We share the world with animals. They were the first subject of art. As John Berger has written they were the first “other”, worshipped, bred and sacrificed but in the modern world animals have become marginalized. Still, every so often we understand that we have made the planet inhabitable to life, and that while they are different they are also similar-they breathe, bleed and die like us. Berger called this the first existential “Duality”. They are subject to the same stresses of Climate Change and Viruses and chemical pollution. In recent years, pigs have floated down rivers, bats have fallen from the skies, bees have died mass deaths and dogs and wild boars with high concentrations of radiation have appeared. Once a Wise teacher asked me “What animal have we helped?”He didn’t expect an answer , I have none, except, perhaps like the ancestors, to honour their “presence”.

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