The Nature of Predators - Why the Caged Bird Sings (7/11)

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Memory Transcription Subject: Cala, Krakotl Child 

Date [standardized human time]: September 4, 2137

There were so many creatures, and I was barely restraining giddy chirps as I rode on Andy’s shoulder past all the exhibits. I’d never seen this many animals somewhere they weren’t being burned! Some of them looked really funny or scary. There were lots of human kids running around too, who, like me, were way less big than my new Papa—I wanted to play with them. Andrew explained what the different zoo organisms were, and I definitely had feelings about the aviary; the birds were locked inside buildings and cages like I was back at the jail. Did Terrans catch avians when they hunted? Part of me wanted to open the cages somehow and let the captive flying things out, though my excitement to see new creatures, and where Andy worked, was stronger.

“Look at all the different colors of these blokes’ feathers! Some of those, like the owl here, are birds of prey—Krakotl are too, by the way.” Andrew pointed to a strange bird with a fat and flat head, ugly, dark feathers, and huge eyes with gigantic yellow irises. “They have something called ‘camouflage’ naturally. Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head from side-to-side. “Those ow-ulls look funny. Where’s their neck? Why do they have ears like a Yoat-ull? I don’t think they’re birds.”

Andy chuckled. “Owls are known for their funny necks, Cala. They can turn their heads almost all the way around, because they have less sockets than us holding them down. It’s pretty uncanny. They also have really good senses for hunting. That’s why their eyes are so wide, and because they’re so huge, the eyeballs don’t have very good movement; it’s literally easier to rotate their entire head, like you turn a faucet handle!”

“That’s weird. You didn’t answer about the pointy ears. Not bird?”

“They’re definitely birds; they fly, much more silent than most. You’ve just never seen birds like them, because the Federation would’ve burned them. Owls, like I was saying about the dialed up senses, can hear sounds super well too. Their ears actually have different shapes and placements, to pinpoint the direction of prey in the grass!”

“Why do they need to hear if they have big eyes?”

“So they can hunt in the dark, like at night, or if their prey is hiding. Natural selection adapted this way, so they could be very skilled at this! They evolved to specialize as nocturnal hunters, going where the opportunity was.”

“I don’t get why you know so much about owls.”

“I told you, I used to work in a place like this, and take care of all kinds of animals. They’re interesting. I’m teaching you now because I think it’s important to fully understand predators, and that’s how humans feel. We learn about the world around us, in facts.”

“Is learning this kind of stuff useful to most of your people? It doesn’t seem like it’d help humans much.” 

“You never know when knowledge will be useful, but we definitely compare ourselves to all kinds of animals. You can learn from nature, and also make funny names for certain behaviors. To use an example, humans call people ‘night owls’ if they stay up super late. Are you a night owl, or an early bird, Cala?”

I tilted my head. “They’re both bird phrases. You compare yourselves to birds?”

“Sure. We can relate to and see ourselves in all kinds of things.”

I gestured with a wing toward the rest of the avians. “So do you describe yourself by talking about any of these other birds?”

Andrew pressed a finger to his chin, thinking. He pointed toward another dark-feathered animal with a white head; the abrupt change in color kind of reminded me of humans’ eyes, with how the stark white changed and didn’t match at all. It had a yellow beak, with a sharp-looking point that jutted straight down. If that looked like a weapon, maybe it was also a bird of prey? Why did Terrans only compare themselves to predatory avians, when they were half-prey too? I didn’t dare to question my new papa about this, since other Earthlings were walking around—many of whom seemed confused to see one bird outside of the aviary exhibits. They might not like me if I asked more questions. 

Mama wasn’t all wrong about everything, but she was right about so little that it’s hard to know what was true. Humans aren’t like what predators were supposed to be, but they do seem to identify with hunters. That’s not a bad thing; I just want to understand predators, like Andy said. 

“If someone has good eyesight, we say they have eagle eyes!” the human exclaimed, as I stared at the bird of prey in deep thought. “How well the owl can see in the dark looks like a joke, by comparison. Eagles can see a fish in the water a mile away; their sight is eight times better than ours! I can’t say how it stacks up against the Krakotl, but that’s astounding.”

I felt pride that I was right about that being a bird of prey; I understood better now! “The eagle is a…better predator than the owl?”

“That’s right. I’m going to teach you a new idea. You know how sometimes, predators can be hunted by bigger predators?”

“Yeah.”

“What we call an ‘apex predator’ is when nobody hunts them; they’re at the top. Eagles are apex, while owls are not. Bigger birds and animals hunt owls, but eagles have no natural predators.”

