From experience, they know that the little creatures diligently collect beechnuts and other seeds, and store them all together in one convenient spot. An enormous store that will last a mouse for months is a tiny snack that will tide a wild boar over until its next meal. However, since mice mostly live in large colonies, a number of small snacks can provide the calories a wild boar needs to make it through a cold winter’s day. And so the boar burrow along the underground tunnels, smashing storerooms and emptying them in a couple of gulps. The only option the mice have is to flee and face an uncertain future, for in winter there are very few sources of food for the homeless. If they can’t evade the wild boar underground, they are gobbled up along with their food stores; boar enjoy their veggies with meat on the side. At least the swallowed mice are spared a long, slow death from starvation.
And what does this behavior look like from an ethical point of view? The wild boar’s plundering of mouse assets isn’t really theft, because they are not deceiving other boar. They are perfectly aware they are raiding mouse provisions, but this is a completely normal way for them to get food, even if the proceedings look very different from the perspective of the mice.
9
TAKE COURAGE!
IF ANIMALS FUNCTIONED only according to fixed genetic programming, then each individual of one species would react the same way under the same circumstances. A certain amount of a hormone would be released that would trigger the corresponding instinctive behavior. But that is not the case, as you probably already know from observing domestic animals. There are courageous and cowardly dogs, aggressive and super gentle cats, jumpy and bombproof horses. The character each animal develops depends on its individual genetic predisposition and, just as importantly, on the influence of its environment, which is to say its life experience.
Our dog Barry was a little scaredy cat. As I have already mentioned, before he came to us he had already been passed along by a number of different owners. For the rest of his life, he was scared of being abandoned, and he always got extremely worked up when he was taken along when we visited friends. If you are a dog, how are you supposed to know whether you’re going to be handed off yet again? He showed his nervousness by panting non-stop, so we finally gave up, leaving the distressed animal alone in the house for a couple of hours instead. When we got back, it was easy to check whether or not Barry was relaxed. He became deaf in his old age and couldn’t hear us arrive, sleeping soundly until he blinked up at us when he felt the wooden floorboards vibrate under our feet. So Barry is an example of an animal that lacks courage, but we wanted to take a look at the opposite trait, and to do that, let’s step out into the woods.
One fawn that had breached a plantation fence along with its mother showed particular courage. I used to erect these fences around areas where storms had toppled trees in monocultures of plantation spruce. In order to allow as natural a woodland as possible to regenerate, forestry workers planted little deciduous trees. These newly planted areas needed to be protected from the greedy mouths of browsers, and that’s why I erected the fences. The wire fences behind which the oak and beech saplings grew were six feet tall. During a late-season storm, a spruce nearby had fallen on one of these fences, flattening it. Deer, including the aforementioned doe and her fawn, had wandered through the gap directly into a land of ease and plenty. No walkers disturbed them there, and they could munch away on the tasty shoots of much sought-after deciduous trees. Things looked a little different to me. The expensive fence was no longer of any use, and the goal to have a halfway natural beech and oak wood one day was fast disappearing. And so, accompanied by my Münsterländer, Maxi, I climbed in after them to drive the freeloaders back out.
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