The fire-animal
Nota bene: For you bothered by that use of "animal" for humans, we certainly aren't daisies or icebox mold, nor are we Staphylococcus aureus (although some think we are lower still than the latter). So chill out already, okay?
Biology is ultimately the study of how organisms use energy: energy for metabolism, expressed in numerous ways, i.e., fleeing, fighting, feeding, and romantic involvements. Organisms use energy generated within themselves for such purposes, but they may also use energy gained from their environment, e.g., creatures living far underwater in volcanic vent communities who not only tolerate but thrive in waters of temperatures up to 400°C (752°F), and reptiles who come out from their dens in the morning to soak up sunlight to rev their metabolisms up to a speed that enables them to catch prey and/or evade predators, as their unaided poikilothermic metabolisms could not.
Some organisms go farther. Many predators have learned to travel along the edges of wildfires to catch the prey that is chased from cover by the fires. Ravens and crows "ant" with fire, as well; these birds have a vice, "anting," tucking biting venomous ants in their wingpits to get a charge from the bites similar, apparently, to that which those who enjoy masochistic practices get from their self-inflicted pain, and will also fly back and forth over open fires to catch sparks in their wingpits to do the same service for them, and even seem to prefer fire to ants for that purpose.
But no other creature on Earth, as far as we know, has ever gone to the extent we have as far as use of external energy sources in support of biological functions goes. First, we captured fire, took it home, and used it to frighten predators away and to cook our foods. Then we gave it a home in the form of the hearth, which became the heart of our homes. Then we learned how to use it to harden wooden tools and weapons, making them more durable -- and, in the case of our weapons, much more deadly.
Then we learned how to smelt metal, and began to make a vast variety of tools and weapons of metal by which we slowly but surely changed the whole world -- and we used fire as one of those tools, our premier and primordial power-tool. Eventually we learned how to extract fossil biomass from the ground and use it in internal combustion engines to do things that open fire could not. Ultimately we learned to acquire and use energy from non-carbon sources -- nuclear energy, solar energy, wind power, hydrogen-burning engines -- to meet our needs. No other creature has ever acquired or used energy from sources external to its own body on such a colossal scale, and that acquisition and use defines us, Homo sapiens, as nothing else does. Almost everything we do, from heating our homes, cooking our foods, making our clothing, powering our computers and other electronics, and manufacturing the modern medications we take for our various ills to traveling over the face of the Earth and beyond Earth's atmosphere, communicating with one another across the globe in a tremendous, intricate network of information-transferring and -processing connections, and readying an enormous and terrible arsenal of nuclear weapons against the day when all-out war becomes inevitable, depends on energy-sources completely outside our own bodies. And all of it goes back to the first taming, use, and re-creation of fire via our first fire technologies.
"When we first got fire, we became human." Fire defines us as nothing else does. All our religions speak of fire, and of the first humans to capture and use fire. Fire is a divinity in many religions, a premier tool of God in others. Fire ecology is human ecology; human ecology is fire ecology. Nothing else speaks to us as fire does; something deep in our collective soul has had a love affair with fire for two million years, a love affair that no other organism has ever known.
We are the fire-animal. Fire is our nature, fire is our slave, fire is the driving spirit of our technology, fire is the symbol of our outward-yearning nature that reaches always for the stars. We are the fire-animal. While some other creatures have learned, tentatively, to put fire to use, such as ravens, crows, the creatures that chase prey at the edges of wildfires, and the pyrobotanicals which, such as manzanita and eucalyptus and chaparral, learn to attract fire to gut their immediate neighborhood so that their seeds, cast when fire consumes the parent plants, will have no competition for the land thus bared by the fire, none have ever created a technology of fire, or impacted the whole world in the ways and on the scales we have.
The Norse were wise. They made Loki, the Spirit of Fire, a God -- but also a Giant, scion of evil, a wonderful servant, a terrible enemy. They knew what lurks in the human soul, and has ever since we first became human.
Biology is ultimately the study of how organisms use energy: energy for metabolism, expressed in numerous ways, i.e., fleeing, fighting, feeding, and romantic involvements. Organisms use energy generated within themselves for such purposes, but they may also use energy gained from their environment, e.g., creatures living far underwater in volcanic vent communities who not only tolerate but thrive in waters of temperatures up to 400°C (752°F), and reptiles who come out from their dens in the morning to soak up sunlight to rev their metabolisms up to a speed that enables them to catch prey and/or evade predators, as their unaided poikilothermic metabolisms could not.
Some organisms go farther. Many predators have learned to travel along the edges of wildfires to catch the prey that is chased from cover by the fires. Ravens and crows "ant" with fire, as well; these birds have a vice, "anting," tucking biting venomous ants in their wingpits to get a charge from the bites similar, apparently, to that which those who enjoy masochistic practices get from their self-inflicted pain, and will also fly back and forth over open fires to catch sparks in their wingpits to do the same service for them, and even seem to prefer fire to ants for that purpose.
But no other creature on Earth, as far as we know, has ever gone to the extent we have as far as use of external energy sources in support of biological functions goes. First, we captured fire, took it home, and used it to frighten predators away and to cook our foods. Then we gave it a home in the form of the hearth, which became the heart of our homes. Then we learned how to use it to harden wooden tools and weapons, making them more durable -- and, in the case of our weapons, much more deadly.
Then we learned how to smelt metal, and began to make a vast variety of tools and weapons of metal by which we slowly but surely changed the whole world -- and we used fire as one of those tools, our premier and primordial power-tool. Eventually we learned how to extract fossil biomass from the ground and use it in internal combustion engines to do things that open fire could not. Ultimately we learned to acquire and use energy from non-carbon sources -- nuclear energy, solar energy, wind power, hydrogen-burning engines -- to meet our needs. No other creature has ever acquired or used energy from sources external to its own body on such a colossal scale, and that acquisition and use defines us, Homo sapiens, as nothing else does. Almost everything we do, from heating our homes, cooking our foods, making our clothing, powering our computers and other electronics, and manufacturing the modern medications we take for our various ills to traveling over the face of the Earth and beyond Earth's atmosphere, communicating with one another across the globe in a tremendous, intricate network of information-transferring and -processing connections, and readying an enormous and terrible arsenal of nuclear weapons against the day when all-out war becomes inevitable, depends on energy-sources completely outside our own bodies. And all of it goes back to the first taming, use, and re-creation of fire via our first fire technologies.
"When we first got fire, we became human." Fire defines us as nothing else does. All our religions speak of fire, and of the first humans to capture and use fire. Fire is a divinity in many religions, a premier tool of God in others. Fire ecology is human ecology; human ecology is fire ecology. Nothing else speaks to us as fire does; something deep in our collective soul has had a love affair with fire for two million years, a love affair that no other organism has ever known.
We are the fire-animal. Fire is our nature, fire is our slave, fire is the driving spirit of our technology, fire is the symbol of our outward-yearning nature that reaches always for the stars. We are the fire-animal. While some other creatures have learned, tentatively, to put fire to use, such as ravens, crows, the creatures that chase prey at the edges of wildfires, and the pyrobotanicals which, such as manzanita and eucalyptus and chaparral, learn to attract fire to gut their immediate neighborhood so that their seeds, cast when fire consumes the parent plants, will have no competition for the land thus bared by the fire, none have ever created a technology of fire, or impacted the whole world in the ways and on the scales we have.
The Norse were wise. They made Loki, the Spirit of Fire, a God -- but also a Giant, scion of evil, a wonderful servant, a terrible enemy. They knew what lurks in the human soul, and has ever since we first became human.