Matt Heath: Seals make me proud to be human

Life's grim for young male seals. Photo / NZME.

Observing two drunks assault each other at a taxi rank, I reflected how nice people nearly always are.

Humans have been doing a lot of terrible stuff to each other lately. Some of us are evil bastards, but as a species I reckon we're generally pretty good.

Two weeks ago I witnessed a street assault that completely restored my faith in humanity.

Octagon taxi rank, Dunedin, 4.30am, Jan 1. The locals were hammered from the traditional southern New Year piss-up and soggy from the traditional southern New Year piss-down. The taxis were behaving like the tuatara I visited a week earlier. Hiding and then moving boringly slowly when they actually appeared.

My sister Imogen and I were tired, we had sore feet, but along with 49 others we were willing to wait our turn. A guy at the back wasn't. When a taxi finally arrived he sprinted up and attempted to jump in ahead of the next guy in line. FIGHT!

Street fights are funny things, the punches sound like slaps and someone always ends up shirtless.

In the end, queue jumper lost the rumble but somehow won the ride. As the taxi screeched off he sat happily in the backseat, topless and bleeding from the face, his head hanging out the window like a happy little doggie yelling: "F*** you. I still got the taxi."

As I stood back observing this fracas, two things sprang to my fuzzy mind. One, Dunedin taxi queues are violent; and two, it'd be far worse if we were fur seals.

The Aramoana Mole is a man-made rock wall that directs the tidal flow and keeps Otago Harbour clear of silt. It's a thin road that stretches out unexpectedly into the sea with smashing waves on both sides. It's very awesome.

At the end of this Mole, me and Dad ran into three fur seals spending the day sunbathing like stinky legless dachshunds. A trio of fat rejects from a Taiaroa Head colony.

Life's grim for young male seals. Every mating season the boss bull takes all the females for himself and kicks the other dudes out. The ejected seals either die from their wounds or end up heartbroken on nearby rocks.

I'd hate to be in a taxi queue with 50 bull fur seals. Those bastards do more than steal cabs.

Chickens are worse. Twenty years ago I was watching free-range hens eat. A fat one I named "fatty" cut herself and started bleeding. Instantly she became food in the eyes of her friends.

A chicken fight is a funny thing to watch. A lot of squawking and someone always ends up with no neck feathers.

If we'd been chickens waiting for that taxi, the queue jumper would have been eaten alive the second he started bleeding.

The point is, humans get a bad rap but we're nicer than animals.

You're probably thinking: "What about the infamous carnivorous Boyd massacre at Whangaroa 1809, or New Zealand's deadliest criminal shooting at Aramoana 1990? What about the evil acts in Paris last week?"

It's true we humans do unbelievably horrible things. But hardly ever -- 99.999 per cent of the time we pass each other on the street without punching or biting. We often drive on the correct side of the road, indicating, giving way and being considerate.

If a bull seal could drive he'd smash head first into the first male he saw. Then take the guy's woman.

People burning tents and throwing cans in Gisborne only makes the news because people don't usually do that. "Bull seal kills all his buddies and throws sex party with their girlfriends" would never make the seal news. They do it too often.

As I stood and watched a couple of drunk men fight in the Octagon it struck me how nice humans are. We so rarely attack each other.

Personally I'm amazed how few people hit me. Animals on the other hand assault each other and me constantly.

Humans can be horribly evil, but seals, chickens and tuatara can't ring their big sister Katharine at 4.30am and get her to take them home safely. That kind of niceness makes me proud to be human.