I was at a dinner given by a boy whom I have seen grow up from a very troubled childhood into an assured and sensitive designer of considerable talent. While the dinner was for me, he served caviar. I was appalled and said that for someone who had suffered as much as him and had come out so bravely why would he take a pregnant fish, slit her stomach, take out the eggs and throw her still alive back into the river. He clapped his hands to his ears “Maneka Aunty, Please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
This is such a common reaction – people just don’t want to know what suffering they cause when they eat an animal. It’s as if they are happy to imagine that each animal they eat was just a lump of unfeeling flesh created for their enjoyment. But animals have lives and loves and relatives and children and traumas and happiness just like us. When you are celebrating the end of the year, remember animal celebrate life as much as we do – and in the true fashion, not by killing and shopping and overeating and drinking, but by dancing and singing and breathing and laughing and loving. Here are some of the ways in which animal love and mate.
Squids begin mating with a circling nuptial dance, revolving around across a `spawning bed' 200 metres in diameter. At daybreak, they begin having sex and continue all day long --they only take a break so the female can drive down and deposit eggs. When she returns to the circle, the two go at it again. As twilight falls, the pair goes offshore to eat and rest. At the first sign of sunlight, they return to the spot and do it all over again.
The male penguin makes his intentions known by laying his head across his partner's stomach. The male penguin selects his mate by rolling a stone at the female's feet. Stones are scarce at mating time because many are needed to build walls around nests. It is commonplace for penguins to steal them from one another. If she accepts this gift, they stand belly to belly and sing a mating song , heads thrown back, singing loudly, with outstretched flippers trembling,. Male Masked Boobies also offer gifts to the ladies but these are feathers which they pluck out of their own bodies (Imagine your boyfriend plucking out his hair as a present).
When porcupine males choose their females they start singing. If she is in the mood, they both rear up and face each other, belly-to-belly. Then, males spray their ladies with a tremendous stream of urine, soaking their loved one from head to foot - the stream can shoot as far as 7 feet. Hippos attract mates by urinating and defecating at the same time. Then, an enamoured hippo will twirl its tail like a propeller to spread this delicious slop in every direction. This attracts lovers, and a pair will begin foreplay, which consists of playing by splashing around in the water before settling down to business.
A male peacock will spread out his glorious fan and dance before his lady love. But he is nothing compared to the frigate bird. The male frigate bird has a throat sac that takes twenty minutes of huffing and puffing to inflate into a giant red, heart-shaped balloon. He then waggles his head from side to side, shakes his wings and calls the females to check him out. A female frigate bird will mate with the male with the biggest and shiniest balloon. During mating, the male bird will put his wings over her eyes to make sure she doesn’t get distracted by other males with even bigger balloons!
The Red Velvet mite releases its sperms on small twigs or stalks to make a "love garden" and then lays down an intricate silken trail to the spot. When a female stumbles upon this trail, she will follow it to seek out the "artist". If she likes his work, then she will sit on the sperm. However, if another male spots the garden, he will trash it and lay his own instead! The Blue Bird of Paradise hangs upside down from a tree branch, while rhythmically enlarging and contracting a patch of feathers on his chest. At the same time he spreads his violet-blue plumes, swaying back and forth, arching his tail feathers, and then calling to his lover softly in a low, sultry, sexy voice.
The South American Songbirds not only sing they use their feathers to make orchestral violin like sounds by vibrating a club-shaped feather against a ridged feather to make sweet music to woo their mates. From the love songs of the Mexican free-tailed bat to the dangerous, seductive dance of red-back spiders, the language of love rings loud and clear in the animal world.
Can we consciously be mean to such amazing animals? Yes, if you choose to remain ignorant of what the other inhabitants of this planet do. But please do not confuse ignorance with innocence. Osho says “Ignorance is rich, it is full, it is pure. Ignorance is a beggar – it wants this, it wants that, it wants to be respectable, it wants to be wealthy, it wants to be powerful. Ignorance moves on the path of desire. Innocence is a state of desirelessness.” But shutting your ears to what people tell you when they talk about animals feeling and suffering, you simply reinforce your ignorance.
Maneka Gandhi
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