This refers to the letter by L. V. Cabral in the opinion column on 23.3.05 under the heading "How did animals escape the Tsunami?"

Cabral goes on to say that the animals were saved from the Tsunami because animals, in other words, behave better in almost every respect, compared to humans. Right underneath his letter appeared another letter with the heading "Religions have nothing to do with natural disasters" presenting logical and rational explanations by one Gamini Dullewe. Dullewe’s article should educate Cabral to a great extent and I would like to add a rejoinder. My answer to his million dollar question is as follows:

It is the innate programming characteristic of a particular animal species that organizes complex patterns of behavior, either learned behavior or instinctive behavior enabling members of a species to respond appropriately to a wide range of situations, for example, a Tsunami. In the case of Tsunami, it is a clear-cut situation of instinctive behavior. Such behavior is usually fairly involved patterns of responses to particular stimuli. In each species these behavior patterns are developed and refined by the forces of natural selection in the process of evolution. I repeat EVOLUTION. Therefore it is the natural tendency or ability to know what to do, or how to behave, in a particular way that people and animals are born with and that they obey, without even knowing why they do what they do.

Human beings certainly cannot emulate the instinctive character and behavior of other animals, as suggested by the writer, to have specific mating periods for man. Cabral’s illogical and irrational arguments are hard for well educated people to swallow.

Has Cabral not seen in nature films shown on many a TV channel today, how a leader of a pack of most animals fight for the position until the contender or he himself is severely wounded or dead? Has he not seen how male lions kill and eat their own young? Has he ever heard of cats in households eating their own newborn kitten? Humans certainly do not eat their new born babies, do they? How ferocious animals kill deer and other innocent herbivorous animals and fight with each other for the carcass is apparent and understandable. Has he not seen tigers who even kill not only other innocent animals but humans as well? Often, the prey they choose to attack are either young or frail. Has he not heard of many thousands of innocent people who die every day world wide of snake bites? Did God Almighty create and save such animals because they behave well?

The law of the jungle is the survival of the fittest and you cannot give credence to such a law. Were the innocent new born babies and young children killed in the Tsunami because they did not behave well? Then there is something radically wrong in the judgment of God Almighty when he chose to kill nearly 40,000 people in Sri Lanka, in a flash.

Natural disasters have nothing to do with religions or an Almighty God.