Chapter 4. Feral. The Outlaw Animal

Feral

1. gone wild: describes animals or plants that live or grow in the wild after having been domestically reared or cultivated.

2. savage: similar to or typical of a wild animal, or living wild.

[Early 17th century. < Latin fera ‘wild animal’] of, relating to, or suggestive of a wild beast <feral teeth> <feral instincts>

The term ‘feral’ originally defined as domestic animals (and plants) thriving in the wild, has a broader application in the Australian vernacular and had been extended, on occasion, to Homo sapiens. The Australian list of introduced animals is lengthy and a sample of animals in feral categories includes donkeys, camels, water buffalo, horses, foxes, domestic cats, domestic dogs, the native dog (or dingo) and its ‘wild dog’ variants as well as the perennial rabbit and hare. Within the Australian cultural setting, a creature described as ‘feral’ also implies a widely accepted status of an ‘outlaw’ animal. This is an animal that occupies a position largely outside the protection of civil law and social norms where an animal targeted for eradication may be treated with extreme behaviours. As Don Watson writes in The Bush, ‘Once an animal makes vermin of itself, it is beyond pity.’1 The term ‘vermin’, ‘invasive animal’ or ‘pest’ is often used. The scientific community represented by the Commonwealth’s Bureau of Rural Sciences’ Australian Pest Animal Management Programme officially describes feral vertebrates as ‘invasive animals’ and provides documents and discussion papers on this topic through its website Feral.org.au.2

The Journal of Animal Ethics, a relatively new publication in this field, criticises terms such as vermin and pests. ‘[O]ur existing language about animals is the language of past thought, and crucially, that past is littered with derogatory terminology: “brutes”, “beasts”, “bestial”, “critters”, . . . and the like.’ In opposition to the feral animal industry, The Journal of Animal Ethics argues for ‘more impartial nouns and adjectives in our exploration of animals and our moral relations with them’.3

Emotive language has been a feature of Australia’s invasive animal discussion from the late 19th century and the threat to rural livelihoods through the competition for livestock and human food plays a dominant role in the identification of Australian feral animals as vermin. Expansive public safety issues have also been evoked for camels, cane toads and fruit bats. Trespass can also be a notional civic issue when the animals infringe on defined public or private spaces.

David G. Stead. Illustration in The Rabbit in Australia (detail). Sydney, 1935, p.19.

An overt failure in animal management strategies or the collapse of feral animal control can precipitate a fearful response such as the revulsion and fear provoked by any unexpected or uncontrolled invasion of animals. This is best seen in invasive mouse plagues or the appearance of unprecedented numbers of cane toads in suburban gardens. This seems associated with the psychosomatic panic response with all of its physical and psychological manifestations.

Animal threats are not necessarily dependent on the size of an individual animal but can be related to the total number of creatures. A pack of dogs, a swarm of insects such as locusts or bees, a flock of birds or a ‘plague’ of mice or rabbits can easily provoke a panic state in an individual or community. The seemingly autonomous behaviour of animals coalescing into a disciplined collective can be un-nerving for the spectator. Animal swarming behaviour also suggests a threatening intelligence that continues to baffle scientists and bewilder the public.4

A flock of Auklets displaying swarming behavior. Shumagins, Aleutian Islands, 1986. Photograph by D. Dibenski. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Wikimedia Commons.

Justin E.H. Smith has recently surveyed the puzzling issue of holding animal intellect ‘responsible’ for collective or individual behaviours in an examination of the history of the trial and punishment of animals in Europe. ‘Jurisprudence,’ Smith writes in his introduction, ‘is based on the conviction that in order to be an appropriate target of blame and punishment, a being must be a rational, moral agent. This means . . . that in order for the trial and prosecution of animals to make sense within a given culture, that culture must be operating either with a very different conception of where the boundaries of such agency lie . . .’5

The idea of holding animals responsible for their actions was explored a century earlier by E.P. Evans’ 1906 survey, Animal Trials, investigating the 14th century trial of a pig charged with murder. This followed the animal’s attack on a child in Normandy and the attack is described.6 The pig was tried, found guilty, publicly tortured, then hanged in the Falaise village square before 500 spectators. Evans finds the owners of offending animals typically did not face a similar trial.

Alternatively, Thomas Aquinas, musing on the basis of intellect, assigns no reasoning power for animals. ‘For all other animals, nature has prepared food, hair as a covering, teeth, horns, claws as means of defense or at least speed in flight, while man alone was made without any natural provisions for these things. Instead of all these, man was endowed with reason, by the use of which he could procure all these things for himself by the work of his hands.’7 Alternatively, others suggest that attributing reasoning to animals is predicated on intimate human interaction with them.

