Why are we scared of animals?

This rat snake scaled the neighbor’s wall and lay there long enough for me to do its photoshoot.

When I sent these photos to my contacts on Whatsapp, majority of them sent me gawking emojis in fear. So why do we fear snakes?

Animals attack other animals primarily for food, protecting their offspring, self protection and in rare cases rescuing a fellow animal from its attacker(s). Snakes do not prey on humans so they will never attack us unless for self protection and protecting their eggs. Snakes live in human settlements for two reasons – to prey on mice and for dark and cold areas inside and around our houses to lower their body heat and digest their food. We should be more wary of urban cats and dogs than snakes because they can chase and bite us. Wild cats like tigers and leopards prey on us but attack us only if they are able to drag our body away from the spot because the smell of fresh blood and meat attract other carnivores. Lions hunt as pride which is why they do not show this behavior.

But there is an oddity in us that is not in animals – fear. In nature there is no emotion called fear. Animals running away from their predators is not in fear as we commonly believe. They run to save themselves and their only purpose is reproduction. Nature imposes population control so to stay as dominant species animals need to reproduce as many as they can. We are the only beings on the planet that live in fear of its own kind. We have created the emotion of fear in animals by encroaching and destroying their habitat and hunting them for the purpose of hurting them. Cows graze on wetlands which are snake infested but snakes rarely bite them and move away from them. Snakes bite us in self protection because we tend to kill them at every possible opportunity. Snakes have poor eyesight so they rely on smell and instincts to determine what is prey and what is a threat. Similar is the case with urban street dogs. Through smell and instincts they understand the ones among us who are hurtful to animals.

I was afraid of snakes for a long time because I was taught to be scared of them. Many snakes simply crawl away or warn us in different ways when we get close to them. Some don’t but they stay far away from human areas. We get into conflict with animals when we think we are entitled to walk anywhere and do anything we want. The planet belongs to all living beings and are entitled to live out their lifetimes if they survive in nature.

Human fixation with building houses – an evolutionary perspective

I was travelling by train when I saw the chandelier like hanging nests of Baya Weavers for the first time & I was absolutely spellbound at their sight. It has taken me a few years to finally get their shots but it has been worth the wait. Ever wondered why building houses is so important for us? Why owning a house is an important parameter in marriage? Primates such as apes and gorillas build nests but are rudimentary when compared to the complexities involved in the nest building process of birds. Male Baya Weavers build partial nests before starting to woo females who in turn inspect the nests before agreeing to mate. Then the males go on to complete the building of the nests. One important aspect females apparently look for is the distance of the nest from the branch or the pole to which it is tied. More distance means the chicks are safer from predators like reptiles and can be protected better. So males that make better choices about where and how they build their nests and can make stronger nests wins over the females. Owning a house is an evolutionary trait which we believe will help us raise our children safely. Our evolution is mind boggling because we have inherited traits from so many different beings. We diverged from nature when we started cutting down trees and destroying nature to build our houses which requires ability and intelligence nature has never given and will never give to any living being because it is a simple self destruct button. This is where human creation theory truly trumps over human evolution theory.

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The dilemma of feeding wild animals when we shouldn’t

