I’ve stumbled upon a rule. The animal kingdom only cares about animals which are slightly bigger than a goldfish.

Today I began searching for an answer to a question that had been troubling me since last night. At our website launch I made some comment about beached whales, and no-one laughed. To be fair, it wasn’t particularly funny, but it’s not just that they didn’t laugh – the whole venue fell completely silent. It was as if I had resurrected Hitler.

It’s not exactly as if I want to work on my beached whale repertoire; it’s just that I’m confused as to why everyone cared so much for these whales that beached themselves last week. I’m fairly sure that none of the people present were incredibly close to any whales – you know, no one had a distant cousin who was a whale, no-one there was married to a whale. I’m also fairly confident no-one was keeping a whale as a pet.

It must have been the fact that I was talking about whales though, and not the act of something being beached. No-one would have lost a family member or friend to being beached. Generally if a human washes up on shore, it just means they’re done swimming.

So why whales? It’s not that I’m cynical, or that I hate whales, I just don’t understand how people can develop a connection with them that would warrant that emotion. And the reason I don’t understand this, is because we don’t have a similar reaction to ants...

If you find an ant in your cup of tea, you’re more upset about having to fish the ant out, than you are about the untimely death of that ant. No-one looks into their cup and thinks, “Aw man, that ant had his whole life ahead of him...”.

No-one cares about ants, because ants aren’t slightly bigger than a goldfish. Ants, snails, slugs, spiders, locusts, bees, tadpoles, worms, moths... we don’t care. Some of these animals, we sometimes kill just for the sake of it. We’ll see an ant walking along the kitchen counter, and without really thinking, give it the thumb of death.

But it’s not just a human thing. Other ants don’t seem to care about the death of their fellow friends. Ants will gladly walk past deceased members of their tribes, without seeming phased at all. They don’t seem to even be worried about their own life – if you walked into a room and saw a bunch of dead people, you wouldn’t stand there thinking, “Hmmm... alright, I’m just going to go fetch that sugar from that cupboard there, this seems like a friendly place...”

Humans begin to care when things are slightly bigger than a goldfish. Tears can be shed by an unfortunate hamster fatality, and cars will swerve and risk hitting other cars to save that squirrel that forgot to look right, then left, then right again before crossing the road. And yes, when whales decide to swim onto Kommetjie beach on their own accord, humans will gather to push them back into the sea, even if they just beach themselves again straight afterwards – as if the whale is thinking, “Wow, those people were so kind, I’m quickly going to pop down to the shore to say thanks.”

And so for no particular reason, we have established a rule – if you’re slightly bigger than a goldfish, we’ve got your back – otherwise, bugger off, we’re either too busy helping something slightly bigger than you, or eating it.