The Otter is a Cunning and Evil Beast - Review Part I

Nemo and his relatives now and in the past

Respectfully submitted to Otter News by Béatrice Dumiche

Fighting prejudices while revising the history of natural sciences according to the spirit of Wilhelm Fabry

From October 30, 2015 to March 6, 2016, the Wilhelm-Fabry-Museum in Hilden, a suburb of Dusseldorf, the capital of North-Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) presented a multidisciplinary program dedicated exclusively to the otter. The otter is an animal rare in this region and country, where it was threatened with extinction until it became a protected species in Europe in 1979 with the signing of the Bern Convention. This rather recent officially protected state needed and continues to need greater support. It was deemed necessary to create a bond between the public and the otter, which has had a negative reputation based on a series of prejudices previously attributed to it to justify its hunting. It had even been demonized by natural sciences which, in the 17^th century, had not yet emancipated from superstitions based on an anthropomorphic vision of the animals’ characteristics and which were particularly virulent against major local predators such as otters and wolves. 

Dr. Wolfgang Gettmann, former Director of the Aquazoo Dusseldorf and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Otter Specialist Group, and Dr. Wolfgang Antweiler, Director of the Wilhelm-Fabry-Museum, set themselves a considerable challenge when they decided to plan this exhibition. They were searching for an exceptional event to celebrate the museum, named after a worldwide famous physician and surgeon of the Renaissance born in Hilden in 1560 who died near Bern in Switzerland in 1634. He contributed to modern medicine as an experimental science by promoting the teaching of anatomy and dissection to gain a concrete knowledge of how the human body functions. While he was practicing in times of war, he invented processes and instruments to extract bullets or to make trepanations. To establish these new standards based on his experience, he fought superstitions with his publications, which consisted of exemplary descriptions of cases and the cures he proposed and helped to formulate individual health protocols including the study of the effects generated by plants and herbs. Although the museum regularly presents instruments and documents directly related to his work, their present interest is to expand to a more general perspective by dedicating temporary exhibitions to medical and scientific history with the aim to change mentalities by displaying how progress has been established in these specific disciplines.         

Focusing on the otter – which had never been the sole subject of an exhibition before – enabled Gettmann and Antweiler to link the educational mission of the museum with a subject that allowed demonstration of the auto-critical process natural sciences went through before they developed an experimental approach, providing concrete and safe information about living nature. Their exhibition was thus founded on a concept that did more than associate biology and anatomy to promote knowledge about otters. It also took into account that scientific rationalization alone is not able to efficiently fight prejudices as this information does not often reach the imagination and cannot sustain a positive connection. It aimed to show how long it takes to change mentalities as a solely scientific approach cannot seize the complex relationship between mankind and animals and cannot integrate the spiritual values that have become associated with them through religions and beliefs. This contradiction explains the difficulties even in the present day of defending apex-predators despite their incontestable key role in the ecological system. The understanding of that cannot compete with the anger and the feeling of personal injustice in the confrontation with a “food concurrent” the nuisance of which appears the more upsetting the more it remains invisible and seems to underline its “cunningness” 

Rational natural education has been unable to fight prejudices against otters

The present discourse about the otter, which still remains ambivalent, is a significant example of the contradiction between scientific evidence and ancestral beliefs which still subconsciously influence the contemporary image of wild animals in relation to humans. The otter’s reputation, tainted through several centuries of negative beliefs, cannot be turned magically into one of love and understanding within a few decades. It can only be surmounted by the kind of popularization that goes beyond facts to create the conditions required for the acceptance of a predator considered a nuisance to humans. The same kind that previously led to the destruction of its habitat, confining it to very restricted areas where it has lived almost hidden. It even switched from the diurnal to the nocturnal way of life to better avoid confrontation, leaving, however, some signs of its nightly raids on fishing ponds or koi carps in private gardens which ironically seemed to confirm his “evil” nature in the popular opinion.

Therefore, scientists, advocating the return of the otter, have been in the uncomfortable situation of pleading the cause of an elusive creature only identified by its persistent misbehavior, which appeared a durable obstacle to its cohabitation with human civilization. They might emphasize its utility for the ecosystem as a key species helping to maintain water quality and eliminating detriments while preserving the health of their environment. However, this rational discourse would not be convincing enough when compared with continued discussions of the physical damage they have caused. The defense of predators such as otters must be innovated if it is to reach an audience larger than those already scientifically interested. It must take into account the progress of science but also deconstruct the prejudices that have built over time, showing that our knowledge about life is not only scientific but also philosophical. Scientific discoveries are very important but to have an influence on human behavior, they must be related to the whole span of arts and humanities and be relayed by an integrative pedagogy targeting children first.