“Who’s above humans?”

“Nobody. We’re apex.”

“But you said snakes ate you! I didn’t understand what you meant then, but you’re not really apex.”

“I told you that nothing that went after humans still exists. We have no natural predators, because we killed them all. We’re actually another word—one that would strike terror into the Federation’s fluff. Superpredators.”

“What does that even mean? I thought you were half-prey!”

“It means we can kill whatever we want, whenever we want—and frankly, we do. Humans are Earth’s top predator because we use our brains. No other predator takes down large carnivores at the rates we do, or even comes close. I figure your exterminators would envy our success in that regard, despite the fact our society widely agrees it’s not good.”

“If you think it’s not good, then why do you do it?”

“I think…any animal would dominate their environment, and their world, if they could. It’s natural. We’ve just exceeded our role in the ecosystem, gone beyond it. We understand the consequences of our actions, and we…need to make better choices. More sustainable ones. Just because we have all these planets out there now doesn’t mean we should destroy our home and its life.”

“That’s why you only compare yourself to the birds of prey. You might eat plants, but you’re way more predator than prey.”

“Now? Sure, and that’s good; I’m glad we stopped the things hunting us, so we don’t have to be regular old prey anymore. We got rid of threats to us, like people do. But we definitely compare ourselves to lower on the food chain birds, the same as predators. That bird there, it’s a chicken—they’re really common, and definitely our prey. We’ll call each other chicken if it’s about being cowardly.”

“So prey comparisons are insults.”

Andrew pressed a hand to the back of his skull, wincing. “Maybe that was a bad example. There’s ‘proud as a peacock’ for someone arrogant.”

“That’s an insult too.”

“You know, you’re right. This is harder than it should be. Uh, cold turkey and wild goose chase are sort of problematic, they refer to food or hunting those animals…just like being a ‘sitting duck’ means you’re easy to kill.” Andy had stopped pointing to birds actually in the aviary at this point, settling for any one that would give him something. “Wait, ducks in a row! That means getting things in order, like a mama duck with her chicks. That’s…good, right?”

I stared at the human with skepticism. “That’s only one.”

“Uh, I’m sure there’s more. Er, graceful as a swan! Happy as a lark! There’s two. See?”

“Sure, Papa. If you say so.”

“Okay. Good. Let’s…move on to other animals, shall we?”

The human didn’t wait for an answer, scurrying out of the aviary. I recognized the Terran written word “tiger” on a direction sign, from when I’d been learning to read his language; if this was an attempt to distract me, it was working! I wanted to see the big stripey carnivores in person, since I learned all about them. I didn’t know that animals could actually be orange like fire, so that flames matched their fur! Mama probably would’ve said they were meant to be burned extra because of that color. I wanted to see how not-human predators lived, and if they were more vicious from moment to moment without the big brains to think about consequences. These weren’t half-prey, or ever prey; they were huge hunters. It was reassuring that the Terrans could just kill anything that was a real threat.

Wait, why is Andy turning away from the tigers? He’s going toward a different pen first; I want to see the coloring book predators!

It was weird to think of my new papa as a superpredator, which sounded a lot like how the Federation talked about humans. He said that his people were destroying their home, and that it was natural to try to dominate his environment. I didn’t think they were evil and unfeeling as a species anymore, but that kind of stuff sounded pretty bad. I thought they didn’t want to hurt and attack other things; Andy had shown how great their nurture instincts were, so I knew they had empathy. Then again, Zhao said they were dangerous and might want to hurt me—I got why, but the ones at the zoo were mostly giving me looks. Predators were kind of funny, if they were all like the Terrans. I hadn’t been taught to understand them fully yet. Was it even important, if Terrans cared about people and wouldn’t eat them because of their feelings?

“Hunting is a part of a lot of our culture and words, but I want to show you the more…prey side of us,” Andrew said. “These are a closely-related species to us; big apes! Don’t be fooled by their size and forward-facing eyes; gorillas are herbivores. Feisty ones, sure, but plant-eating animals can be that way.”

I stared at the weird animals with really long, almost black fur; I didn’t get why they had a full pelt when Andy didn’t. The gorillas seemed weird moving on their arms like they were quadrupeds, but I could see a slight resemblance to the humans. Their noses looked different too, without that bridge that stuck out from the Terrans’ faces and made it kind of like a beak. They also had a lot more muscles than the slimmer sapients, and their necks were super wide, seeming to flow right from the back of their heads instead of curving. The forward-facing eyes seemed to be scowling almost, with the ridge right above the eyes—less flexible than Papa’s brows. This was the first animal with binocular eyes I’d seen in real life that was an herbivore.

