Biology vs Science Fiction

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Why are some animals good and others bad? I was asked in an interview last week. “Is it possible for nature to rise up against us humans, as in The Swarm?” was what the journalist wanted to know from me this week. “What happens,” one of the listeners asked after one of my presentations, “if managers are replaced by animals?” All questioners succumb to the same temptation: they project human values ​​and characteristics onto animals. But “good” or “bad” are values ​​that we humans have defined. What is “good” differs from country to country, here in Switzerland, even from canton to canton and finally from person to person. An animal cannot be “good” or “evil”. It is what it is – of course.

Of course, an individual animal can rebel against a person, but the whole species or nature as such cannot and cannot. When a pet is mistreated, it can become stubborn, rebellious, or aggressive and will resist people. But a dog that is being abused by its owner cannot (unfortunately in this case) team up with other neighborhood dogs against the abuser. In Frank Schetzing’s novel “The Swarm” it also only seems that nature is rebelling against people. In reality, and here Schetzing leaves the realm of biology and switches to science fiction, this is a fast-learning, highly intelligent superorganism that disturbs people, infects the brains of sea creatures and allows killer whales to attack boats and deep-sea worms to cause tsunamis. Frank Schetzing copied the basic idea, for example, from parasites and fungi that infect ants. Once on the ant, the fungus enters the brain and controls the behavior of the ant so that it can spread particularly quickly. But that a fungus would cause entire colonies of ants to attack humans in a coordinated fashion is a fantasy.

As problematic as it is to attribute human qualities to animals, it is just as dangerous to apply the “laws of nature” to us humans. Because the question of “controlling animals” will only bring us a gross awakening. In addition to family structures, Darwinism always operates in nature – the right of the strongest. Whenever we humans have tried the humane version, social Darwinism, the extremes have been disastrous. The darkest example is the Nazi era in Germany.

We should not try to make animals out of people or out of people into animals, but rather ask how we can use our human values ​​to protect animals and nature. We humans can be good. We can take responsibility. We are the only beings on this planet who can take responsibility for others. A killer whale cannot take responsibility for a deep sea worm. We do. So, hypothetically speaking, nature would have no more reason to rebel against man – if she were able to do so.

Source: Blick