, cats come from tigers, and hey, like them, the vast majority of us are carnivores.
It’s such an ironic evolution that we deal with every day. As a 10-year-old, I vividly remember our elementary school field trips. We would go to the Joseph Meat Packing Plant. They’d kill the cattle in front of us and then gut and butcher them. We absolutely knew where that hamburger came from for lunch. (I’m sure it would be considered child abuse now, but it was just a field trip for us.)
The book, “The Naked Ape,” by Desmond Morris takes a deep and long look at humans as animals. Morris was a practicing zoologist who dedicated this book to we humans as animals.
He very carefully outlined the numerous animal traits that we share, and then he illustrated how hard we work at making sure every day we aren’t seen as animals. Bathing, deodorant, shaving, and clothing are just a few examples.
If you think about the craziness of our world and equate it to packs, tribes, gangs, and such, things begin to make so much more sense.
It also explains some of our political, psychosocial, and personal decisions regarding tattoos, piercings, sports, and voting. We are pack animals. It’s why we run to wear our Tommy Hilfiger, Lacoste, and Under Armor clothing. We want to fit in with the rest of our gang, whatever that gang represents. It also explains our love of red meat, our sexuality, and what seems to be our madness. We’re animals disguising ourselves as humans.
Yes, we have spirituality and a more sophisticated brain, but smart people do some pretty dumb things. It actually gives me a little peace of mind when I’m trying to figure out why we’ve been at war forever or why we’re so hostile toward each other at political rallies. It’s our animal side.
So, the next time you look at Buddy, Chipper, or Miss Kitty, just understand that they’ll probably go for the soft tissue first, and it’s not because they didn’t like you or because there wasn’t food in their bowl.
Thank you, National Geographic, for absolutely terrifying me. I’m so glad I’m pet-less right now. Here kitty kitty.
