Orcas sank another yacht near the Iberian Peninsula in November.
Members of a pod had been ramming and shaking boats in the area for more than three years, and had now sunk four. Many observers believed the orcas were attacking their boats, perhaps taking revenge on fishermen. But both boaters and scientists wondered if the orcas were playing, and the marine biologists who study this group think it may be a fad. "The consensus is that they're doing this to show off," the director of science at an ocean-conservation group said. (As fads do, this one may have spread; a yacht had been rammed near Scotland in June.) This is no consolation to sailors, some of whom have tried to take their own revenge on the orcas, shooting at them, lighting firecrackers, and playing heavymetal music underwater to drive them away.
We project a great deal onto animals. They are elevated into ideals of love and fidelity (dogs, horses), and often they are reduced to objects and tools (cattle, pigs, horses again). Much of humanity's history with animals has been made possible only by refusing to grant them inner lives anything like our own. We can be amused by a parrot's speech and intrigued by macaques that use human hair as dental floss, but many animals live in ways we can hardly imagine.
Whales and frogs and frigate birds exist in realms we cannot enter, walled off by complex sensory differences and disparate desires. We deny them the individual worth so precisely known as "personhood." This denial doesn't just constrict our imagination; it has also constricted research in ethology, or animal behavior.
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Denne historien er fra April 2024-utgaven av The Atlantic.
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You Are Going to Die - Oliver Burkeman has become an unlikely self-help guru by reminding everyone of their mortality.
"The average human lifespan," Oliver Burkeman begins his 2021 megabest seller, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, "is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short." In that relatively brief period, he does not want you to maximize your output at work or optimize your leisure activities for supreme enjoyment. He does not want you to wake up at 5 a.m. or block out your schedule in a strictly labeled timeline.
Washington's Nightmare - Donald Trump is the tyrant the first president feared.
Last November, during a symposium at Mount Vernon on democracy, John Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general who served as Donald Trump's second chief of staff, spoke about George Washington's historic accomplishments— his leadership and victory in the Revolutionary War, his vision of what an American president should be. And then Kelly offered a simple, three-word summary of Washington's most important contribution to the nation he liberated.
The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books - To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.
Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University's required greatbooks course, since 1988. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading, College kids have never read everything they're assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames's students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem.
What Zoya Sees
Long a fearless critic of Israeli society, since October 7 Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi has made wrenching portraits of her nation's sufferingand become a target of protest.
Malcolm Gladwell, Meet Mark Zuckerberg
The writer’ insistence on ignoring the web is an even bigger blind spot today than it was when The Tipping Point came out.
Alan Hollinghurst's Lost England
In his new novel, the present isnt much better than the past—and its a lot less sexy.
Scent of a Man
In a new memoir, Al Pacino promises to reveal the person behind the actor. But is he holding something back?
CATCHING THE CARJACKERS
ON THE ROAD WITH AN ELITE POLICE UNIT AS IT COMBATS A CRIME WAVE
THE RIGHT-WING PLAN TO MAKE EVERYONE AN INFORMANT
In Texas and elsewhere, new laws and policies have encouraged neighbors to report neighbors to the government.
The Playwright in the Age of AI
In his new play, McNeal, Ayad Akhtar confronts, and subverts, the idea that artificial intelligence threatens human ingenuity.