Our Job as the Dominant Species

Here is the deeper argument that sits underneath every safety rule in this book. Human beings are the dominant species on this planet. We did not earn that position through strength, speed, claws or armour. Not one of them. By those measures we are unremarkable, and against a saltwater crocodile we are hopelessly outmatched. We are dominant because of our minds: our intelligence, our capacity to plan, to cooperate, to imagine consequences and act on them. That is the whole of our advantage, and it changes the moral arithmetic entirely.

Because if our dominance comes from our intelligence, then the responsibility that comes with that dominance is ours too. The animals that share this planet, the crocodile most ancient among them, were here long before us. The saltwater crocodile’s lineage predates humanity by tens of millions of years. We are the newcomers. We are the ones with the power to wipe a species out, as we very nearly did to this one. We are also the ones with the mind to know better and choose otherwise. No crocodile can decide to coexist with us. Only we can decide to coexist with it.