It's been a long time since I wrote on the blog. I got carried away with life and my masters thesis so I haven't had a chance to put my thoughts down in a blog post. Never the less, here I am and I have a few things in my mind.
The first thing(and what I will talk about today) is predators. I was thinking about this while watching the BBC series "The Hunt". I love predators and I am sure anyone reading the blog knows that. I just think that the way these animals live and hunt is extraordinary. They have to rely on themselves to survive and while the same goes for herbivores(since they have to rely on themselves to not get eaten), it feels different with predators.
During a very vivid scene of orcas hunting a baby humpback whale, I found myself rooting for the orcas and hoping they make the kill. It occur to me however that someone else might be rooting for the baby humpback to escape and survive. I pondered on that thought a little and thought that in the end of the day it may have something to do with human psyche and what is your outlook on life. I don't mean it in a " strong people root for predators, weak people root for herbivores" situation. A lot of herbivores are pretty badass.
What I mean exactly is the outlook on life and how you perceive it. Speaking from personal experience, people rooting for the prey tend to be more empathetic towards everyone and tend to have a larger picture view of life. They plan their life and set goals they want to achieve later in their life. People rooting for predators tend to trust only "their own" people and tend to prefer living in the moment with their plans not ranging that far into the future. They have a general idea of what they want to do later on but the words "we will see" tend to come in mind.
This is of course a very gross generalization of humanity, one of the most complex species on the planet. Of course there will be people who won't match these boxes and of course there will be people who will disagree with what I say.
But that's not really what I want to get through today. Whether you agree with what I say or not, I believe in what I am saying. So what that says about me as a human? I think that we have this tendency to take certain things from nature and project them into how we believe the world works. It's impossible to prevent ourselves from doing that. Ultimately the question isn't should we do that, but rather what is it that we do? What elements of our world perception come from our observations in nature and what is instilled by society. Can we overcome certain beliefs through our experience with nature?
When I first started being interested in nature, I found myself believing that predators were the best. They are highly adaptable killing machines. "Why would anyone root for anything else? Deer are stupid grass eating things and humpbacks just swim around. " It's only by learning more and observing more that I learned that prey species aren't all that stupid after all. Humpbacks will defend gray whales and their calves with possibly no other motive but altruism. Deer will move in herds to prevent themselves from being attacked. Other species have learned to look at patterns to prevent predation.
So much like nature, our perception of the world is ever evolving and what we take from nature constantly changes the more we observe and live in it.