So often, we come across messages explaining why we should not feed wild animals. I am not talking about animals in forests. All animals that live in nature are wild. We are even told not to feed animals in zoos. The primary culprits among animals who have the propensity to look for food from us are monkeys. Here are a few illustrations. The problem with these pictures is, they are used to generalize and create opinion against feeding all wild animals. In the case of monkeys, they are primates like us and we still have similarities with them in the food we eat. They have adapted to our food habits quickly. But why are House Crows, Red Whiskered Bulbuls, Red Vented Bulbuls, Greater Coucals, Asian Koels, Common Mynas, Rufous Treepies and Yellow-billed Babblers coming to my home to eat rice and chapathi (Indian bread) every day? They started coming looking for scraps and that’s how we started feeding them. Everybody who is interested in understanding life and its evolution should watch the English movie Lucy. Though it is a fantasy sci-fi movie, how single celled organisms became multicellular ones and went on to become complex beings has been wonderfully explained. When habitats are available and food is in abundance, animals procreate and try to increase their population. When habitats decrease and food becomes scarce, animals choose self preservation over procreation. This is how crocodiles and turtles seem to have survived when almost all other animals got wiped out after the asteroid strike 66 million years back. There are plenty of trees in the area where I stay which provides the birds with enough habitat to nest and reproduce. But animals don’t go away from their habitat area in search of food which is why they have evolved into eating different types of food within their habitat area. Now what if we do not feed animals in the wild? Our encroachment into nature continues unabated as our population keeps swelling. Earth comprises of 30% land mass and 70% water so we and all other land animals are jostling for space in the 30% area. Cutting down trees and destroying forests have two effects on animals. 1) Their habitat areas and food sources dwindle and consequently 2) competition for both increases, not just between animals of the same species but between different species. If this destruction is allowed to continue, most of the animals will be forced to go into self preservation mode. When we decide not to feed them, this can lead to their starvation and death. Extinction of animals do not have to happen by a cataclysmic event alone. Steady loss of habitat and food sources can create the same result over a period of time. Man-eating tigers do not walk for hundreds of kilometers from forests into villages and cities to feed on us. Tigers usually prefer to stay away from humans. We have encroached so much into forest land that our living area has overlapped with their habitat and older tigers are finding us easy kills. The consequences of our actions do not end here. Before religions took shape, we used to follow pagan culture and fundamental to it is nature worship. Hinduism is a pagan culture and not a religion which is why it has animal Gods and animals depicted as vehicles of Gods. Monkeys have adapted to living with us and can be seen in large numbers across cities in India. Because Hindus worship monkey God Hanuman, monkeys have no threat from people which has allowed them to procreate in large numbers. Similar is the case with the Karni Mata temple, also known as the Temple of Rats in Rajasthan where rats are revered and fed daily and thousands of rats live. Nature is a system that keeps the population of every being within it under control through food chain and diseases. With the knowledge of agriculture, rearing livestock and treatment of diseases, we exited from nature’s food chain a long time back. This is why our population has exploded. The population of monkeys in Indian cities and rats in the temple has similarly increased because their population is no longer controlled by nature’s food chain. But diseases still control population to a certain extent which is why in spite of all medical breakthroughs thousands of humans die every year. Same is the case with monkeys and rats. By adapting to our society and lifestyle, monkeys have also become vulnerable to dying in traffic accidents, just like stray cats and dogs. When animals have enough food in nature, they will have no interest in the food we eat. The only way to make this possible is by giving them back the land we have taken from them and let nature restore their habitats and food supply. Pictures and illustrations like the ones above are being wrongly used to demonstrate why we should not feed animals. They should be used to educate people on why nature is important, how badly we have destroyed nature and its ecosystem and highlight the need to control our population.

Understanding our obsession with legacy

Scientists and researchers agree that since life began on our planet, 99.9% of all life forms that ever existed have become extinct. This clearly means we are not going to be here forever. Animals come and go quietly and leave no traces behind other than fossils. Even our ancestral species like the Neanderthals and Homo Erectus left quietly but that’s not going to be the case with us.

We have filled the planet with structures right from the pyramids. Temples in the name of Gods have existed for thousands of years all over the planet. Kings built palaces, forts, places of worship and memorials for their dead ancestors. We do not know when this custom of building structures started but it did not remain as a privilege for kings and in the name of Gods. From huts to stone houses, common people have also been continuously building structures.

All the structures serve as reminders of the existence of those kings in our history. Have we been building houses for a similar purpose? Humans have become obsessed with leaving behind their legacy in any possible way. From monuments to fame to even notoriety, we just want our names to be recorded and remembered long after we die. This obsession has filtered down to every aspect of our lives now.

Houses, jewels, household items are all part of the legacy we leave behind for our children. I know and have heard of people in the corporate world slogging for 15 hours a day and more and saying we are struggling for the better future of our children. There were times when opportunities were far and few and the ones who could used to leave houses and wealth behind for their children. But even with education becoming accessible to everyone with the objective of empowering each one of us to build the lives we want to live, we are still holding on to our obsession.

There are more reasons adding to the obsession of buying and building houses. Ditching the joint family system and the ever increasing concept of nuclear families has exponentially increased the need for more houses. This is further accentuated by the ability to travel to distant countries and reside there for work. I know of apartment complexes in my hometown less than half of which are occupied by residents and the rest are bought and locked up because the owners are living in other countries and cities.

