Fluttershy and other animals · 9:15pm Sep 20th, 2014
All of the mane characters make great role models for little girls (and boys). This was a key part of Lauren Faust's vision: to provide a cast of strong female characters, all very different, but each equally amazing in their own way...
Picture the bright future which awaits us once the current generation of young fans have grown up and, inspired by their favourite ponies, transformed our less-than-perfect world into something more awesome. Children now playing with Twilight Sparkle dolls will become the academic leaders of tomorrow, furthering scientific research and sound public policy. Rainbow Dash fans will help shatter outdated gender norms, as the Blue Angels / Red Arrows captains of the future. Applejack followers will reform our flawed financial culture and sustainably grow our economy through honest enterprise. Rarity's admirers will create a stream of fabulous new designs to grace the catwalks of New York and Paris. Pinkie devotees will propel the entertainment industry to new highs with bigger parties and better laughs. And Fluttershy fans will protect the natural world and save the white rhinos, rare butterflies and other species at risk of extinction. And all together they will promote friendship, tolerance, and girl power across the world.
The future will be bright, rainbow-tinged, with cupcakes for all.
But growing up is a sometimes painful process, and we must support our young friends as they build their futures and make this vision a reality. The group who will surely need the most comforting hugs along the way is Team Fluttershy.
For at some point, these happy junior nature lovers will grow up to realise that caring for animals in our world, is not the simple delight of playing with cute little critters which it is in Equestria...
Let me tell a short story:
Once upon a time, many years ago, I shared a house with a young vet. In the evenings, she would sometimes get phone calls redirected to her mobile, which would go something like this:
“Hello Veterinary Emergencies...... Oh dear...... If it's badly injured you'd better bring it into the clinic to be humanely put down...... No no, the RSPCA will pay for it...... Yes....... No...... You're welcome.”
If she had had a hard day, then after hanging up, she would say something like:
“Stupid twat, why can't they just whack it on the head with a fence post like we'd do in New Zealand?”
Being a vet is not an easy job. Love animals. Care for animals. Kill them on a daily basis. She was tough.
Conservation work is the same, but on a bigger scale. You want to save some species, you have to control others.
The red squirrels which featured in Fluttershy Defends Scotland Against Invasion by Alien Squirrels are an emotive issue in Dumfries and Galloway, where the locals are very keen to protect them, and the arrival of squirrelpox was a frightening development. But globally they are doing fine, with vast numbers covering a range stretching across Europe and Asia. Compare this to the kakapo—the famous New Zealand flightless parrot, with a population under 150, confined to a few remote islands, kept free of rats, cats, stoats other aliens by a dedicated team of rangers (whether by fence post or other methods, I can't say).
And if we are to save further endangered species, we must be prepared for dirty work on an even bigger scale. An extreme example is the South Georgia Habitat Restoration Project. An ambitious programme to eradicate rodents from the remote South Atlantic island. Completely eradicate—every last rat—over a island of 3900 square kilometres. That needs a dedicated team of professionals, and several hundred tonnes of rat poison. But necessary to save the many indigenous ground nesting birds. If this project is not successful, they will be lost as the climate warms, glaciers retreat, and rats can spread over the whole island.
The most depressing side to working in conservation is probably not the number of rats, squirrels, or other creatures which must be killed in the process, but the fact that, despite determined effort, these projects are all-to-often unsuccessful. For every species which is saved (and maybe only temporarily) there are many that disappear forever. But if we are to conserve even a fraction of our natural heritage, we need conservationists to do this work, however dirty, depressing, and badly paid it is. And we need role models to inspire the next generation. We need Fluttershy.
Ah, the kakapo. Body of a parrot, voice of a subwoofer, survival instincts of a spun-sugar synchronized swimmer. Spend enough millennia on an island, and all of the energy expenditure of flight seems downright silly... up until the naked apes and their tagalongs show up and remind you that survival of the fittest never stopped being a thing back on the mainland.
At least we're not importing animals we recognize to remote parts of the world anymore. Now we just have to clean up after ourselves. But boy, is it a big cleanup job...
Sometimes, to preserve life, you have to take life.
I don't envy Fluttershy. She must be more mature than many people assume.
i.imgur.com/qu6EnFr.png
2470442 Whenever semi-sentient animals and the food chain come up I'm always remind of meet the meat from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the TV show specifically).
Well said. It is generally unwise for a society to emotionally punish (let alone in other ways) for the act of making a Tough Choices when the choice does indeed prove to be a tough one. The choice will be made, one way or another....
Working on it....
I tried to get my niece interested in Twilight Sparkle so that she would do better in school, but she refused. It is no wonder that she cannot figure out how to fit an infinite number of ponies in an hotel with an infinite number of rooms, with each room occupied and being numbered with natural numbers and having an intercom.
Relevant story: Five Hundred Little Murders.