Save the Krill! Stop Speciesism Now!

My uncle realized early on that the Greenpeace "Save the Whales" campaign was a little misguided.  Sometime in the early 90s he made our family T-shirts printed with "Save the Krill!  Stop Speciesism Now!".  That way, we could all proudly declare our nerdy ecological farsightedness.  Not only is it important to protect the smart, large mammals that don't usually try to kill people, that display significant intelligence and almost-human family structure, and that leap gracefully into the air and land with a big, entertaining splash, it's also important to protect the tiny, maybe microscopic invertebrates that humans mostly don't realize exist (and if we do, we're disgusted by them).  It's pretty easy to convince people to save the whales, mustangs, and Giant Sequoias (even though the realization of this necessity is rarely followed by action), but it's a little more difficult to turn the tide of public opinion for the Cannibal Slug, Rock Gnome Lichen, or Dracula Ant.  While the superstar species of the plant and animal kingdom get all the attention, the vast majority of the planet's biodiversity quietly goes extinct, suffering at the hands of speciesism.  (See Endangered Ugly Things for more info.)

We assign value to species based on any number of factors.  In "The Biophilia Hypothesis" Stephen Kellert and Edward Wilson describe biophilia as "the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms."  They outline what they consider to be nine expressions of this tendency which determine human response to and valuation of other organisms: utilitarian, naturalistic, ecologistic-scientific, aesthetic, symbolic, humanistic, moralistic, dominionistic, and negativistic.  Though I don't believe that these responses are universal from culture to culture or through human history, I think they do provide a framework through which to understand the our species' relationships with other species.  

The chart below is a terribly simplified version of these ideas.  I'm particularly interested in two spectra on which we often place animals: beauty and intelligence.  Let me quickly specify what I mean by those terms.  By beauty, I include organisms that humans enjoy looking at, listening to, and smelling.  We may find them cute, graceful, impressive, athletic, or pleasing in their resemblance of humans.  On the opposite end of this spectrum are species that we find hideous, ugly, frightening, monstrous, disgusting, and insidious.  The intelligence spectrum assigns value based on how closely a species' intelligence resembles human intelligence.

 

  

Although I think the system by which we value species is far more complicated, these factors seem to be the most important in determining value for Western, post-industrial cultures.  

In "Toward an Aesthetic Marine Biology" J. Malcolm Shick describes the historical trajectory of marine biology-related art and his use of it in teaching his students.  From this, it's clear that when something is aestheticized, it tends to become very appealing to the rest of us.  Seaweed that may actually be slimy, stinky, and bland might be rendered by an artist as graceful, colorful, and patterned.  Once this new, more pleasant version of seaweed is in our head, it slides along the beautiful spectrum (which is only concerned with general human perception, not actuality).  But indeed, someone must have found it appealing initially.  So there is a cycle: an organism rendered beautifully increases its popular value, and beautiful organisms are more likely to to be rendered beautifully.  It's a bit of a chicken and egg thing.  Are there qualities that are perceived by humans as universally beautiful?  Shick quotes T.A. Stephenson (a scientist and artist) as saying: "If we ask ourselves why we find many marine organisms beautiful, we are at once on far more difficult ground...[A]mong the several attributes of natural objects...resulting, in our minds, in the sensation of beauty, the mathematical relations...play an important part...[T]he aesthetic emotion can be vividly awakened even by the shapes of a few lines anx the angles at which they meet each other..." 

Above is a lovely picture of sea stuff by Anna Kirk-Smith, which can be seen online here.  She has given it the heading "for T A Stephenson".

I'm not so sure that math explains all of it, but it does ring true that some of our sense of beauty has been programed into our genes through evolution.  The undiseased fruit is more symmetrical and colorful than the diseased fruit, therefore is safer to eat, and therefore is more beautiful.  Something along those lines.  

But now, it's become increasingly obvious that even ugly things are vitally important to the health of the planet, so we have to shift how we popularly value organisms.