Elephants, their majesty and their power in The Elephant Whisperer

From The Week of March 3, 2014

The world is a playground for humanity. This is the inevitable conclusion drawn by a species that, for thousands of years, has flourished as Earth's apex predator. No other creature can match our intelligence, our self-awareness, our emotional depth. No other species has produced poets and playwrights, gods and scientists. These findings, these thought experiments, distinguish us from the great dumb herd that comprises the world we are free to exploit.

But naturally, this is nonsense, the destructive conclusion of biased thinking. For humans typically only respect as intelligent things they understand. Present to us music and math problems, politics and prose, that we, on some level, comprehend and we are more than willing to acknowledge your personhood, your worthiness. But communicate to us in a language we're not geared to understand -- the skitterings of the monkey, the song of the whale, the bone-deep vibrations of the elephant -- and you are a beast of burden, a thing whose power is to be harnessed and used to our benefit. This inexcusable intellectual arrogance has not only allowed us to ravage our planet, it has permitted us to do it guilt free. The costs are immeasurable, a truth vividly illustrated in Mr. Anthony's touching life story.

Compared to much of the rest of the world, Africa is a wonderland of biodiversity. Swamps and forests, deserts and jungles together contain a breathtaking spectrum of life, from tiny spiders to gigantic elephants, from venomous snakes to harmless dogs, a balance ecosystem in which the ruthless, millennia-long dance of nature and evolution has unfolded. But now, after countless centuries of natural ebb and flow, this treasure trove of life is under threat, not only from encroaching humans but their externalities as well. Urbanization, climate change and trophy hunting have reduced this once vibrant place to a shadow of what it was. Every year, the deserts grow at the expanse of the forests and once populous creatures are hunted for their meat and their horns, as the glories of evolution are reduced to cliched mementos of man's undeserved prowess.

Recently, however, movements have ignited to push back against this butchery of the wild. Conservationists have succeeded in having huge swaths of African territory designated as nature preserves where the ecosystem is allowed to flourish unmolested by all but a handful of poachers who are dealt with violently and mercilessly. Staffed by naturalists whose life's work is the understanding of and treatment of animals, and funded both by governments and tourism, these reserves hold a mirror up to the world, of how it once was and how it will someday never be, the essence of natural, if cruel, harmony.

The story of Lawrence Anthony, the head of the Thula Thula Game Reserve, The Elephant Whisperer is a charming adventure through the life of a world-class conservationist. Organized around Anthony's reception of a herd of elephants abused and hunted by man and the means by which he restores their health and their trust, the work expands to include lush descriptions of the Reserve: its incredible wildlife, its caring staff, its venomous dangers and its thorny politics which are uneasy at the best of times. Throughout, we are afforded glimpses of lives lived with purpose, not to gain advantage, not to hoard wealth, not even to accrue power; simply to hold on to the glories of what came before, beauty we are all-too-eager to bulldoze in favor of another town, another residential complex, another hotel and casino. In this, it is hard not to think of Anthony and those like him as the guardians of nature, as stewards of life the rest of us dismiss as unworthy.

There can be no doubt that Mr. Anthony's charm and passion rides high throughout The Elephant Whisperer, but it is to the credit of Anthony and his biographer that the elephant herd is the work's beating heart. Over and over, the authors demonstrate the grace and intelligence of these majestic creatures who appear as emotionally connected to their allies and their environment as they are willing to fiercely protect it. Described in vivid detail, their five-ton bodies seem as massive as their awareness of the external world is keen, communicating complex notions of friendship and suspicion with devastatingly simple gestures that leave the reader yearning to witness even one of these life-altering moments of cross-species connection. For they leave no doubt that we are not alone on this world we've claimed, that we share it with others who too-often go unheard in the congress of Earth's affairs.

