Back from African soil, I fully savor the sweetness of my autumnal hills. When the sun hides beyond the summits in the West and the freshness reaches the undergrowth, I dive into my photo cards and watch with great happiness the moments of “wild” life captured by my Nikon.
I note that this time, my preference fell on portraits, animals and even birds. I wanted to capture an expression, a look, an exchange between them and me, a message perhaps. This time more than usual.
We often attribute to animals human attitudes, this anthropomorphism that is particularly fond of the creators of comics or animated films. The intentions are good, and tend, with this game of mimicry, for humans to better understand the animal world. And protect him.
Personally and more and more, after several (not yet enough …) observation stays in the heart of the Massai Mara and elsewhere, I do not see the human in the animal. But rather the animal in the human.
In the depths of the human being, the meaning of life is engraved, just as it is inscribed in the flesh of the lion lords, elephant mothers, herds of buffaloes and bison in North America. The frailest impala carries birth and death within him. Like the ruthless hyena or the ephemeral morpho in South America.
To better understand humans, real humans, we must observe the still free animal world. Soak up the first bird song before dawn, accept the bloody predation of a leopard on a baby dik-dik, do not be shocked by the cruel settling of scores between lions and hyenas, get lost in the gaze of ‘a baboon mother protecting her newborn, the grace of a hopping antelope. We just copied them.
A mother, against the whole world, will defend her children, whether cheetah, gazelle, zebra, lioness or human.
An ambitious person will try to impose his choices and his authority on all his subordinates, whether he is a lion or a human being.
A shy person will have, more than any other, to be attentive to his environment because some will play dirty tricks on him, in hippos, hyenas, wildebeest, humans. A colony will organize itself to prosper, survive disasters and ensure its reproduction, each will find its role and exercise its own functions, whether it is among ants, wolves, bees, lionesses, humans.
Elephants are, according to our current knowledge, those who push the exercise of consciousness the furthest. Watching a herd of elephants, male, female, young, old, meditating on the remains of one of them, I assure you to reflect on what we represent, we humans, in the great infinite circle of life on this beautiful planet Earth. not
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