Japanese Zoos and Aquariums

“Sultan is alone in his pen. He is hungry: the food that used

to arrive regularly has unaccountably ceased coming.

“The man who used to feed him and has now stopped feeding

him stretches a wire over the pen three metres above ground level,

and hangs a bunch of bananas from it. Into the pen he drags three

wooden crates. Then he disappears, closing the gate behind him,

though he is still somewhere in the vicinity, since one can smell him.

“Sultan knows: Now one is supposed to think. That is what

the bananas up there are about. The bananas are there to make one

think, to spur one to the limits of one’s thinking. But what must

one think? One thinks: Why is he starving me? One thinks: What

have I done? Why has he stopped liking me? One thinks: Why

 

does he not want these crates anymore? But none of these is the

right thought. Even a more complicated thought — for instance:

What is wrong with him, what misconception does he have of me,

that leads him to believe it is easier to reach a banana hanging

from a wire than to pick up a banana from the floor? — is wrong.

The right thought to think is: How does one use the crates to reach

the bananas ?

“Sultan drags the crates under the bananas, piles them one on

top of the other, climbs the tower he has built, and pulls down the

 

bananas. He thinks: Now will he stop punishing me?

- Extract from J. M. COETZEE The Lives of Animals (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values)