By John Di Leonardo
As an anthrozoologist and executive director of Humane Long Island, I spend a large majority of my time advocating for other species, however, long before I advocated for animals, I managed day programs for people with neuro-divergences across Long Island; and last week, I was proud to combine both my interests by being honored at RISE Life Service’s Rubber Duck Race —a fundraiser for an organization that aids those with special needs.
In preparing a speech for this event, I stumbled upon the following snippet from a larger blog by VINE Sanctuary director Pattrice Jones:
People who bother to justify their presumed right to exploit, cage, kill, and control the reproduction of nonhuman animals tend to reach for a limited number of arguments. Among the most common of these is the idea that only humans have some particular capability and that this superiority of ability entitles people to do whatever they like to nonhuman animals. As I once heard disability rights activist Mary Fantaske say, “That’s not just like ableism; that is ableism.”
Acharya Tulsi Ji (Photo provided by: Arvind Vora)
Speciesism —the human-supremacist worldview that one species is more important than another— deprives us of seeing the intrinsic value of animals and leads us to either consume them or discard them when they’re no longer deemed useful to us while depriving us of experiencing the wealth of talents and abilities of our divergent peers.
As I was reminded last week, waterfowl rarely have such prejudice.
Just like our companion and farmed animals, domestic waterfowl were domesticated by humans thousands of years ago. Years of selective breeding have produced waterfowl vastly different from their wild counterparts, both physiologically and psychologically, just like dogs and wolves. Bred for either egg or meat production, domestic ducks and geese have tiny wings, large bodies, and generally no camouflage. They lack natural instincts, typically cannot fly, and they can never migrate—literally sitting ducks for predators and cruel people when abandoned in the wild.
So when someone abandoned two domestic Pomeranian geese to the Long Island Sound at Roanoke Beach last week, my wife and I sprang into action, jumping into the sea to save them. The male—handicapped by a deformity called angel -wing caused by being fed bread—suffered from a twisted wing, but his able-bodied mate loved him all the same and he defended her with a ferocity that knew no disability. Two days later, we rescued another pair—a different breed—however, the two Pomeranians and two Buff geese—including another with angel-wing—accepted one another into each other's flocks like they knew each other since birth. And a day later we rescued two domestic ducklings abandoned in a park in Huntington. Despite being handicapped by their domestication, these ducklings were readily accepted by a wild mallard mother who cared for them until a Good Samaritan called us to help.
While it's easy to think of ourselves as superior to ducks or geese—to the point that communities like Peapack-Gladstone in New Jersey have hired the USDA to gas them to death—this is nothing more than hubris; and when it comes to matters such as prejudices, many animals—including ducks and geese—are certainly superior to us.
For this week’s Anuvrat, I invite readers to examine their own prejudices, whether they be related to gender, creed, sexual orientation, intellectual ability, or species, and to go out of your way to do an act of service for this population you may have previously neglected to understand.
John Di Leonardo is the founding director of Humane Long Island. He was previously the Senior Manager of Grassroots Campaigns and Animals in Entertainment Campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). He has a Master's degree in Anthrozoology from Canisius College. He also earned a graduate certificate in Jain Studies from the International School of Jain Studies (ISJS) in India. John can be reached at [email protected]. (Photo provided by John)