“They have long hair everywhere. Not like you with your patches,” I chirped. “And they don’t walk like you.”

Andrew flashed his teeth. “We’re upright apes, not like the rest of our kind. We stopped climbing trees, began to take up shop in open savannas. Most of our ancestors are either herbivores, or omnivores that subsisted on fruit with occasional meat pickings or small prey. Early humans were mostly scavengers too—I taught you about that, remember?”

“Yeah. Scavengers eat left-overs from other predators.”

“Good job, Cala! We made tools to help with that, and our brains got big doing that, so we realized those things could be used to take animals down ourselves. We crafted our own destiny—decided what we’d be. Our ancestors still scavenged for plants, like the gorilla roots, but also started pack hunting. Our word for this is hunter-gatherer; you’ll hear it in school.”

My eyes lit up at the thought of going to school. “I think I get it! Gorilla is…just ‘gatherer?’”

“Exactly! Maybe instead of half-prey, you should call us hunter-gatherer…or even hunter-farmer to be accurate, since we learned agriculture to stop gathering. Permanent settlements gave us society. You can still look back and see where we came from in the herbivorous gorilla.”

“You’ve changed a lot! I would’ve never thought this big, mean-looking thing was an herbivore, but I believe you! So Mama wouldn’t have burned the gorilla, since it eats plants?”

Andrew’s eyes darkened. “The gorilla has forward-facing eyes, and the exterminators believe everything with that directional gaze is a predator. Your mother would’ve burned these herbivores without ever looking past their eyes.”

I went quiet, as the human turned away from the gorilla exhibit. My demeanor brightened back up when he turned in the direction of the tiger, the scary predator I’d been waiting all day to see! Would one roar at Andy, and he’d have to flash his tiny fangs and rumble his throat back at them? The humans didn’t seem very scared about having a dangerous carnivore at risk of breaking out and mauling one of them at any moment. I did feel a little bad, as I looked over my shoulder at the gorilla enclosure. They were locked in a cage just like I’d been in the jail, though their habitat was a lot bigger, had sunlight, and had other apes as companions for them. They didn’t seem depressed the way I’d been, so the Terrans must’ve treated them okay enough. 

Then again, they were animals. Did they know they’d be stuck there forever?

“Andy, did you mean it when you said it’s better to die free than live in a cage?” I asked.

The human tilted his head. “Of course, Cala.”

“Then why do you lock up the creatures like this? It seems like it’s just to put them on display.”

He knitted his eyebrows together. “The need for independence and meaning is what drives sapients. We always long for something more. Animals choose to survive, while sometimes, we’ll choose to die for a cause beyond ourselves. An idea.”

“How do you know they don’t long for something more?”

“Well, their brains are smaller, but I guess we don’t. We try to watch their general mood and behavior; people are trained to know what they need to live.”

“Like I watched your behavior from the cell, and knew you were sad, Papa.”

Andrew swallowed. “I’m not sad. Not anymore. I…remembered one of the causes that were worth dying for. Without that, there’s not a lot of difference between people and animals after all. That’s why I’m going to do whatever I have to, endure any abuse, to keep you safe. You can count on it.”

“Thanks, but I don’t want anything to happen to you. I like going places with you. Living with you is the only freedom I’ve ever known.”

The human ruffled my head feathers. “Get used to it, Cala. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

“Which is why we are going to see the tigers now, right?”

“Yes,” he chuckled. “Just remember what you promised me about being on your best behavior, and staying right here, close to me.”

“I will. I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

Andrew smiled, taking the final turn toward the big cats. I waited with bated breath to see how tigers compared to their likeness on the page, so I could truly imagine how a party hat would look on their head. This zoo trip had been a fun adventure where I’d learned a lot of new things. I was glad that Papa number two had been willing to take me here, and had answered all of my questions without calling me annoying or dumb. With Andy helping me to understand stuff, I thought I’d know more about animals than any of the exterminators had soon. I was going to be better than the chick who pushed buttons and hurt lots of humans, no matter what it took. That would be my cause that was worth more than anything.

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A/N - Part 7! Andy teaches Cala about birds of prey, with animal fun facts and unfortunate metaphors mixed in. He also shows her an herbivorous relative of humanity at the gorilla exhibit, after explaining apex predators and why humans would choose to dominate our world. What do you think of Andy’s explanations and lessons for various animals, as well as Cala’s reactions? What animals do you think she should see before the end of the zoo trip?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting!