Leonardo Boff's reflection on "table fellowship" bemuses me despite, or even because of, a fundamental error of fact: Building tables is a uniquely human behavior, but all social animal species share food. (Herons seem incapable of sharing food. Herons are gregarious when not eating...but we don't usually think of herons as social animals.)
Not only apes, which at least look like us enough that some humanists find comfort in thinking that their social behavior may be genetically "related" to ours. Not only wolves, which are smart and beautiful animals and can become great friends to humans. Rats share food. Chickens share food. Widow spiders share food. (The male widow spider doesn't have much time to live, or reason to want to live, in any case but, if he does want to live as long as he can, his only chance is to make sure his mate is positively stuffed. He starts throwing food in her direction before he ventures close enough for more personal communication.)
Caterpillars, as we've seen at this web site, exhibit radical extremes from cannibalism to compulsive food-sharing behavior. Some caterpillars won't eat unless they can feel siblings, touching them at either side, sharing their food. Caterpillars have very little brain, but what they do have in the way of brains tell some of them that it's safe to eat when their siblings are eating too.
And not only that, but food-sharing turns out to have solid selfish motivations: If I supply the others with food, I become the Provider, I raise my own status, I have claims on the others. If I provide food while being a member of a lowly and short-lived species, like a spider, I can claim the right to approach a bigger, hungrier member of the species without being eaten. If I provide food while being a member of a cleverer, longer-lived species, I can be the leader, the sought-after mate, the parent-surrogate, the boss...
Grazing animals feed almost continuously, and their food has to seem monotonous even to them, but that seems to make eating as a social behavior even more important to them. The cow or horse who finds fresher grass is the leader. Groups of wild cows and horses usually have a dominant male who at least claims to be the protector, which makes his status high...but even the alpha male will follow a female who consistently leads the herd to tastier food.
Caterpillars follow those who find the best food in a more direct and primal way. Many caterpillars drool as they walk and thus leave trails of silk for their siblings' consideration. Siblings can taste the silk and tell who found the best food most recently. If a brood of caterpillars have to migrate, they follow the ones who found the best food in the past! Since caterpillars have no intelligence to speak of, there's no guarantee that the one who found the best food in the past will be able to find the best food in the future, but the family place great faith in those who have led them to good food before. Europe's deeply nasty processionary caterpillars will follow their leader until they all starve. Fractionally more intelligent species, such as tent caterpillars, hedge their bets by recognizing more than one leader. During their compulsively gregarious stage some North American stingingworms will follow one leader...until they get hungry enough to replace an unsuccessful leader with a different one.
The social cats eat crickets when they find them, but any large or interesting catch is always displayed to the family. The cats call one another, and the humans, to come and see what they've caught. Sometimes prey is presented as a gift to one other cat or one human; usually, after the hunter reenacts the hunt and growls happily for a few minutes, the cats share it. Sometimes the reenactment gives credit to other cats' participation in the hunt. Sometimes they decide that, although interesting as prey, it's not desirable as food, and give it to the possum. I've even seen an older sibling give prey to a younger sibling who presented it to their mother as if it were the younger cat's own catch. In any case the successful hunter gets a visible status boost--and oh, how my long-gone cat Bisquit kvelled, even sang, when her daughter was the successful hunter! Social cats make food-sharing more rewarding than simply eating food when they find it, just as human "homemakers" try to do with their table decorations and family food-sharing rituals.
Knowing that there's absolutely nothing "uniquely human" about food-sharing need not keep us from enjoying the less selfish pleasures of food-sharing or reflecting on the fact that Jesus enshrined them in Christian religious practice. The fact that a good breakfast tends to generate a good visit to the toilet, as well, has never kept families from bonding at breakfast.
We share the joys of "table fellowship" with nearly all of Creation. In fact we have a unique ability to initiate friendly relationships with other animals. "Lower" animals can and do approach humans and offer to share food, but they rarely, if ever, recognize as food anything that they don't eat. Cats bring us mice; horses lead us to clover; crows will eagerly lead us to anything freshly dead, whether we can eat it or not, in the hope that we'll open the hide and make it possible for the crows to eat fresh meat, which they love and which they are seldom able to eat all by themselves. It does not occur to them to lead us to something we might prefer, like fresh blueberries. It does occur to us humans to notice what other animals eat, and offer it to them if we want them as friends. Is this not the "dominion over" the other animals the Bible writer observed that humans have?
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