It's a jungle in here 

You know they call them "Killer Whales"?!

But you seemed surprised when it pinned you down

To the bottom of the tank

Where you can't turn around.

It took half your leg and both your lungs.

"When I craved I ate hearts of sharks, I know you know it."

I'm a man-man-man, man-man-man eater

And still you're surprised when I eat you.

-- from "People Got A Lotta Nerve" by Neko Case

Trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed a couple of weeks ago by an orca whale at SeaWorld in Orlando; since then, discussions have centered on why the whale did it, and what can be done to keep such an incident from happening again. Those have been the main choices talked about, but surely there's another one.

My own first thought, after the initial shock over the trainer's death, was, "What did they expect?" and the Neko Case tune, which she sang recently at the Knight Theater downtown, came to mind. The next thought that shot through my cranium was, "Why don't they just let these animals be?"

Seriously. Let intelligent beasts like orcas, or killer whales, live normal killer whale lives. For that matter, let tigers live normal tiger lives, let elephants live normal elephant lives, and so on. Why capture, confine, and cash in on creatures we say we like so much? If we liked them that much, shouldn't we let them live their own lives? Wouldn't that be more respectful of the qualities we say we love in wild animals: their "awesome power," their "nobility?" It's hard to think of anything less noble than being made to do tricks in order to be fed. Do we really need to corral these beasts' natural force for our own entertainment? Well, maybe we do.

It may be that humans have deep-seated reasons for wanting to be around "wild" animals. The renowned British essayist, novelist and art critic John Berger, in 1977, wrote an influential essay titled "Why Look At Animals?" In it, he posited that humans go to zoos and animal "shows" in order to regain a sliver of our species' lost connections with nature, to reunite, even if unknowingly, with ancient traditions of living cheek-by-jowl, as it were, with animals.

Berger says the main reason people have a need to connect with animals, even though we live in a technologically sophisticated culture that demands little interaction with them, is precisely because we live in a technologically sophisticated culture that etc., etc. He reminds readers that humans once lived in close contact with the natural world, in an "unspeaking companionship." Long, long before the modern world -- in fact, starting in the earliest days of humanity -- we depended on animals as beasts of burden, as food, as companions, as symbols (they show up in the very earliest hieroglyphics), and as objects of worship, as evidenced by prehistoric cave paintings. All that changed, says Berger, with the Industrial Revolution, when human productivity began to replace animals' usefulness, other than as another form of machine.

So today, according to Berger, animals have become "the living monument to their own disappearance" from our everyday lives. He goes so far as to say that our need to look at, to be with, animals is even entangled with our notions of art; he talks of animals being taken out of their natural environment in order to be displayed in zoos, "so what you have is an animal with a 'frame around it,'" similar in a way to the paintings we view in museums.

Much of what Berger says makes sense to me. If you've ever been to a zoo, circus, or marine animal spectacle, you know that the feeling of empathy or even affection for the animals involved is tangible among audience members. There's more going on, in other words, than just the action of the show. It's the same human impulse that leads us to still have domestic pets, long past the time when they served as actual guardians or agricultural "helpers."

Berger is more concerned with our loss of connection with the natural world than with saving animals from exploitation, and he even posits a time in the not-too-distant future when we will have "outgrown" our need to see, or be with, animals -- it's not a future he relishes, nor could any other thinking person.

But it seems to me that even if you accept Berger's ideas -- before the day comes, if it does, that we don't "need" animals anymore -- we could adopt another type of affiliation with the natural world, at least where it concerns wildlife. If we really do long for a reconnection with our old colleagues, so to speak, because we've so changed -- some would say ruined -- our relationship with them, couldn't we at least do the one thing we humans can do that wild animals can't? Couldn't we get outside ourselves, outside our own selfish focus on what we "like to look at," and forego the circuses, zoos, marine animal shows and the like? Couldn't we relate to these other living things, once our partners long ago, by agreeing to finally, once and for all, leave them alone?

john.grooms@creativeloafing.com