Listen to the Animals

Eva Meijer, a Dutch philosopher, novelist, visual artist and singer-songwriter, is an eloquent advocate for humans to change their anthropocentric view of animals. She has documented her study of animal languages and social activity in two books that will be available this month.  She is one of many scientist, academics and philosophers, who are arguing that it is time to respect the agency that creatures other than man demonstrate.    

One consciousness-shifting example of animals’ inner lives given by Meijer is that wild elephants have a call for humans that also means danger. When we see humans anew via the language of animals, it is not a pretty sight. This is what Meijer would call an anthropocentric idea (hey, let’s find out about what animals think of us), but it is a useful awakening. “It is also a bridge from studying animals as objects to noticing they are subjects – they are thinking about us, they are speaking about us,” says Meijer.

 We seem a long way from granting animals meaningful rights and yet Meijer identifies plenty of progress, from the electoral success of the Party for Animals in the Netherlands (moving from two seats in the Dutch parliament in 2006 to five in 2017) to pensions for police dogs; animal sanctuaries are undertaking “some kind of interspecies negotiations about how the place should look”; while academics such as Barbara Smuts are not simply more alert to anthropocentric assumptions about the nature of “intelligence” or “morality”, but are exploring whether animals can co-determine their research questions.