Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Another Honorary Wanderer?

Remote camera photo of OR7 captured on May 3, 2014, in eastern Jackson County on USFS land. 
Courtesy of USFWS

In addition to proposing Keiko as an honorary Wanderer, I'm thinking about this wolf. The ape authorities are thinking about killing him.  We allow animals to join us in death, as well as in life.

We've had numerous dogs in our midst (some now dead), welcome at the table. Yes, mostly we're comprised of [not naked] apes, par for the course in our zip code.

My reference to Ecuador in the above tweet has to do with that country encoding some rights for non-humans into law, one of the first groups of sapiens to do so.

Yes, it's true, some apes pride themselves on being "sapiens" and have invented a whole taxonomy to celebrate their supposedly exceptional superiority.

Never mind they murder one another in droves and are the laughing stock of the galaxy -- just kidding, the galaxy has more important things to think about.

However if we're allowed to call North Americans "Indians" (even in 2016!) as in "Indian reservation" then I think the "Planet of the Apes" moniker applies just as well, as a colloquialism.

"Welcome to the planet of the apes!" I'd say to the ET tourists.  The "sapien" stuff is just their vanity talking.

I'm referring to all the branches of hominid species, most of them already killed off by now. The sapiens were apparently the most vicious.

Call them "mankind" if you like, or "humans". That's the more formal term (not "vicious monkey" or simia vitiosus in Latin).

When in Rome...