Freaks in nature

Following one of Sean Halls’ lectures earlier on in the year, we emerged with a thought, often debated, which put forward the suggestion that : ‘If humans are part of nature, anything we do is, therefore, natural.’ We as human beings declare ourselves as the dominant species of the world due to having the ability to develop and expand ourselves. We, therefore, set ourselves apart from nature. This in turn suggests that anything we do should also be considered as ‘apart from nature’ and treated as an intervention into nature

I remember having a conversation with a science teacher some years ago, who touched upon a theory which suggested that this unnaturalness is likely to continue, that our species is unlikely to evolve much, if any more then we already have; This being attributable to the fact that we do not adapt to our surroundings as most animals do, but instead, change our environments to suit us. For example, if it’s hot, we turn on the air conditioning. Likewise, if it’s cold we turn on a heater. In this way there is less opportunity for us, as a species, to engage in the process of evolution. With the slow destruction of our planet, it is highly likely that we will once again need to partake in the natural ritual, survival of the fittest, at which point, we may find ourselves obsolete.
If we cannot even participate in one of nature’s most natural process, the arguments suggesting that humans are not part of nature, therefore, define any of our actions within the natural world as artificial.

With this view that human presence bringing a synthetic touch to the natural world, I wanted to consider 'Artificial Nature' in terms of the environments we create not only for ourselves, but for our animal companions.
Whilst we attempt, in many ways, to accomodate various animals who are endangered or kept as pets, we create backdrops for them to remind them of home. There is often an effort to make their enclosures and 'new homes' as close to how they would be in the wild. In addition to this, these artificial replicas are entirely for our own visual benefit on which we impose our own humanoid assuptions on. Despite our best efforts, these surroundings are, essentially, copycat environments which fall short of the natural beauty they should be enjoying without our interference.

This is a little home movie of my tortoise Tedward in the garden. As you can see, he wasn't particularly impressed by the tomato's involvment in his 'natural' habitat.