The moral issues of outlaw status for animals was assessed in the 19th century by the British philosopher Henry Salt (1851–1939) in his landmark Animals Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress. ‘Nothing can be more shocking than the treatment commonly accorded to rabbits, rats and other small animals, on the plea that they are “vermin”,’ Salt writes, ‘and therefore, it is tacitly assumed, outside the pale of humanity and justice . . .’8 The label ‘vermin’ is typically assigned to animals that appear in ‘shocking’ proportions. Extreme threats to livelihood, social equilibrium or food sources often produce extreme responses.

I am aware that many of my contentions will appear very ridiculous to those who view the subject from a contrary standpoint, and regard the lower animals as created solely for the pleasure and advantage of man . . .

Henry S. Salt. Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress. Macmillan & Co, 1894 (1st edition 1892).

Salt anticipates this response writing, ‘We are justified by the strongest of all instincts, that of self-defense, in safe-guarding ourselves against such a multiplication of any species of animal as might imperil the established supremacy of man.’ ‘But,’ he adds, ‘we are not justified in unnecessarily killing, still less in torturing, any harmless beings whatsoever.’9 ‘We may kill, if necessary, but never torture or degrade.’10

A domestic animal, anthropologist Barbara Noske reminds us, is a creature living under a regime of behaviour enforced by humans. Domestication commonly requires the removal of animals from their natural habitats and communities establishes alterations in their seasonal subsistence cycle and encumbers humans in their maintenance for breeding for profit. Noske argues for the processes of domestication as a series of ‘forced changes’ that ‘allows a continuum of human/animal relations’. After breeding for special desirable traits, ‘interbreeding with wild relatives’ and the ‘wild counterparts can be seen as a threat to valuable domesticated livestock’.11 Feral animals may compete with domestic herds for food sources or threaten breeding programmes and husbandry decrees they must be controlled or destroyed.

‘[T]he reality for many of the animals that humans have direct contact with,’ Dinesh Wadiwel writes, ‘is that they are owned as property and are used as commodities.’12 This market value is considered by some thinkers to support humane issues of animal welfare. And in practice, when Australian feral animals are perceived to have little or no property value, there is diminished support for their humane treatment.

The destruction of Australian invasive animals follows three paths. There is the ‘thrill kill’ aspect of animals that much of the population would find objectionable. These ‘repugnant’ animals can evoke the suspension of moral judgement and includes such common species as mice and rats, toads and more recently the Indian myna bird. There are highly organised Indian Myna Action Groups battling to destroy this introduced bird. Then there is the sporting hunter who matches skill against animal logic in pursuit of feral goats, pigs, wild dogs and other vertebrates. An informal code for the equitable treatment of animals often prevails amongst the casual hunter. Finally, there is the feral animal shooter, trapper and poisoner whose livelihood depends on the efficient destruction of wild dogs, dingoes and in the past, the rabbit. Suffering, for the animal control professional, is no more than a delay in an allocated task.

A plague of cane toads, the Godzilla of the amphibian world, is overrunning Australia. Breeding faster than rabbits, impervious to predators, the cane toads are gradually making their way south . . .

www.travel.cnn.com/sydney/visit/cane-toad-invasion-reaches-south-and-north-communities-fight-back-027094. 22 June 2015.

Despite being awarded ‘outlaw’ or feral status, invasive rats, mice and cane toads attract no attention from sporting hunters. These outlaw animals, however, draw considerable interest from an avid population of amateurs who attack and kill these animals at every quarter. As outlaws, these animals occupy a landscape of moral nihilism where inflicting suffering and death knows no boundaries.

The Cane Toad as Outlaw

The Australian outlaw status of an animal is often a function of their appearance in plague numbers. The cane toad (Rhinella marina; formerly Bufo matinus) frequently described as Australia’s ‘most hated invasive animal’ attracts virulent loathing from many of its pursuers as dozens of YouTube videos, the documentary Cane Toads. An Unnatural History (1988) and its sequel, Cane Toads, the Conquest (2011) illustrate.13

Cane Toad (Rhinella marina; formerly Bufo matinus). Australia’s “most hated invasive animal”. Photograph by Brian Gratwicke, 2012. Wikimedia Commons.

The cane toad population is extremely high in colonised areas and they are active at night, presenting a startling presence underfoot. Frequently updated YouTube videos illustrate a near universal loathing of the amphibian as toads are blasted by shotguns (notably with so-called ‘toad load’ shells), doused with chemicals such as lime and the antiseptic Dettol®, smothered with noxious gas, struck with golf clubs, frozen, shot with air rifles and small calibre firearms, run over by motor vehicles and numerous other inventive and not so inventive methods.

The enthusiasm for ‘toad busting’ and cane toad ‘musters’ has so alarmed the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service that they have produced an illustrated brochure cautioning people not to extend their hatred to indigenous toads and frogs. ‘Some native frogs that may be mistaken for cane toads are shown with their adult size and geographic range in NSW,’ they caution. ‘Compare these native frogs with the cane toad. Do not kill the animal unless you are sure it is a cane toad.’14