Intriguing, revealing, embarrassing, shocking – whichever word best suits your reaction to the following news story, it indicates something totally unexpected. The story is that researchers tried to find out which noise scared wild animals in the savanna stretches of South Africa, in and around Kruger National Park, the most – the sound of lions roaring or human voices. They placed hidden recorders and activated them when animals gathered near water bodies or were moving in herds, or simply preparing to feast on a recent kill. Every one of them, some 19 different species, including giraffes, deer and wild boar, elephants, antelopes and leopards displayed greater fear and fled instantly on hearing human voices than when they heard a lion roar.
Animals may be associating human voices with intrusion, disturbance, killing, poaching, hurting, shouting and more such insensitive and violent behaviour toward other species and the environment. Predators like lions attack and kill to satiate their hunger, a basic need for survival, and the ecosystem in the wilderness is attuned to that threat, seeing it as part of their interconnected survival network. Yes, prey animals do display fear and try to flee but not with the same intensity and terror when confronted by human voices. Even a leopard that was preparing to eat an impala it had just killed – simply abandoned its lunch and fled when human voice recordings were played.
Wild animals, even the apex predators that we fear, are terrified of us, say researchers. “The sound of human voices evokes more fear than the sounds of snarling and growling lions. This underlines that our species is recognised as uniquely dangerous.” Says conservation biologist Michael Clinchy at Western University in London, Ontario: “This is because we are super lethal.” In contrast, there are stories of animals and humans living in harmony and trust in places like those in and around Ramana Maharishi’s ashram in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu. The Sage of Arunachala, as he was known, was calm, exuding peace and quiet confidence. Whosoever came to visit, went away carrying some of that peace with them.
New mother monkeys would visit him to show off their newborn babies; peacocks came to perform their rain dance; and troubled human souls came to the Maharishi, to unburden all their problems but found themselves sitting in complete silence in his benign presence – and leave feeling comforted, without a word exchanged. Quiet compassion and brotherhood, kindness and interconnectedness bind all species and souls in a positive, enabling manner that generates more compassion and love.
The sage’s compassion extended to plant species as well. When he saw a worker hacking an almond tree to remove dead leaves, he asked him, “Please can you be gentle? How would you feel if I yanked your hair and pulled some off its roots? Plants can feel, too.” Leopards are known to move away when they crossed Ramana Maharshi’s path during his circumambulation of the Arunachala hill. He would just ask them to leave, and they would do so. Fear was never part of this kind of inter-living, something unusual and inspiring.
Ramana Maharshi’s level of compassion and kindness may be very high benchmarks for us, but we could aspire to emulate at least some of it.
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