A Dog's Life

I've just been reading a few e-mails from our taman in KL regarding stray dogs on the estate and the need to deal with them. (I think that's a euphemism for killing them.) Of course, it's quite right: there's a need to control the problem. But another part of me wonders whether we (our species, not just the taman-dwellers) are not just brutally destructive for the sake of our narrow, irrelevant comforts. Consideration of the experiences of animals is invariably a fascinating way to approach topics in the IB subject Theory of Knowledge, and it's interesting how often students seem to effortlessly put these questions to one side. Do animals know things in the same way humans do? Do animals know more than us? Is instinct a kind of knowing? I think when I was younger I wouldn't have worried too much about these issues. Now they fascinate, and worry, me. After all, we've made this world a kind of hell for other species. Perhaps we're getting closer to payback time?