Another insanity is with our obsession for vehicles. In spite of having excellent public transport facilities, 5 people in a house going out have 5 vehicles. We have completely lost our minds in this obsession. In the 21st century, we still collect heads of wild animals as trophies. We are killing animals that have survived from the time of the dinosaurs for collecting their heads and horns as trophies. This is one example of Helmeted Hornbills being hunted for their horns.

The obsession that has engulfed our minds has a good reason. Every organism in nature, no matter how small or big serves some purpose in the existence and sustenance of nature. We evolved from primates and we eventually evolved away from nature to the point where we are no longer part of nature’s ecosystem. We are not part of nature’s food chain and the reasons and rules of predator-prey relationship do not apply to us. We still need nature for our survival but nature does not need us. Nature has no dependency on us. If lions no longer need to hunt buffaloes, zebras and deer what would be their purpose of existence? That’s exactly where we are now.

We do not know our purpose of existence so leaving behind our legacy is the purpose we have found for ourselves. So we have ended up building houses, buying vehicles and collecting heads and horns of animals. We spend our entire lives earning money for buying more and for maintaining what we have bought. Because of social equality being brought on by education all of us are expected to have similar social lives. I reached that point very early in life where I realized I am going to leave behind everything I buy and accumulate when I die and more importantly I do not know when I am going to die. This realization stopped me from having desire for anything in life. I have never looked at anything and thought I wish I could buy it. I only buy what I need and I keep my needs limited so I never reach the point where I cannot handle what I have.

So why am I complaining? Because nature can no longer handle our obsession. When we destroy animal life in nature we should be able to take over the functions performed by those animals in nature’s ecosystem. When we cut down all the trees we should be able to create oxygen, hold on to rain water, protect and maintain the soil and the 100 other functions trees perform. When we are causing bees to become extinct we should be able to take over their function of pollination. Can we? When we cannot replace trees and animals what gives us the right to wipe them out from the planet?

I was interestingly watching a debate unfold on a social media group about a hydroelectric project green lighted by the government of the state where I reside and the ecological disaster it could create. Someone interestingly became the devil’s advocate and said if we do not create hydroelectric power we will have to use coal to generate electricity and that is also destroying nature. Messages were flying back and forth as if nature has given us the privilege to choose between water and coal. Cycles of day and night are part of the design of nature for maintaining the balance of it’s ecosystem. What have we done? We have found ways to light up darkness and after the advent of electricity there is light everywhere at night. The consumption of electricity increases exponentially at night. No one in the debate spoke about switching off all the lights at night.

We speak about protecting nature yet we cannot control our needs. There is only so much resources nature can provide to all the life forms. By destroying the balance of nature we are forcing nature to reset itself. I am writing all of this down because I know it is going to make sense some day even if it is not during my time.

10 reasons why humans are the aliens on earth

1. Everything in nature is beautiful in it’s own ways with vibrant colors, sounds and movements. Only we are monotonous and boring in the way we look, sound and move. Male animals and birds are the ones who have been created as beautiful to woo females. Only in humans are females expected to look pretty for men to woo them.

2. All animals in nature have developed camouflages, either for protection or for hunting their prey. Only humans build camouflages to hide from other humans. A Zebra’s stripes are for camouflaging it from lions and other predators, not from other Zebras. Only we do not have any natural camouflages. But the camouflages we create are not tuned to nature that’s why we can never use them to hide from animals.

3. All animals are part of the food chain in the ecosystem, only we are not. We are neither a predator nor a prey (or we are both when we decide to go hunting in the forest and gets mauled by a lion or tiger) and we are the only species in such a unique category on the planet.

4. All animals stop eating food when they are sick. They use all their body resources to fight off the disease so it does not make any sense to burden the body further with digestion of food. Only we need external nourishment from food when we are sick. When an animal falls sick, it isolates itself from it’s group so that the disease does not spread to it’s brethren. We, on the other hand seek caring and attention when we are sick which in turn spreads the disease to the people around us.

