the fine line between human and animal
I just finished watching the animal planet show “Caught in the Moment” which is about a wildlife filmmaker and a conservationist, who go around the world and film animals to make a conservation music video. On tonight’s episode they went to India to film langurs, which are a type of monkey. Unfortunately they haven’t posted the video on the website yet, so ya’ll can’t see it. But here's a picture of a langur.
Anyway it’s amazing how the Indian people coexist w/ the monkeys and other animals and also how the animals are incorporation into their religion and are thought to be sacred. The langurs are thought to be the living incarnations of their god Hanuman. In the story of Hanuman (this is only what I remember from the show) he rescues his princess from demons and while in doing so gets burnt, so the monkeys are sacred b/c their unique black face and hands are thought to be given to them by Hanuman. I never really thought about how much nature and animals are tied into the Hindu religion; something that is lacking in the Catholic religion, with the exception of St. Francis Assisi.
I was also amazed by the monkeys’ sensitivity but also their cruelty. In both they are similar to humans. There’s an alpha male that’s head of the troop, which includes adult females and their babies and juveniles. Outside the troop are adult males that fight the alpha w/ the intent of killing him and taking over the troop, if this happens they will also kill the babies. That’s so horrible, but then at the same time it’s essential for their survival. The strongest male passes on his genes and kills off the weaker male and offspring. The monkeys are similar to humans in that they kill their own kind, but differ in the reasons, people don’t kill for the continuation of their kind. In the show the adult males kill a baby, the mother mourns her lost and so do the other females. They seem to know that one of their own has died and they huddle around the mother. Like humans they mourn a lost. The alpha kills one of the adult males, which drives the rest off. Although I’ve seen other animals kill each other for mates or territory, I guess this seemed so strange to me because they resembled humans so much, making their actions all the more horrible. At the same time making the scene of the mourning mother more relatable.