Since 1970, Earth Day has taken place on the 22nd day of April. In thinking about the upcoming celebration of Earth Day, I am reminded that planet Earth is home not just to humans but to countless other animals as well. The relationship between humans and other animals is a topic of great concern to my friend and colleague Alan Rauch, who is a professor in the English Department at UNC Charlotte. In addition to publishing scholarship on Victorian literature and culture, Alan has written extensively in the field of animal studies, including his recently published Sloth. This book received a glowing review in Publishers Weekly. The reviewer writes, “in this amusing and informative entry in Reaktion’s Animal series, Rauch explores the behavior, anatomy, and evolution of sloths . . . Animal lovers will be entranced.” I reached out to Alan and asked him to comment on his interest in animal studies, his new book about sloths, and his thoughts on the importance of Earth Day. Here is what he sent to me:
We are all engaged with animals—to say nothing about the “environment” in general–in everything we do. On Earth Day, as on every day, if we don’t pay serious attention to what we are wearing, or eating, or fishing and hunting, or even exterminating we are simply not acting responsibly. Sometimes it’s easier to bring these issues to mind, but we often avoid addressing our own interconnections with the natural world.
I can’t trace back my initial fascination with animals to a specific period in my life; I don’t recall time when I didn’t want to know more about dogs, cats, horses, dinosaurs, marine mammals, and even sloths. The question of how animals influence any of us is, to say the least, complicated. I can say, with certitude, that growing up in Canada, where animals were always foregrounded, was critical to me. Animals were always, quite literally, in hand. A caribou has distinguished the Canadian quarter since time immemorial (except when, in 1967, a beautiful engraving of a Canada Lynx was featured). The beaver (Canada’s national animal) is almost synonymous with the nickel. And now, as virtually everyone knows, the dollar coin or “Loonie” honors the elegant and sonorous loon. Even the paper currency had a series that featured the birds of Canada. Everyone in Canada, a nation that honored its wildlife, touched a representation of an animal on a daily basis and that necessarily had a lasting impact on its citizenry.
To be sure, I was perhaps more smitten than most. Beyond dinosaurs and horses, I was fascinated by whales and dolphins and as one of the youngest members of the Montréal Zoological Society, I joined excursions to Tadoussac, a town halfway up St. Lawrence River, to see a gathering of whales at the mouth of Saguenay River where there were belugas by the score, as well as Minke, Sei, and even Blue whales. Those trips and others (e.g. to see thousands of snow geese preparing for migration) were exhilarating and life changing. But I was no less in awe of muskrats, porcupines, chipmunks, and even squirrels all of which remain enthralling to this day.
Of course, aside from giant ground sloths (which disappeared 13,000 years ago), Canada was a “sloth-free” nation. But fortunately for me there was a fossil of a giant ground sloth in the Redpath Museum, where I attended classes as a biology student at McGill University. That creature, a Megatherium, was a conundrum! How was it, I wondered, that a 19-foot-tall creature that roamed the Americas could be related to a group of very small and sluggish animals limited to Central and northern South America? Paleontologists have still not answered that question satisfactorily. But it is worth noting, as I did for years, that virtually every natural history museum features, often near the entrance, a replica of a giant sloth. Why? Oddly enough I tried to answer that question not as a zoologist, but as a scholar of Victorian Studies and published my theory on that topic in an essay called “The Sins of Sloth.”
But once captivated by sloths they won’t let go and I became determined to write about all sloths not merely as historical artifacts or the loveable subjects of children’s books, but as critical members of our environmental and cultural lives. I volunteered at a sloth rescue center in Costa Rica and worked with the Sloth Institute; I solicited dozens of images, and delved into years (perhaps slothfully) of research. The resultant book, Sloth (Reaktion Books, 2023) is, I hope, one of the most comprehensive works about an animal that is not only compelling but, like all other animals, essential to our lives.
The sloth’s status as a meme for “cuteness” or for casual indifference seems to the dominant theme of most representations of the sloth in Western culture. T-shirts abound with slogans like “Live slow” or “I’m not Lazy, I’m just energy efficient” abound, although the latter point about energy efficiency is well-taken. But T-shirts aside, we need a more nuanced understanding of the sloth as a well-adapted organism in a very complex environment. What makes that environment particularly complex and troubling, is the extent to which it is threatened by deforestation, pollution, and even eco-tourism. One can only hope that the many “attractions” of the sloth and its wonderful appeal in social media will eventually result in a more nuanced understanding of them as organisms rather than disembodied memes or living “toys” for human amusement. That point is as much a reason for Earth Day as any, and whether our awareness or responsibility begins with sloths, or dolphins, or even Canada’s haunting loon, we should all be motivated to environmental action.
As we celebrate Earth Day here in Storied Charlotte, I think that we should join Alan in remembering that we share our planet with many other living beings and act accordingly.