Creature teachers.

There's a wrenching documentary that turns up on public TV now and then about Greenpeace and its mission to save the whales. Whatever you think of Greenpeace, only the hard of heart could observe this footage and not be moved. Seeing these people in their little boat, darting between whaler and whale, you can't help admiring them and rooting for the whale to get away--which, though, he doesn't.

Once I was watching this watery drama with some fellow conservatives who have the annoying habit of exchanging despairing looks every time the subject of my "animal friends" comes up. "Okay," said one--launching into the usual reductio interrogation--"if whales have rights, what about minnows? Or sea horses? And what about the rights of the shrimp community. When will their cry for justice be heard?" My stirring appeal on behalf of the whale would have received a fairer hearing from the men of the Pequod.

Having endured many such brow-beatings, I must concede that my non-animal friends have a point. To speak of "animal rights" is, in the end, as absurd as to speak of "animal duties." Probably the most rational view of animals and their place in the world is that of C.S. Lewis in his essay "Pain and Animal Suffering." Man, he says, "must be understood only in his relation to God. The beasts are to be understood only in their relation to man and, through man, to God. . . .[E]verything a man does to an animal is either a lawful exercise, or a sacrilegious abuse, of an authority by divine right." Fluffy sitting there minding his own business may not have the "right" not to be whacked with a paper. But we have a responsibility to wield the paper justly.

The Lewis formulation, moreover, supports the intuition that animals have some role to play on earth beyond their respective positions in the food chain. Maybe "role" isn't the right word. From a certain angle their glory consists of being "extras" in the whole human drama--as useless as Fluffy to the practical affairs of the household, yet somehow nice to have around. The sheer multitude of animals, their astounding variety, their strangeness, even their entertainment value all reflect something very comforting: a divine disregard of practicality. The mystery is not whether animals were made with rights, but that they were made at all. Judged by utilitarian standards, they are not here for anything. They're just here.

And even if their lot is not quite the peaceable kingdom, most of them seem pretty happy about being here. Their dumb contentedness with each day and its haul--nuts, leaves, a salmon, or some other equivalent of their daily bread--is one of the more appealing animal qualities.

That and their vulnerability. Reflecting on his farming life, Whittaker Chambers observed that no one appreciates the life of an animal like the man whose job it is to raise and kill it. The reason being that he understands himself to be exercising power, and with it a trust.

A similar idea comes across at the end of The Deerhunter, when Robert De Niro has just come back from Vietnam and sets out with his old hunting buddies into the woods. While his idiot friends are back swilling beer and shooting from the car, De Niro, the true hunter, is on the trail of a majestic buck. Finally he has it caught in his sights, and through his scope we see the creature looking straight at him, scared but serene. And at the last moment, De Niro fires into the air, shouting something like "Just this once..." The idea is not that he has suddenly converted to the animal-rights cause, but that he now sees that in a vicious world perhaps even a prize buck deserves an occasional break.

I'm afraid I actually know people who cannot appreciate the sight of an animal except on the table, above the mantel, or around the shoulders. One pities them, not because there is any grave moral issue at stake, but for the same reason you pity the clod who tramples over a bed of flowers for a shortcut or just for the willful enjoyment of it. They're missing out on that experience of wonder at the "fearful symmetry" of nature, as Blake described it. And, too, there's a doltish arrogance in that spirit. If not even a sparrow falls without His knowing, we're not too important to notice it ourselves.

About the worst disservice we can do our fellow creatures is to drag them into our ideological schemes of power, "rights," and "victimization." If animals perform any service to us, it's precisely to draw our minds away from those distracting shadows. There really is something to be said for hitting the trails now and then (though come to think of it I have never actually done so) to study the lower creatures in search of higher things. A young woman I know put it simply when, as we were walking through a park, she pointed to a squirrel and asked idly, "What makes it go?" Animals--both friendly and frightening--are like wordless messengers racing and roaring and singing around us to keep that question before us. If that, in the grand design, is their mission, it's a noble one.

