Fortunately, this second of the outdoor recordings lacks the worst of the snaps, crackles and pops that showed up in the first one. Perhaps the wildlife figured out what I was doing and decided to cut this poor human some slack. 🙂
Relative to animals, we humans typically have taken the “If it looks like a duck” approach to animal identification. As we’ve become ever more remote from nature, for more of us it’s become a case of if looks like how we think a duck should look, that’s reason enough to call it a duck. A good example are all those folks who can’t tell the difference between a pit bull, a boxer, and a Boston Terrier who see no problem voicing their strong negative convictions regarding pit bulls.
Because of this tenuous identification system, it’s probably not surprising that we have little difficulty convincing ourselves that any animal who looks like a domestic animal must surely be domesticated. Add our species penchant for hubris and it’s even easier to convince ourselves that those animals would like nothing better than to live with us.
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