Book Reviews

Cold-Eyed Conclusions

WINTER WORLD: The ingenuity of animal survival
By Bernd Heinrich

I was thrilled to read of the multitude of amazing strategies that keep creatures alive through long months of numbing cold, snow and near absence of food. There are insects that freeze solid and reanimate and bears that neither eat, drink, nor get up to pee. Even more marvelous somehow, is to learn of the mysteries that remain unsolved, such as how the three-and-a-half-inch, golden-crowned kinglet can survive sub-zero winters in northern forests.

I want to like Heinrich, a writer who seems to share the same delight that I find in the natural world and all of its denizens, but I have some issues with his techniques for wildlife study. My first problem was when Heinrich related that he used a stout stick to whack trees in which he suspected flying squirrels or kinglets were sheltering. Couldn’t he have found a less violent method, like unobtrusive observation? If he lacked the time or patience, what about using surveillance equipment?

I also have problems when the practice of “science” involves killing its subjects. I was happy to learn of the recent discovery that golden-crowned kinglets eat a little-known geometrid caterpillar. Do I think it was worth killing the tiny birds to examine their stomach contents? No, emphatically not.

There are those who will say, ‘well, that’s science and that’s how it’s done.’ I won’t argue that’s how science has been done, from the dark, barbarous ages from whence it sprang. In light of the great body of scientific knowledge that’s been acquired in the centuries since, our methods of scientific inquiry have failed to evolve to match our advance.

I think Heinrich senses the wrong being done, if only subconsciously. In Winter World, he buttresses the telling of his killing episodes with explanations that few animals are killed and that their loss will not affect the health of the populations in the wild. This is rationalization, and the human species is famous for its ability to rationalize the most heinous of acts.

When a scientist kills an animal, he undermines any defensible ethical legitimacy for his acts in my book. That Nature herself is cruel and indiscriminate in dealing suffering and death is no justification for taking an animal’s life, either. Rather, it only argues that any human intrusion into the lives of the wild should be to heal or help.

I expect Heinrich will go on writing his lovely accounts of animal lives interspersed with passages about whacking trees to find his subjects, and shooting and dissecting them, while he waves the banner of science. And Winter World and other books, deserve to be read for the fine job they do in illuminating animal lives. In addition to the narrative the serious reader will be gratified to find thrity pages of references. Mingled with my admiration, however, remains the haunting question, - will humankind ever respect life enough to move beyond the practice of blood sacrifice in the name of science?

ISBN 0-06-095737-9
ECCO - An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com

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Copyright ©  2005 Christine M. Roane

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