People say nature is cruel, but it's kind, too

Although it is undeniably true that “nature” does “kill” and “torture,” it is also cooperative, compassionate, and just. An increasing amount of research is beginning to show just how many the social interactions among various species are affiliative rather than divisive or violent. Nature may be brutal, but it is also far more complex than a dog-eat-dog world. Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce write that the “consumption paradigm . . . has monopolized discussions of the evolution of social behavior. The predominance of this paradigm in ethology and evolutionary biology is both misleading and wrong, and momentum is building toward a paradigm shift in which ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ sits in balance with wild justice.”

-- Sunaura Taylor (from her book Beasts of Burden)