Barbara J King extends anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’s concept of “mutuality of being” – a relationship in which “the individuals involved remain emotionally and cognitively taken up with each other’s lives even when they are not together” – to the animal kingdom:
In 2005, two Moulard ducks were rescued from a foie gras factory and brought to Farm Sanctuary, an organisation with safe-haven properties in New York and California. The two ducks, named Harper and Kohl, had suffered significant emotional and physical trauma at the factory.
When they arrived at the sanctuary, both animals were frightened of humans, both had the liver disease hepatic lipidosis, and each had his own serious medical issues too. For four years at the sanctuary, they were nearly inseparable. When Kohl could no longer walk or his pain be treated effectively, he was euthanised, and Harper was allowed to watch. When Harper approached the still body of Kohl, he first prodded it, but then lay down and draped his neck over Kohl — for hours. In the following days and weeks, Harper withdrew socially, preferring to spend his time alone near a small pond where he had often gone with Kohl. Two months later, Harper died, too.
This sad story moves me because it asks us to think beyond ‘the usual suspects’ at the frontiers of animal emotion and intelligence. While scientists and animal caretakers have only just begun to record qualitative data about animals’ responses to death, and to address larger questions that bear on mutuality of being, we have strong clues that suggest the fully interdependent nature of animals’ non-kin relationships. Mutuality of being need not be expressed only through language. Animals, too, can feel their lives deeply, and they might even feel the co-presence of others — whether related by blood or not — in those lives.
Previous Dish on the complexities of animal life here, here, and here.
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