There are flaws here. For a conservationist, Mr. Anthony is a little too fond of recounting his own successes. The Elephant Whisperer's first half is almost entirely about the compassion that Anthony and his friends have for the animals they steward. One cannot help but imagine an alternate text in which the animals feature more prominently than the humans. However, beginning in the work's second half, a series of devastating failures on Anthony's part allows the reader to forge an emotional connection with him and his cause. We are made to understand just how much this means to him and how much of a difference it makes to the creatures in the reserve. This sweeps aside concerns of egotism, leaving in its wake a heart warmed by the world he is fortunate enough to know so well.

A read with the power to re-shape the way one thinks about both Earth and our role in its concrete future... (4/5 Stars)

The cultural and medical histories of Rabies engagingly explored in Rabid

From The Week of March 25, 2013

Viruses reek havoc upon the human mind. For not only do they have the power to starve it of resources, reducing it to an unintelligent sludge, they can attack it through fear, divesting it of all rationality and making of its host an exceedingly soft target. Despite the innate difficulties of battling a scourge one cannot see, however, many of these viruses have been brought to heel, their effectiveness muted by science. And yet, some remain to haunt us, some that refuse to have their claws so easily clipped. Mr. Wasik and Ms. Murphy marvellously documents the most infamous of these vehement holdouts in his excellent chronicle of Rabies.

For all but the last few centuries of its existence, humanity has been blind to the threat of viruses. Its conceptions were limited to what it could taste, touch and feel. So while the species had soem understanding of what was harmful to its health, it could not even imagine the ecologies that lingered beyond the vistas of human vision. And yet, something had to be there. For tribal man could see quite well the consequences of contracting deadly viruses, chiefly, the loss of their companions felled by nothing more than the sudden onset of ill health.

First with the ancient Greeks and then with the Arabs, this understanding began to evolve, but not before superstition had taken hold. Before we knew why, we knew how. And in the case of Rabies, this was particularly apparent. For one had to but wait a few days after being bitten by an enraged subset of mostly friendly animals to feel the deadly consequences: the nightmares, the fear of water, the sleepless nights, the creeping death.

Devils and demons were conjured up to explain such violent and terrifying punishments. And yet, few of these could imagine the truth, that Rabies was a most insidious virus, a chain of genetic information with the singleminded goal to propagate, to spread, to consume. Eschewing the most conventional routes of pathogen's (the blood stream), it attacked the nervous system, inching its way up to the brain which, defenseless against its ravages, succumbed to that most straightforward kind of madness, the bite, a most expeditious method of passing copies of itself on to the next, inviting target.

From the characteristics that made it legend to the scientists who reduced it to mere mortality, Rabid is an entertaining journey through the history of Rabies. Penned by a veterinarian (Murphy) and a journalist (Wasik), it competently mixes humor with fact to create a most edifying illumination of a genetic sequence that, though relatively rare, particularly within civilization, has nonetheless had a profound impact on our conception of horror. The authors contend that the myths that gave birth to vampires, werewolves and zombies were all heavily influenced by our fear of the bite which does not merely emanate from our distaste for pain, but from something far more elemental, an aversion born of memories written into our heritage.

Rabid has its stumbles. It makes almost no attempt to advance our understanding of Rabies' genetic properties. Moreover, it seems, at times, much more concerned with its cultural impact than its medical one. But these are minor gripes in what is otherwise a thoroughly engrossing read that winningly captures the full might of science, particularly its capacity to isolate a problem, reduce it to its component parts and to deduce, through trial and error, a method of rectifying it. Here, this is particularly exemplified in the time the history devotes to Louis Pasteur, the famous French scientist who, in addition to discovering germs, took a largely successful swing at Rabies as well, reducing it from a fearful unknown to a problem that could be vaccinated if not cured. This, along with an intriguing comparison of how the East and West conceive of Rabies' primary carriers, allows Rabid to easily overcome its drawbacks.