Nor is it even all that relevant to debate animal intelligence, intriguing though this is. The question is explored in a recent Time cover story entitled "Do Animals Think?" And the answer seems to be--yes, at least more than we supposed. We read, for instance, of dolphins who are instructed by hand signals to execute tricks of their own devising. They dive below, squeak in private for a moment, and then emerge to perform exactly the same stunt simultaneously. It seems to be an act of creative collaboration.

Similar gifts are displayed by chimps--such as the renowed "Washoe," who responds to English by pointing to symbols, each representing a word. And then there's Alex, a parrot, who according to Time can form his own sentences (drawing from a vocabulary of a hundred or so words), identify colors, shapes, and materials, and even apologize when he answers incorrectly.

A cracker for Alex. This really is impressive. But, actually, it just confirms the observation of any pet owner or Sea World visitor that some critters are mighty smart. I have seen a friend's cocker spaniel dash upstairs every morning for a week with no further prodding than the words, "Max, go make Matthew up!"--Max's only reward being the anguish this routine seemed to cause.

In fact this same Max displayed something very like altruism, routinely stepping aside to let his mate, Muffin, have first run at the food bowl. His portly bride would scoff furiously on their communal meal, all but disappearing into the dish as her exemplary beau stood by waiting for the proper moment.

Such traits, more than intelligence, are the animals' strongest claim on our kindness. One thinks for instance of the AP story a few years back about a dolphin that came to the rescue of a ten-year-old boy swept away in the tide near San Francisco Bay. For about two hours, as the boy described it, the dolphin circled him fending off the sharks.

Or I think of my own dog, his little mission on earth long completed. He was not an intellectual dog, but only the most ferociously loyal creature God ever put breath into. As he got older he seemed to gain a sense of his own dignity, like a battle-tested old elephant. The usual tricks were beneath him, and any he could be cajoled into he performed with the sad, half-hearted look of a Ringling Brothers bear.

Once, when he was 15 and I was 16, as a casual experiment in canine behavior I aimed some mint breath spray into his mouth as he was innocently sitting there panting. The result of my experiment: Subject responded unfavorably to stimulus. Until that moment my inseparable friend, he would have nothing to do with me for a full week, even to the point of leaving--slowly and deliberately--any room I entered. It wasn't like the loss of temper a dog seems to understand and forgive. Worse than a violation of his "rights," I had insulted him; a pact had been violated. This lesson learned, my week in the cold was declared over one morning with a wake-up lick.

Then there is this Disneyesque, but true, story about Lucky. In his twilight months, he and I would sleep on a mattress downstairs, on account of his arthritis which made the trip upstairs daunting. At this point he couldn't even take walks, just stiff little steps in the snow around the back porch.

One night I said or did something despicable that brought on one of those horrible family fight scenes--everybody shouting and crying as I was ordered upstairs in disgrace. A few minutes later, sitting there in my room in a state of turmoil, I heard the familiar claw sounds as he reached the top landing, and looked around just as a brown and white muzzle poked through the door. If you ask me what in this case "made it go," I would not discount the possibility of empathy. If the old fellow was merely scared by all the commotion, why didn't he just find a quiet corner downstairs?

From such stories, after all, do we get our dog cliches; they really are loyal, and not always animated by self-interest. Likewise, the cunning and curious cat, the provident squirrel, the longsuffering horse, the artful, workaholic beaver, the trusting lamb, the eager-to-please dolphin, the gentle whale--metaphors inspired by ages of observation. Looking at the whole strange assortment, we can view them all as cartoon-like beings, or as so much livestock awaiting our use or consumption. Either way, it seems to me, we miss out on one of life's easier opportunities to observe beauty.

What makes it go? is, in fact, not a bad summary of Psalm 104: "How manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches. So is the great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships; there is that Leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein."