Nepal worships animals but still has no law to protect them

Every year on October 4, the world marks World Animal Day. It is a day to celebrate animals. It should also be a day to remember how much of our own story they carry, and to ask what we owe them in return.

Long before we built cities, wrote laws or drew borders, we shared our fires with animals. Wolves that drifted towards human camps became our first domesticated companions at least 15,000 years ago, before we had even learned to farm. Around 10,000 years ago, goats, sheep and cattle turned wandering foragers into settled farmers, and with them came villages, surplus and civilisation itself. Horses, donkeys and, on the high plateaus, yaks carried people, goods and ideas across mountains and continents.