Boxing Kangaroos

Yesterday I saw something on TV that made me rethink nature documentaries. It was a David Attenborough episode on kangaroos in Australia. More specifically, it was about how male kangaroos fight one another for dominance and mating rights. What I wasn't expecting was how viscerally violent these matches are. The kangaroos are built to punch and flail. Muscled and motivated, they pull no punches, literally and otherwise, in dispatching with their opponent. As with any such documentary, the episode was replete with a moody ambient soundtrack and effects which heightened the tension implicit in the fights. There were various shots which closed in on the faces of kangaroo onlookers. The whole thing was narrativized and given the framing of an event: a pleasant, unassuming pastoral setting, and suddenly, like in some depiction of a duel in the wild west, two kangaroos face off against one another and everyone else runs away and watches from a distance. The kangaroos themselves don't visibly emote their disgruntlement: what was really funny to me personally was how the violent flailing was carried out with an almost gentlemanly predisposition of inevitability, as if they were saying to one another: "It's nothing personal, but I have to punch you and kick you in the stomach."

What gave me pause was the fact that, for once, I agreed with the effect the accompanying music and the narrativized sequence had on me. Here was drama, playing out in front of me as it would in any theatrical production. There was no spoken words, no language as such, but you'd have to be blind to not apprehend the tension and the movement of the ensuing plot. I know nothing about kangaroos myself, but as a fairly attentive viewer who's interested in animal life, as well as the very strangeness of the word "animal" itself as typifying both nonhumans as well as humans alike, I'm simultaneously drunk on difference and similitude. What can I gather from the sequence, without knowing anything about kangaroo behavior? I understood that they were social beings; that they, like most mammals, compete for the privilege of reproducing with a suitable mate; that they are gregarious and feisty creatures who are intentional in how they switch between stances: they can go from grazing harmlessly in a meadow to outright and immediate conflict without a moment's notice. Or was it more drawn out than that? The documentary never gives you a good idea of how much time has been collapsed to suit its narrative. Perhaps they deliberated upon the decision to fight. Maybe something about the presence of a nearby mate provoked them to act. Maybe the rivalry had existed from a long time ago; maybe it wasn't their first fight.

We are always careful of not anthropomorphizing, but there is such a thing as evolutionary continuity. Maybe there is something to be said of how certain animal actions remind us of human behavior. It's enough that they are indicative of a similarity; I'm not interested in proving definitively whether or not its significantly similar. It doesn't matter if it's not; ultimately, what interests me about the depiction of agency in the documentary is the fact that there is enough raw material from a phenomenological angle for us to allow a narrative to exist in the first place.

Is there any value to such a close study of kangaroo behavior, aside from learning more about them? If tomorrow kangaroos became endangered and I had to prove to someone willing to fund their conservation why it's worth it, what could I say? That these funny creatures have a gregarious lust for life, and they're full of vitality and unassuming purposiveness? Even as I type these words, I feel like laughing: is it part of the whole genre of having to prove something to someone that forces us to spout redundant facts about life? Or do they seem redundant because we are somewhat knowledgeable about how similar animals are? What if someone isn't? Would my little writeup about how my own experiences as a human helped make sense of what they possibly could be doing as a group be enough of a validation as to why they are important? 

Who knew kangaroos could tell us so much? How we relate to animals tell us so much about the empathetic value in such a relationality.