Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Who Is To Say?

Of all the beasts of the world, humans are held to be tamed, civilized, part of a complex society of their own devising.  Other animals that share the world with homo sapiens have also an ordered way of life, as much as Nature has equipped her creatures to devise them, inheriting memory and practise to whatever it is that advances their ability to survive as a species.

Human beings have developed a symbiotic relationship with animals even as we manipulate, use, and abuse them.  The most obvious order of abuse is one that Nature herself has imbued us with in our appetite for flesh to complement grazing on vegetable matter and grains.  But we also value the presence of certain domesticated animals in our lives, finding ourselves attracted to their spirited emotions.

These, primarily canines, felines and equines - but not exclusively - complement our lives in many ways.  There are many people who find solace and comfort, friendship and deep meaning in the companionship of dogs in particular.  Their uncomplaining natures, their reliance upon human nature to provide shelter, food and care in exchange for loyalty and requited love, endear them to us.

There are those people who fixate on other types of animal companions, from pigs to fish, turtles to parrots, alpacas to lizards.  And then there are monkeys whom it is so easy to anthropomorphize.  They are the closest genetic companion to homo sapiens in the animal kingdom.  Their appearance is similar to that of humans; we each developed, before diverging, from the same primitive organism.

Primates are intelligent, quick to learn to communicate and to understand; they are capable of thinking ahead and of manipulating objects with opposable thumbs, just like humans.  Little wonder it is easy to consider them almost human.  Occasionally when people adopt primates that grow to a considerable size like chimpanzees, catastrophe can ensue as occurred with a woman who had her hands and face ripped off by an enraged pet chimp in Connecticut.

"Darwin is not a dog, he's not a cat, he's not a lizard.  He's 93% human DNA... How would you feel to see your child behind a cage and be with him outside the cage?', the moving emotions expressed provocatively by Sam Nakhuda, husband of the now-famous little Japanese macaque named Darwin who famously wandered onto an Ikea parking lot in Toronto, after freeing himself from his cage in his owner's parked vehicle.

The tiny primate will not grow to a large size, he is a small breed and can be more easily controlled than a chimpanzee.  He is young and amenable to training.  As a wild, albeit domesticated animal he may present problems as and when he matures and become more difficult to control.  But then, the behaviour of some dogs can also be unpredictable, just as human behaviour can be.  He presents no more potential danger to society at this juncture and for the foreseeable future than a companion dog.

Yet because primate ownership is illegal in Toronto (despite some municipalities having no bylaws forbidding pet ownership of snakes, alligators or tigers) the tiny animal was taken for sanctuary to the Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary.  A sanctuary, ironically enough, that is operating without license though a new bylaw enacted in the Township of Brock where it is located, requires one.

The little primate's owner, Yasmin Nakhuda, is distraught over the absence of her tiny companion in her family life.  They have bonded and she fears for the mental and emotional equilibrium of the small creature in altered, alien, unfamiliar surroundings.  The sanctuary's founder Sherri Delaney believes there is a hint of abuse in Ms. Nakhuda's exchange of emails with a primatologist in Las Vegas.

And the abuse appears to centre around primatologist Lisa Whiteaker's professional sense that monkeys should be caged, not habituated to roaming free in a household setting. "[Clothing] restricts them from climbing, from swinging, from being a monkey", explained Ms. Whiteaker. True - on the other hand, Darwin was born in captivity, has never known his native environment, and was resident in a home environment.

Clothing is not natural to other animals, like dogs, either.  Yet even veterinarians observe that in inclement weather conditions some vulnerable dogs, with short haircoats, or tiny stature, require protective clothing and/or boots to insulate them against extreme cold and icy conditions. 

Ms. Nakhuda made application to a Superior Court judge to allow her to take her little monkey home for week-end visits, away from the sanctuary. The sanctuary owner has offered to allow her to visit with Darwin on the sanctuary grounds for brief periods of time, requiring a police presence to ensure security and other strict conditions. 

Ms. Nakhuda would essentially be seeing her erstwhile intimate pet companion under conditions resembling a visitor to a zoo, and this she declined as being too stressful for both herself and the monkey. Let alone coping with the alienating, adversarial position of the sanctuary and its owner to Darwin's owner's wish to be reunited with her tiny pet.

There are times and places when people's freedom to live as they feel comfortable doing, when there is no harm done to others within society, are truly infringed upon.  This seems one of those situations.  Most people would be dreadfully upset over being separated from any beloved companion pet.  This is an unwarranted intrusion on someone's private life.

And an innocent, dependent, patterned young animal is being harmed in the process.
Toronto Ikea monkey captured in photos
A small monkey wearing a winter coat and a diaper apparently looks for its owners at an IKEA in Toronto on Sunday Dec. 9, 2012.

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