Biophilia

I've been overwhelmed by the response to yesterday's blip of the new kittens. I think it's been my most popular ever. I'm sorry that I just don't have time to respond to everyone. Thank you so much!
The kittens and their mother are flourishing but they are avoiding limelight today - their eyes are not open yet.

Why the enthusiasm for a handful of tiny beasts? What's the explanation for our intense interest in pictures of animals? Not just mammals but birds and reptiles and insects. And flowers and trees. Woods and mountains and rivers and the sea.
We love to see them, and photograph them, and have their images on mugs and clothes and bags and cushions. We watch David Attenborough telling us about them, we read books about them. We keep pets, we visit zoos, we feed wild birds, we make gardens and grow flowers and cherish trees. We need green spaces in cities, we make trips to the country, we have pot plants on office desks, fish tanks in waiting rooms. We give our children toy animals, and tell them animal stories and songs and rhymes. We uses their names affectionately (chick, lamb), or insultingly (pig, bitch, rat.) Our language, our literature and art are threaded through with images and iconography that represent or reference the natural world. It's as if we are constantly rehearsing and reinforcing our connection to the pantheon of living things through the very texture of our culture.

The biologist E.O.Wilson came up with a hypothesis called biophilia (love of life). It's our deeply rooted affiliation with other living things that seems to be a psychological necessity whether we are conscious of it or not. The natural world nourishes our minds and emotions as well as our bodies; contact with living things seems to be almost as essential for us as food and water and air. We've all heard accounts of prisoners finding release in watching birds or growing plants, troubled individuals calmed by gardening, sick people comforted by contact with cats and dogs, disordered children relaxed by riding horses, old or lonely people supported by companion animals. Once it was necessary to 'tell the bees' if a member of the household died. And, for multitudes, the natural world still informs their spiritual world.
There's nothing new about all this; biophilia is just a fancy name for what been happening ever since Homo sapiens evolved from the matrix of living things.

So my image today is just a swan - but think: Swan Lake, Leda and the Swan, The Ugly Duckling, swan song, swanning around... like most familiar animals it has a host of associations in our human world. Biophilia rules!

My reflections on biophilia today have been underlined by thoughts of Kendall and her new feline companion, Kismet. For a while their fate seemed balanced upon an acceptable financial assessment that the sanctuary required to ensure that the cat would be receive adequate medical attention if needed. There's been a lot of discussion on whether such judgments are appropriate, just as there is when potential adopters of children are deemed too old or too fat, the wrong race or religion, or they smoke. It's not easy when it's someone's life that's involved.

Now the good news is that Kendall has been approved and is set to be united with Kismet in the very near future, for their great mutual benefit I have no doubt. What's more, Kendall is looking at inaugurating a scheme to support others in her country for whom animal companionship may be jeopardized by shortage of funds. I wish her every success and I'm sure others will do all they can to help too.