Calling Animals "Pests" is more about us than them. A new book asks why we consider some animals to be pests and others not.
Our relationships with nonhuman animals (animals) are complex,
challenging, and paradoxical. We allow dogs and cats to breed themselves to
death and continue to harm and kill other animals and destroy their homes at
unprecedented rates as we take over and destroy the natural world.
Often we bring other animals in who actually begin to disrupt ecosystems for
us, such as cats, Burmese pythons, or even horses. We then label them as
"pests" as well, when their actions are no longer acceptable to us.
Many of the animals who find themselves being harmed and killed are referred
to as "pests" or "trashanimals," and it's useful to figure out why these
demeaning labels are used to describe some animals but not others. These
words are conveniently used because it allows us to get rid of them however,
wherever, and whenever we choose.
Along these lines, I was pleased to learn of a new book by Dr. Bethany
Brookshire titled Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains.1.
Here's what Bethany had to say about her important, thought-provoking, and
timely book.
Marc Bekoff: Why did you write Pests?
Bethany Brookshire: I’ve been fascinated by the concept of
pests for years now, ever since I wrote a piece back in 2016 about the
earliest evidence of house mice. I loved the idea that we’ve had house mice
since we’ve had houses, before we even started farming. I also realized
around that time that every place I went to had its “rat.” Sometimes it was
a rat, sometimes a pigeon or raccoon, sometimes even a giant land snail, but
every place I went seemed to have an animal that people hated, one that
caused them endless problems.
Source: Alexas Fotos/Pexels
I began to realize that this wasn’t about the animals. It was about
us—what we expect and want and believe about the world we live in. I began
to see that we hate animals because they aren’t living up to our
expectations. And I learned that the way that people think about animals in
Western culture is not the only way, and it’s not even the way that might
serve us best. We could get rid of pests—not by changing them, but by
changing ourselves.
MB: How does your book relate to your background and
general areas of interest?
BB:It doesn’t! Not really. My original scientific training
was in neuroscience. But after I left academia and took up science
journalism, I felt the freedom to be truly curious, to dig into everything
and see what fascinated me. I kept coming back to how humans perceive their
environments, how they see their place in the world. And since researching
the book, you could say human–wildlife interaction has become my new beat.
One source suggested I should submit it for a master’s degree. But that
seems like an awful lot of trouble.
MB: Who is your intended audience?
BB: Anyone who has ever hated an animal. Anyone who’s had a
squirrel in their garden, a rat in their sewer. A mouse in the house! Anyone
who’s ever been curious as to why we love some animals and hate others.
MB: What are some of the topics you weave into your book,
and what are some of your major messages?
BB: My book is organized around five themes—five ways in
which we come to hate the animals around us. The first theme is fear and
disgust—why is it that some animals creep us out. The second is niche, how
humans act as ecosystem engineers—and why animals end up moving in. The
third is belief. So much of whether we love or hate an animal comes down to
what we believe—beliefs that are often at odds with the animal’s behavior.
The fourth theme is power. In the Western view, humans are the top dog, and
any animal that challenges our supremacy quickly becomes the enemy. The
final theme is habitat. When we move into new areas, we often drastically
change what they look like and the species that thrive there. We expect
animals to go away. When they stay, when they adapt, and when they persist,
we don’t exactly greet them with open arms.
There are several conclusions to draw from these themes, but one is this: So
much of the way we view animals is based in our idea that we are in charge,
that we have dominion over our environments. But that’s not a universal
human view. We do not have to be this way. I got the chance to learn from
many Indigenous peoples over the course of this book. I learned different
ways of looking at “pests” and different ways of seeing our place in the
world—ways that might work a lot better for both us and the animals that bug
us.
MB: How does your book differ from others that are
concerned with some of the same general topics?
BB:Well, first there are a lot of great books out there
about pests. For example, Mary Roach’s book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
and Robert Sullivan’s excellent book Rats. There are also some great books
about human impacts on wildlife and wilderness, like Emma Marris’s
Rambunctious Garden.
Mine differs, I think, in the themes it explores—asking why we look at
animals the way we do. And while people might think the book is about
animals (It is! Honest!), it's also about us—about people and why we are the
way we are.
MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about
so-called "pests" they will tolerate them and treat them with more respect
and concern for their lives?
BB: Maybe? What I’m really hopeful of is that people who read the book will look at themselves. They’ll look at their own relationship to their environment, why they think some animals “belong” and others don’t. I hope they’ll realize how many pest problems are the result of people, the way we live and how we behave. So I hope we’ll improve ourselves, change our views. If we did that, we probably would end up treating some animals with more tolerance and understanding.
References
In conversation with Bethany Brookshire. Bethany is a freelance science
journalist and the author of Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She
is also a host and producer on the podcast "Science for the People." Bethany
is a former staff writer with Science News magazine and Science News for
Students, a digital magazine covering the latest in scientific research for
kids ages 9 to 14. Her freelance writing has appeared in Scientific
American, Science News magazine, Science News Explores, The Atlantic, the
Washington Post, Slate, and other outlets. Bethany has a Ph.D. in physiology
and pharmacology from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She was
a 2019–2020 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.
1. The book's description reads "An engrossing and revealing study of why we
deem certain animals 'pests' and others not—from cats to rats, elephants to
pigeons—and what this tells us about our own perceptions, beliefs, and
actions, as well as our place in the natural world, A squirrel in the
garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much
of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places.
When animals pop up where we don’t expect or want them, we respond with
fear, rage, or simple annoyance. It’s no longer an animal. It’s a pest. At
the intersection of science, history, and narrative journalism, Pests is not
a simple call to look closer at our urban ecosystem. It’s not a natural
history of the animals we hate. Instead, this book is about us. It’s about
what calling an animal a pest says about people, how we live, and what we
want. It’s a story about human nature, and how we categorize the animals in
our midst, including bears and coyotes, sparrows and snakes. Pet or pest? In
many cases, it’s entirely a question of perspective. Bethany Brookshire’s
deeply researched and entirely entertaining book will show readers what
there is to venerate in vermin, and help them appreciate how these animals
have clawed their way to success as we did everything we could to ensure
their failure. In the process, we will learn how the pests that annoy us
tell us far more about humanity than they do about the animals themselves."
Bethany Brookshire is an award-winning science writer who was a 2019–2020 MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow. Her work has been published in outlets including the Atlantic,the Washington Post, Scientific American, Science News, and Slate. She is a host of the podcast Science for the People. She holds a PhD in physiology and pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
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