The Power of the Herd by Linda Kohanov

while the nonpredatory side nurtures the herd. Cattle, sheep, goats, camels, horses, and other animals are treated not as slaves or commodities but as valued members of an interspecies society. Herders exhibittremendous pride in and affection for their animals, who in turn trust their two-legged companions to lead them to greener pastures, oversee their mating, assist their births, and milk them — the ultimate oxytocin-producing activity.
    Meat composes a surprisingly modest part of the pastoral diet. Modern tribes mix grains, roots, fruits, and vegetables (gathered, traded, or planted and reaped during seasonal migrations) with lots of dairy products, everything from butter and cheese to fermented mood-altering drinks like koumiss, which Mongolia’s nomadic horse tribes make from mare’s milk. Some cultures, such as Africa’s cattle-oriented Masai and Siberia’s reindeer-based Even people, occasionally consume blood from living members of the herd, though milk remains the staple. Moving with the animals keeps these people physically fit — electrocardiogram tests applied to four hundred young adult male Masai found no evidence of heart disease, abnormalities, or malfunction. Despite significant dairy consumption, their cholesterol levels were about 50 percent of the level of the average American.
    Close interaction with powerful, nonpredatory animals also promotes mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual balance — as well as a form of empowerment that deftly combines fierceness and sensitivity. It is, after all, much more dangerous to herd, ride, or milk a large herbivore, even a domesticated one, than it is to hunt it from a distance. Interspecies affinity, attention to nonverbal cues, mutual respect, and mutual trust are literally survival skills for herding cultures.
Lost Knowledge
    The human element also coordinates, thoughtfully and compassionately, with the realities of the ecosystem. Mongolia’s highly successful pastoralists, who raise horses, sheep, goats, camels, and cattle, cull animals in the fall that aren’t likely to survive the harsh winter ahead, drying the meat to sustain the herders’ families until spring. In Living with Herds: Human-Animal Coexistence in Mongolia, Natasha Fijn effectively illustrates how deeply these cultures care for their animals. Oxytocin’s social recognition circuits cross species lines, creating, as Fijn discovered, a nature-based philosophy of equality. The Mongolian pastoralists she encountered knew every animal by name. This, however, didn’t affect their ability to make tough decisions. Rather, it reinforced “an egalitarian outlook , without favouritism or treating the animal as the equivalent of a pet. Likewise the attitude within Mongolian herding society is to take care of everyone within the herding community, not just singling out individuals for special treatment. Nonetheless, contingencies such as extreme weather conditions,parental survival, and other factors do require that some animals have differential treatment from others,” particularly in the case of orphan foals, calves, or lambs who are brought into the tent, bottle-fed, then released back into the larger herd when strong.
    Yet while Mongolian pastoralists are loving and nurturing, they’re perfectly capable of standing up to an ornery bull, feisty colt, or rearing stallion. And they’re fierce yet reverent in culling the herd. The human role effectively combines parent, leader, and predator through a sacred trust, ensuring that all the herders’ animals have an opportunity to live a full life and, when the time comes, to die quickly, humanely, and meaningfully, as opposed to enduring extended suffering from weakness and starvation. Even so, “Mongolians do not eat animals that are under one year of age,” she emphasizes. When she told one of the tribe members about the Western practice of consuming lamb and veal, tears welled up