Awhile back I saw an amazing video of a dog who ran out onto a busy highway to to attempt to pull from danger another dog that had just been hit by a car. As cars whizzed by barely mising them, the heroic dog managed to get ahold of the hurt canine and gradually, inch by inch, drag it to relative safety across multiple lanes of traffic to the center divide. Humans then were able to lift the wounded dog off of the highway and out of harm’s way. If I recall correctly the heroic dog left the scene after it was sure the hurt one was being taken care of. I was glad to read that the wounded animal survived the ordeal and its injuries.

When I see and read stories of animals doing extraordinary things to help fellow creatures–and often creatures that are completely different species than their own–I become even more hopeful that human beings can rise above mere skin color, the shape of one’s eyes, political divisiveness, and so many other things that we’ve allowed as justification to tear apart our brothers and sisters not just in war, but via neglect, humiliation, deprivation, cruelty, ignorance, apathy, hatred, greed, bullying, ostracizing, enslavement, and tyranny.

We have much to learn from each other and from other creatures. I firmly believe that we’re interconnected and that when we do harm to another, we also do harm to ourselves and to the whole.