My Guilty Conscience About Animal Wrongness

Pony's Saviors

Months ago, I wrote that song about Pony The Orangutan. Yeah, I know, it's really sailing close to the wind of bad taste, but you know, you have to do something when you hear stories like that.
Today I want to link to this article, because I think the plight of the Orangutans is simply terrible.

Smits's work equips him to bring the orang-utan's plight to a global audience. His tales include that of a female orang-utan who stumbled from a burning forest with her child. She waited until a human drove by then remained deathly still as the man raced from the car, rescued her baby and drove away.

"Only when she saw her child was in the hands of humans did she turn around and clumsily go back into the smoke of the burning forest," Smits says.

"I recalled a story from the Old Testament - the mother who loved her child and wanted to save it, so renounced it, just like the female orang-utan did.

"Please do not think now that apes are unable to estimate their situation realistically, because that would be completely wrong. Animals stricken by such catastrophe know exactly that their world is disintegrating and that there is no more chance for them."

That last bit just got me down. It's one thing to be oblivious to your world ending. If you knew your world was coming to an end, it would be that much worse to being that powerless. Then again, that's where we all are. Somehow humans have a capacity to ignore it and keep doing the dumb things.