There's nothing permanent about a form of life. Anybody who’s got any brains at all, who knows anything about biology, who has ever looked at the history of life, knows that every species is replaced. Maclean’s: Do you think man will be replaced by another species? Mowat: I don’t think it, I know it. Our aggression has got us so far ahead of the other forms of life that we’re now in a position to destroy them all, including ourselves. But I suspect that pure aggression, no matter how it is formalized-and man has formalized it now in a thousand ways-may be a dead end. He is the most aggressive form of life the world has ever known. Mowat: Man has been one of the best-endowed of all forms of life up to now, but man’s whole essence is based on violent, vicious competition. Maclean’s: I can’t understand why you are so optimistic about dolphins and other animals and so pessimistic about man as a species. There’s no need for them to he aggressive, no need for them to be power conscious, or power hungry. You see, they don’t need to control anything. It’s quite conceivable that this has never entered their minds. Why don’t they control the earth? Mowat: The idea of controlling things is a strictly human concept. I suspect very strongly that they use their brain in terms of intellectual attainments that are advanced so far beyond ours, that we could no more understand them than a rat can understand Marshall McLuhan. We can’t talk to them yet, but we have lots of experimental evidence to indicate that they have a marvelously complex and adequate means of communication. Well, how do they use their brain? The only answer I can find is that they use it for purely intellectual pursuits. The only conclusion one can draw from this is that they use their brain. And these things aren’t vestigial organs. In terms of wave ratios and so on, their brains are fantastically developed. These animals have a higher brain capacity than we have. And yet something very strange has happened here. His brain should shrink and become a pea. Theoretically, without the necessity of earning a living, the necessity of defending himself, the necessity of constructing things, he ought to turn into just-blubber. You sec, the dolphin is one of the few animals, maybe the only animal that’s ever existed, that doesn’t have to live with fear as a constant companion. Because if 1 could not believe that, it would be absolutely hopeless. It’s an article of faith.ġ feel there has to be some form of sentient life which is more able, more capable, more intelligent than we are. Mowat: It’s not something I know, it’s something I hope - something that I believe. Farley, that you thought dolphins were more intelligent than human beings. But somehow - as befits a naturalist - he always returned to the subject of animals, and what we can learn from them: In between, he talked about Canada, literature, women, mankind, politics, sailing, money and Farley Mowat. And Mowat had to keep excusing himself to go down to the harbor and pump out his constantly leaking boat. There were frequent interruptions: the secretary of the plumbers’ union dropped in for a chat and a few tots of rum, and so did the United Church minister and his new baby. This Maclean’s Interview was conducted over a snowbound weekend in January by Managing Editor Alexander Ross. With its booklined bathroom, its antique organ, its marble fireplace and its multiple guest rooms, it’s the kind of house that manages to be spacious and cozy at the same time guests have been known to linger for six weeks. Today Mowat and his second wife Clare, who have spent the past five years in Burgeo, Newfoundland, live in a 90-year-old house just off the main street in Port Hope, Ontario. There have been more than a dozen books since then, and all of them have enlarged Mowat’s reputation and his income this year, his broadcasting, royalties and advances will probably earn him around $45,000. The book was a major achievement, and it instantly established its author, Farley Mowat, as an important Canadian writer, a controversialist, a naturalist, an ethnologist, a public scold and an interesting man. It was an alarming exposé of the hardships that white civilization had inflicted on Canada’s Eskimos. In 1952, a 31-year-old amateur biologist from Saskatoon published a book called People of the Deer and shocked the country.
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