This is eminently consumable work. And yet, for all its lightness, Rabid possesses sufficient depth to leave the reader's knowledge of the world of viruses significantly advanced. Most satisfying... *4/5 Stars)

Soldier Dogs by Maria Goodavage

From The Week of November 26, 2012 >
As much as our lives are defined by humanity, its emotions and its foibles, its actions and its reactions, ours is not the only species to leave its mark on our planet. Every day, creatures we barely understand, let alone relate to, persist, their fortunes rising and falling largely based on how useful they are to us. If, like with insects, we deem them to be bothersome, or even deleterious to our health, they are exterminated, snuffed out for a crime no more heinous than the fulfillment of their genetic destiny. However, if they are dogs, whose faces we find cute, whose fur we find pleasing to the eye and whose affections we find spiritually enriching, then they are permitted to populate in great numbers so long as they continue to please us. Of course, pleasure isn't the only benefit of domesticating such animal friends. Service can also be within their purview. And, truly, what service is nobler than war? Mr. Goodavage explains in her biography of the 21st century war dog.

Though dogs have, for centuries, had their noses used to sniff out the enemy and have had their fierceness and bulk deployed to guard military camps, it was only with war's recent evolution that a dog's skills were put to more complex use. With the rise of non-state actors, and given the degree to which these actors have thrown out the rulebook when it comes to the so-called honorable codes of combat, war in the 21st century is far less about numbers and battlefields, tanks and trenches. It is about fear and terror, the power to demoralize the enemy until it is willing to act as you desire it to. Consequently, all manner of dirty tricks are used to crush ones foe, the most notorious of which is the famed IED, an improvised explosive designed to harm the enemy when he least expects, in the process, causing as much damage as possible.

When it lacks knowledge of both the terrain and its culture, how does an occupying force avoid such booby-traps? By using every weapon at its disposal, the most effective of which is the highly developed nose of a dog. Reputedly to be many magnitudes more sensitive than our own, a dog's olfactory sense can distinguish from thousands of scents, over hundreds of miles, across dozens of days. Properly trained, it can pursue a particular scent for hours at a time without distraction, its mind singularly fixed on the completion of a goal for which it has been trained to expect a reward. These soldier dogs have been a runaway success in these new theatres of war, saving uncounted lives by providing an early warning system for the enemy's machinations, all while creating effortlessly the deep bonds of personality and loyalty that make it so treasured by humans. These are the new faces of a new kind of war, one that is fought with drones and Hellfire missiles, across mountains and cities, without uniforms or even command structures. It is war for which the instinctive animal is quite well-suited. Though it is not without flaws, Soldier Dogs is a buoyant and affectionate examination of this new breed of soldiers. From training methods to types of deployment, from breeds to purple hearts for bravery, Ms. Goodavage does a thorough job capturing the degree to which humans have begun to understand his best friend and to use that knowledge to execute one of its most indulged pursuits. She masterfully bestows personalities upon each of the cases featured here, their talents and their limitations covered with equal pleasure and fascination.

However, for as much as Ms. Goodavage captivates us with tales of canine heroism already acceding into legend, she gives virtually no consideration at all to the ethical questions that naturally underpin the practice of using dogs as instruments of war. The closest she comes is when she evinces her distaste for the US military's classification of them as materiel, arguing that they deserve much more status than that. But this strong opinion arises out of the author's belief that the faithful service of these war dogs has earned them much more respect than they are now given. It does not stem from the far more fundamental question of whether this is an even remotely ethical practice, to train guileless and relatively unintelligent animals to fight our wars, to clean up our ugly business, to avoid unpleasantries we put in place. By her own admission, Ms. Goodavage recognizes these dogs do not understand that they are fighting a war. All they care about is the reward of a job well done, having no concept of the terrible risks they take every time they are sent sniffing after buried explosives easily powerful enough to obliterate them when triggered. This is a glaring omission for a work with aspirations of understanding the world of war dogs. By and large, Soldier Dogs is a charming glimpse of a world few of us will ever see. However, in not confronting the most fundamental issue of this practice, it is also a work that surrenders any aspirations of being consequential or journalistic which this reader considers a shame. Fun for what it is... (3/5 Stars)