5. No wild animal gets afflicted with the diseases that we do. Back pain, cancer and all of those are extremely weird diseases. The moment we stand up on our two feet, we start going against gravity and become candidates for spinal diseases. All animals have their body fine tuned to gravity. Cancer has been found to be caused by the deficiency of Vitamin B12. Most urban people are suffering from diseases due to Vitamin D deficiency. No animal suffers from any Vitamin deficiency based diseases.

6. There is nothing unique about us that anything in nature can learn and use it for their own benefits. Rather, we have constantly observed and learned from animals and nature for our growth and evolution. Even martial art forms such as Kung Fu have been developed by observing the movements of Cranes, Snakes and Tigers among other animals.

7. Animals have evolved according to their habitat to protect themselves from the forces of nature. Polar bears have developed a black hide beneath their thick white hair. The hide conserves the heat produced from body fat and prevents it from radiating outward. Similarly all animals have developed their own means of self protection. Only we did not evolve similarly or we were not created in this way. Only we need clothes and other external methods to protect ourselves.

8. All animals consistently follow the principle of Survival of the Fittest. They have the inherent ability to understand which among their children are healthy and can procreate successfully when they grow up. The rest have to die. That’s why birds push their chicks out the nests after they grow up to a certain point. The ones that cannot fly should fall down and die. In this way, all animals ensure that defective genes and diseases are not passed on to future generations. Only we defy this rule and protect our children because of which we have all become unhealthy due to defective genes.

9. In Indian folklore, the legendary poet Kalidasa was an illiterate woodcutter in his younger days and he was once found cutting the same branch of a tree on which he was sitting. This is exactly what we are doing with nature. We are destroying nature to build our homes, the same nature that sustains and nourishes us. No other animal displays this behaviour. Animals use what is available in nature and adapt to changes in nature for their survival and existence. No being in nature has been given the ability to destroy the very environment it is part of.

10. Finally, animal senses are all attuned to nature and our planet. Animals sense geological changes such as natural disasters in advance and move to safer places. Apes and Chimpanzees also have this ability, so if we evolved from them naturally, why did we lose it? If we were created from apes or from early hominids, was this ability removed from us? If yes, why?

To add to this,

Every animal in the ecosystem have a particular season or time when they procreate and that is the only time they become sexually active and mate. The female ovaries of all animals are able to hold the male sperms for a long time after mating. Only humans do not have any mating seasons. Human ovaries do not have the capability to store male sperms. There is no sex in the animal world, that term is applicable only for humans. Ovulation and menstruation cycles with such complexity exists only in humans in the mammal world and does not even exist for other animals. How did it evolve to such an advanced level only in humans? If the reasons were because of changes in nature, why did the same adaptation not happen in other mammals?

Humanity’s wake up call

Yesterday night, I was having a casual chat with an MBA schoolmate when the conversation veered off into uncharted waters. She said she has a strong feeling that the world is going through or is on the verge of going through a phase of spiritual awakening. I have been going through one from time to time in my life but it has been very pronounced in the last 4 years, from the time I left my job to pursue MBA and my granny passed away. I have been reading a lot about spiritual awakening and how it can save humanity from further moral descent, but no one had told this to me in person. Question is, is spiritual awakening happening?

Every year, my MBA Alma mater throws challenges to teams from business schools all over the world to devise innovative solutions in order to address humanity’s most pressing needs around the world. People are getting opportunities to work on some amazing projects through this initiative. When I was doing my MBA, the challenge given was to solve the problems with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative and make it a reality. As I watched teams come up with business strategies, I realized one thing. The objective is to solve humanity’s problems only. It seemed to me that humanity is being treated as a separate entity from everything else on our planet. Access to clean drinking water for humanity was one of the challenges in a previous year. Isn’t it the right of all living beings on our planet to have access to clean drinking water? The way I see it, as our awareness about humanity is increasing, the lesser we are thinking of the factors and entities that are harboring and nurturing us on this planet. Do we consider ourselves as part of the ecosystem of our planet? I do not really think so. We have been living on the lofty assumption that being the dominant species on the planet gives us the privilege to do as we please.

