Animal in the Human Community

Ever since true humans appeared on earth, they have lived in close association with other animals. Throughout most of that time, human existed as hunter-gatherers who depended on wild animals for food and clothing. They also found a source of aesthetic pleasure and spiritual strength in the animal life about them. Evidence of this exists is the remarkable paintings of Paleolithic people in the caves of southern France. The religious practices of North American Indians involved the veneration of certain animals, such as the bear, wolf, and eagle, in an attempt to acquire the power, wisdom, courage, and speed that these animals supposedly possessed.

Human societies have continued to exhibit traces of these relationships. The aesthetic appeal of animals is expressed in the mosaics and frescoes of ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt, in the paintings of the Renaissance masters, and in countless works of more recent artists. Mystical feelings toward animals are reflected in myths and folktales, moralistic fables involving animals, and anthropomorphic animal stories for children as well as the adoption of animal names for cars, sports teams, and so on.

Despite highly developed technology and agriculture and the domestication of many species, modern humans still depend on wild stocks of a variety of other animals, such as fish and shellfish, for food. Unmanaged commercial exploitation, however, has greatly reduced this resource and has driven some species to the edge of extinction. In addition, wild animals provide recreation in the form of sport hunting and sport fishing, bird watching, and visits to zoos and wildlife refuges.

As human advanced from hunting to an agriculture existence, relationships between humans and animals changed. Animals that preyed on livestock or that destroyed crops were reduced or exterminated and the alteration on the landscape eliminated habitats for many other species. As humans became more concentrated in cities, however, animals such as rats multiplied and became important carriers of disease.

Human domesticated some animals for food, clothing, power, and companionship. How this came about is a matter of speculation. Through protection and selective breeding, humans changed early-domesticated forms into highly productive dairy and beef cattle, sheep, swine, and poultry. Also contributing to human welfare are the dogs, cats, white rats and mice, guinea pigs, and rhesus monkeys that medical research has used to gain an understanding of human physiology and to develop drugs and procedures to combat human illnesses.

As human continue to spread across the earth, however, they encroach on or pollute the environments of many animals, reducing remaining habitats to smaller and smaller areas. Unless this trend is reversed, much of the world’s animal life faces extinction.

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