5 Reasons Animals are Better Than People
By: Joe Duncan
Tags: Environmentalism, Humor, Culture, Animals, Animal Welfare

5 Reasons Animals are Better Than People

In Case You Needed a Reminder…

There are some things in this life that are so pure, so wonderful, so predictable, they just warm your heart. Whether it’s the rising and falling of the sun every day, the clockwork nature of the Universe, or of course animals, there’s plenty out there to love about life. People, on the other hand, aren’t always so wonderful and predictable.

If you want to know what I mean, stop and talk to one of those pesky humans for about five minutes, especially on social media, and especially when mentioning anything that’s been in the news recently *cough cough* politics.

People are real pieces of work, they’re tragedies unfolding at warped speed, works in progress inching along at a snail’s pace. They’re so often chaotic, selfish, short-sighted, and downright goofy that all you can do sometimes is look at them silently, jaw hanging off your face as you nod in disbelief.

It’s no wonder that so many of us usually prefer the company of animals. Animals don’t drive like complete idiots on the road, forgetting turn signals and divebombing into your lane like a kamikaze pilot doing a three-sixty tailspin into a battleship.

They don’t tell you to meet them somewhere and not show up or text. They don’t get drunk and decide that they want to fight your friends — or you — for no reason. No, animals always have reasons. There are so many little things that animals don’t do that are abundant in human behavior.

According to Grant Bailey of The Independent:

Questioned on the strength of their relationship with their pet, 53 per cent of the 2,000 people polled said they preferred spending time with their pet than with a human companion and 17 per cent favoured quality time with their pet over their partner.

That’s a pretty substantial number. Nothing to shake a stick at, unless you’re going to throw it say, “Fetch!” afterward.

In case you didn’t yet have ample reason to worry that I might be slowly turning into a cat lady, here are five damn solid reasons that animals are better than people…

1. Animals Appreciate Everything You Do for Them

I was walking through the park recently with turtle and bird food, two animals that populate the local park here in large numbers. As I scattered the food amongst them, I watched them devour it without hesitation or complaint. In that moment, it was all they needed to be happy.

Now imagine you’re walking through a park and see a couple sitting down on a blanket relaxing in the sunshine. How appreciative do you think they’d be if I tossed some fries on the ground in front of them? Right, they’d probably recoil from you in horror.

All jokes aside, so many people are so unappreciative. While your dog or cat might ask for more and more food with a cute-but-pouty stare that they know works like magic, humans will actively get mad at you after you do something nice for them, after you go out of your way to help them out. Sometimes, people will even hold resentments over the fact that you did one thing for them but didn’t do another.

Nothing is ever good enough for some people. You loan them $20 this week and next week it’s an expectation. Some of the really bad ones will throw away years' worth of friendship if you don’t loan them another $20 the following week, but animals? Animals will give you the cutest pouts you’ve ever seen, and they’ll be grateful for whatever you give them.

2. Animals are Amazing with Emotional Support

They never fail. They never let you down. They never passive-aggressively sulk in the corner because they’re angry with you for just being yourself. They never hold ridiculous standards over your head.

This isn’t a diss on all the therapists out there. I know you’re working hard to help people out; the medical community is amazing at what they do more often than not, but not all humans are that amazing. Animals, on the other hand…

There are emotional support cats, emotional support dogs, legally established emotional support birds, and even emotional support alligators. According to Grant Bailey at The Independent:

Three in five said their pet helped them de-stress after a tough day, 57 per cent felt less lonely when their pet is beside them and seven in 10 found their pet was a calming presence in their home.

3. Animals Will Save Your Life

All this wonderful stuff and animals also notice things we as humans don’t notice…. countless times animals have saved entire families by alerting them that something was wrong, be it be an intruder, a diabetic coma, a housefire, a gas leak, or even cancer.

Stories like these are countless. Sure, there are firefighters out there who save lives, medical professionals, as well, but animals, on a whole, do an excellent job helping people’s lives because animals love unconditionally.

4. Animals Didn’t Vote for Donald Trump

Do I really have to say anything more?

Trump is rolling back regulations that protect the habitats that animals so desperately need to survive. His first day in office, he announced his plan to cut the EPA by 37%. Then he tried again to cut the EPA by 31% in 2019. Then again this year in 2020, this time by 26%.

Yeah, the guy is literally trying to be evil as fuck. He clearly hates animals. He doesn’t even own a dog or a cat. He cares about nothing but himself and not a single animal voted for him. They deserve better.

5. Animals Aren’t Destroying the Planet at an Alarming Pace

Do you know what the tragic twist in all of this is? For all of the love our animals show us, for all of the patience they’ve given us, for all of the times they peacefully encountered us in the wild and went their own ways, for all of the hunting for sport, and mass-scale animal slaughter for food that we squander nonsense we’ve put them through, animals aren’t the ones destroying their habitats at an alarming pace. No, that’s humans. While animals are out saving lives, humans are taking them.

All of that’s happening by humans just being irresponsible humans, consuming, mindlessly buying and throwing away, wasting food and other goods. We’re destroying the oceans, we’re destroying the climate, we’re destroying the rivers, the lakes, the rainforests, and entire ecosystems with our recklessness. And something’s got to change.

Because you know what? Animals don’t deserve us, and we don’t deserve animals. At least not until we clean up our act, clean up our environment, clean up our actions and our attitudes, creating a better, sustainable, habitable world for all. It’s really hard to outdo a fluffy, cute, life-saving rabbit, but I think it’s worth a shot to try.