From the time of Renaissance, we have been tirelessly working on improving ourselves technologically and technology has indeed revolutionized our lives. Out of this came the need for strategies and innovations to manage both technology and business. What we need to look at is, for all this time, we have been focused completely on ourselves, we have been consistently overlooking our planet, destroying nature’s resources and ridiculously taking for granted that nature can tolerate our assault on her forever. It is high time we started remembering that we are born from nature and we will go back into nature some day. It is also high time to make sure everything we do including our business and technological advances are aligned with nature. How? Consider two recent developments. In Spain, algae are being made to create crude oil by artificially speeding up the process of creation of fossil fuel which usually takes millions of years. This is true innovation. And where have they set up their factories? Near cement factories, which emit high levels of carbon dioxide, the most essential component for fossil fuel creation along with sunlight. This is a genuine strategy. This example proves that innovation and strategy creation is possible by aligning ourselves with nature. Another one, a car that runs on salt water. The objective of both these innovations is to use available resources on our planet and cause zero or minimum negative impact on nature. We need to differentiate clearly between maximum utilization and depletion of available resources. Lack of this awareness is why we have used up all of our fossil fuel. Apple’s HealthKit app is another example. Though it is made exclusively for us, it allows us to understand the functioning of our body better and for me, which is one step taken in getting closer to nature.

So what is true spiritual awakening? Knowing ourselves better is just the starting point. Every living being on our planet has a reason or purpose for its existence and its own contribution for maintaining the balance of our ecosystem. Consider the story of Hanuman, the monkey king with extraordinary strength and abilities in the mythological Indian saga The Ramayana. It is said that Hanuman is the reincarnation of Lord Shiva and was born to help Lord Rama, the reincarnation of Lord Vishnu to defeat and annihilate the evil demons on earth. Hanuman is worshiped for many reasons, for being blessed to have an eternal life on earth, for his mighty strength, his wisdom and his unwavering devotion towards his master which is being attributed to his perpetual bachelorhood. What we have sadly ignored is, it is said that he knew his purpose in life from a very early age. That may have been the single reason why he could stay a bachelor because knowing the single most important purpose of his life took precedence over everything else that came and went from his life. Maybe that was the reason why it is said he was given eternal life and made the guardian of our planet, because of his unwavering focus towards the task entrusted to him. I have been taking photographs of birds, butterflies and beetles around my home for a while now. I was thinking that these birds, butterflies and beetles will still be around in 5, 10 or 50 years from now. But are they going to be the same birds, butterflies and beetles that I am seeing today? Definitely not. They will all die and get replaced by similar ones. But from nature’s perspective, each organism has its own reason for its existence. When nature identifies each living being uniquely, why do we identify only fellow human beings uniquely? We mourn so deeply when one of our own dies, but do we realize that nature is mourning when we are mercilessly and rampantly destroying everything in nature for our needs? Is it enough to cut one tree and replace it by planting another tree? Maybe yes for us, but it has to be a definite no for nature. The tree that was cut had an objective for its existence and we cannot replace it by planting another tree. Can we kill a human child and give another child as replacement to the killed child’s mother? This attitude of taking everything for granted has strained our relationship with nature and everything in it, including our own fellow beings.

For a long time, we have been procreating, like the rest of the animal world, to maintain our population and become the dominant species on the planet. That objective is long over. What have we been doing from then? Differentiating ourselves based on religion, race, caste, gender and skin color and fighting for domination among us. What is the road ahead? One, understand the true objectives of our existence on our planet. Two, expand our procreation to other planets. We have unfortunately opted to take the second option. That is why so much money, resources and time are being utilized for Mars and deep space exploration. I have never believed that we became so intelligent by chance or by evolution. When I look at the mechanisms of the human body, I know it is perfection beyond our capabilities of creation. The fact that living beings from other planets have been visiting us for thousands of years is gaining ground rapidly. I also got to know that once US military fired artillery at approaching alien ships but had no effect on them. If they are so advanced than us, why don’t they simply conquer and rule us? Why are they only monitoring and studying us? It may not be simply because conquering us will create more bloodshed. It may be because we were created by far more superior beings, we were given this planet as our home and we were delegated the task of administering and maintaining our home. All we may need is an awakening, to see ourselves in the true light. But instead of understanding our home better, we are planning to journey to other planets to colonize them. But there is a catch. How will we create the environment for our survival on another planet if we do not know our own planet properly? What will we find on another planet if we cannot find a passenger plane that simply vanished without a trace on our planet?

Is there a true spiritual awakening in the air? Not yet. Will it ever happen? I sincerely hope so.