Generally, I do not refer to personal experiences in a review but I believe we are at a crossing where ancient prejudices support discrimination against predators while the perceived cuteness and innocence of animals, whatever they are, is emphasized to oppose human cruelty against them. This leads sometimes to a form of naïve vegetarianism or veganism. When I was visiting a French zoo with a large enclosure for otters and a beautiful pond, two adolescent cubs, while playing together after having cuddled with their mother, spotted a young duck landing on the water. In a second, both reached it and strangled its thin neck with their strong paws, eventually tearing off its wings from each side. Nearby was a couple with two young boys who seemed deeply shocked by how these fur babies they had found so adorable a few minutes before suddenly behaved. They vented immediately to their embarrassed parents, ‘Why did they do this? This is mean! These otters are murders and must be sent to jail!’ while the otters munched their prey noisily. The scene revealed our own contradictions as carnivores. ‘They must eat, they were hungry and that’s how they live’, answered the mother while the boys insisted that it was barbaric until their father, becoming slightly irritated, concluded with some authority, ‘And you, what do you think you eat? You eat meat and this comes from animals that were killed!’ The whole family looked down silently while the otter cubs were licking their paws. The children took a last glance, visibly troubled and the parents left the enclosure without a word, probably feeling guilty for having ruined their children's’ illusions and having made them aware of being ‘murderers’ too. The zoo-keeper, who had been alerted of the interaction, sighed with a resigned smile and complained about the lack of realism of the mostly urban visitor population who have become more and more difficult to educate to better understand wildlife despite all of the efforts which have been made to bring greater awareness to larger ecological interdependencies.

To underline his statement, I add a remark I heard at a German zoo from a young couple in their twenties who passed by the otters’ enclosure immediately after feeding time. The animals had just been fed rainbow- trout and were eating loudly, cracking the bones, ‘Look at these poor things! The rubbish they feed them in zoos! This is awful: they didn’t even debunk the bones! And how badly they eat! They’re ugly! Let’s go!’ This couple must have imagined fish sticks or fillets and eating with knives and forks to be the civilized behavior well-educated otters must be trained for under human care! This last personal anecdote sheds light on how much of the contemporary criticism against zoos is founded on the public’s ignorance of nature due to a lack of direct experience and of its cruelty we try to avoid identifying within ourselves. 

Science must reunite rationality with emotions for a global experience of life

These examples are personal. However they hint at a wider tendency within our technologized countries of denial of the reality of nature which leads us to believe our cohabitation with animals is an utopic civilisation of kindness and carefulness, where the Good (whatever we imagine it is) has definitively won, while we actually negate the objective ecological impact of our pretended highly evolved way of life, the dark barbaric side of which we consider quasi-innate to populations we can easily blame for being primitive and uneducated. The integrated concept, which Gettmann and Antweiler opted for in their exhibit was an effort to interrupt this vicious circle where rationalism and irrationalism condition each other cementing reciprocal incomprehension through the perpetual renewal of clichés and false pretexts. The goal was to pacify the present western humanity with their natural origins through an enlightened education, which aimed to direct away from an excessive emotionality by creating a self-critical scientific discourse reintroducing the idea of acceptance of our own aggressive nature so far as it is indispensable for the perpetuation of our species. Thus, it related feelings to historical and social conditions and stressed the way in which the image of otters has been determined for centuries by irrationality, first as an incarnation of the Evil and of ugliness and more recently as a symbol for ultimate cuteness. Neither of these assigned symbols are accurate as they are an expression of pure anthropomorphism for which there is no justification in the eco-system, where each species has a role and predators a determining one. 

The idea was not to entirely give up on empathy and compassion as a way of understanding how nature works. This becomes clear when Gettmann’s animal companion and International Otter Survival Fund   (IOSF), ambassador organization for the 13 otter species, Nemo, enters the scene. A face-to-face encounter with him allows one to better view the world from his perspective through seeing the playful relationship he has with his surroundings. Nemo’s clever opportunistic hunting behavior evokes an evolutional ability we share with otters and which we subconsciously use every day. Contact with him allows us to reconnect with that and enjoy it while discovering that the carefreeness we love in him encourages acknowledgment of our own spontaneous creative energies used to survive through subconscious reinvention.

Meeting Nemo is much more than an encounter with an animal ambassador. It was the crowning of the exhibition in its goal to mediate between otters and men as it allowed visitors to face the reality that understanding wildlife is not simply a question of facts or emotions as separate entities, but both. It challenged us to consider our own ability to evolve according to the opportunities and events of life and enabled us to question the self-perception and survival instincts active in our daily lives. Nemo’s natural instinct of independence reminds those who might humanize his cuteness too much, of what unites us with him: our strive for survival and self-affirmation, situated at the crossing between instinct and conscience. Feeling affection for him affects us as we recognize in his playfulness our childhoods and the endless potential of our own nature, while realizing that our stake consists in integrating it into a significant process through interactive socialization. Thus, he teaches us that respecting the animals’ antics means also respecting ourselves, which signifies the opposite of any kind of idealization. On the contrary, it highlights that our relationship and the way we see these animals is always likely to evolve and should not be judged according to moral standards which are transitory and subjective – matching the spirit of an epoch – and that the contradictions they reveal are above all challenges to our ability to survive.