Free Being a Beast by Charles Foster Page A

the badgers weren’t very interested in the generator. They habituate very quickly to sounds, especially distant ones, that they know aren’t threatening. The thump inevitably caused the eardrum to vibrate: that’s immutable physics. But the brain ignored it; that’s excitingly mutable biology. The brain chose not to use that block in building its world. The plaintive wood warblers had a place but not, normally, at the level of ‘conscious’ hearing. Theirs was the mew of a normal wood. A change in their tone might indicate something relevant, and hence it was change, rather than the wood warbler per se, to which the badger paid attention. I, not knowing the significance of the changed tone and lacking context generally, paid attention to more than the badger did. In this sense my wood was bigger and more complex than the badger’s. A badger focuses fairly hard on its career of survival, and focus is rarely a friend of aesthetics. A badger’s aesthetics, I would guess, are mainly relational and fairly crudely sensual. They like rolling around with the kids and scratching their bellies in the sun.
    That’s not to say that they can’t branch out. If I can expand my suite of sensory accomplishments and appreciations, why shouldn’t a badger? Music is the obvious thought. Pan piped more than he spoke. If Bach encodes (and surely he does) some of the most basic formulae of this dazzling world, wouldn’t you expect him to do exciting things in a Welsh wood? If he makes my DNA quiver, shouldn’t he set the DNA of a badger – so, so similar to mine – a-trembling?
    I’ve tried this, half-heartedly and inconclusively. My speakers have always been rained on or the batteries too flat for a proper broadcast. But most classical-music-loving dog owners are on my side. That cliché Jack Russell listening to His Master’s Voice would learn to love the B-minor Mass just as much as the voice, even if the mass didn’t come with a pat and a handful of dog biscuits. In the film The Weeping Camel , the mother camel, which had refused to allow its calf to suckle, is entranced by an old Mongolian song and becomes immediately happy and compliant. The calf suckles and lives. The mother permits suckling and so lives as a mother. The music represents the way that things should be, and the world, including the camel, hums along. The music acts like a defibrillator, gently shocking the world back into rhythm. Great music, great literature and great anything are great because they are built of the most basic elements; because they are fundamental. They can therefore speak to kings, commoners, badgers and wood warblers. Hence this next and most extravagant act of faith: play the B-minor Mass to a badger, and the badger would hear the B-minor Mass.
    Badgers don’t just have broader bandwidth than us; their sensitivity to sounds within the audible bandwidth is also greater. They’re more acute. It’s thought that they may be able to hear, as many birds do, the rasp of the earthworms’ bristles as they scratch through the earth.
    Just think what the obscene tsunami of a nearby motor vehicle does to an animal that can do that. It’s easy to get a faint idea. Sit outdoors one night in an isolated place. Leave the iPod at home for once. Then walk quietly to a road. The first car will seem like a regiment of tanks. You’ll feel violated and feel that the land is violated. You’ll note in yourself, perhaps with surprise, that since both you and the land are violated, there must be a previously unrecognised solidarity between you and the land. Or even, since nights outside tend to make you romantic, perhaps you’ll think that you and the land share an identity . You’ll hate and resent the driver. But most of all you’ll pity him, cocooned in his air conditioning, listening to canned banality on the radio. You’ll know, and have, what he’s lost.