Reflecting on words of wisdom from writer Henry Beston
How easily we forget, or fail to recognize, animals possess superpowers—abilities so magnificent that if you stopped for just five minutes to really think about what that means, your head might just explode. 🤯
Take the dung beetle, for example, who holds the title of strongest insect on Earth: They can push balls of animal excrement that weigh 200 times their body weight. One overachiever was recorded as having moved a load 1,141 times his weight! Naturally, I had to ask Google what they do with all that 💩. Dung beetles eat it, lay their eggs in it, seduce the opposite sex with it, and take a cool reprieve from the too-hot ground by climbing onto it. Most interesting to me is the observation that dung beetles, like tiny pirates, use the stars to guide their travel.
An owl can rotate its head—attached only by one socket pivot—three quarters of a full circle, an anatomical alternative to moveable eyes. Super spooky, super cool.
Great white sharks can detect blood from THREE MILES away. And sea cucumbers can shapeshift to escape predators, as in transform from a solid being to a liquid being and back again. WTF?
Superpowers aside, every creature blows my mind. Like goats, with their alien eyes; dogs, who possibly love with more purity and devotion than you or I could ever muster; giraffes, with their impossibly long necks and striking fur patterns; and dinosaurs—no explanation needed.
In honor of all the non-human animals, flying through expanses of blue, swimming the open seas, and traversing the earth, I’d like to share a quote from Henry Beston’s The Outermost House. I haven’t read the book yet, but I will soon. Rather, I came across the thought-provoking passage on the Instagram page of photographer and animal caretaker Wesley Burdett.
A Grave Mistake, Not to Be Repeated
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err.
For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
Most unfortunately, in the nearly one hundred years since Beston’s words first touched paper, humans have descended to new and horrific depths in their indifference to the well-being of animals.
Eat Like You Love ‘Em
Factory farming is only one example of the cruelty we inflict on our fellow earthlings, but it happens to be the most significant cause of animal suffering around the world. And with detrimental impacts on wildlife, natural resources, human health, and our environment, why is the dissolution of such a devastating food system not a greater priority? I think that every one of us living today is in a unique and pressing position to make it so.
Human creativity is boundless, and, armed with the facts, we can apply our ingenuity toward spreading awareness and replacing harmful practices with ones that promote harmony between the planet and all who inhabit it.
No need to wait for a grand idea to strike you. Choosing to eat plant-based—and encouraging your loved ones to do the same—checks all the boxes:
✔️ Cruelty-free
✔️ Planet-friendly
✔️ Body-loving
✔️ Delicious!
Love animals. Love you. Love us. 🌎