Posts Tagged ‘relationship with animal’

Dumb Animals?

Animals are amazing, and these true stories prove they are not so dumb as some people make out

Bravery in humans is regarded as one of the most noble things a man or woman can accomplish. Our history books are full of the brave deeds that people have done to make our present life possible. Yet our history books seldom tell us that nature has heroes too!

The Caring Crane

A crane, having caught an especially large fish in one of Florida’s lakes, carried it out of the water. He gracefully walked up the bank away from the lake, and settled himself some forty feet from the edge. Cranes, like many other birds, do not chew their food, they simply swallow it whole. But the crane’s eyes had been too big for its swallow so to speak. Try as it might, the fish was too big, and it couldn’t swallow it So after several unsuccessful attempts, it dropped the fish and walked away.

After walking some sixty feet from its catch however, it stopped, looked back, and then returned to the fish. Receiving a quick peck the fish tried to flop away. The crane, on seeing it was still alive, picked it up in its bill, and carried it all the way back to the lake. It dropped it into the shallows, and then pushed it out into the deeper water-to safety!

It would be difficult to call that crane a “dumb animal” in the sense of it being unintelligent. One could hardly call its action instinct either. Rather, it is the sort of action one would associate with an intelligent human.

In recent years, scientists have begun to believe that wherever there is life, there is some sort of intelligence. The more we study animals the more one is convinced that this is true.

Ants Raise Mushrooms and have Chemical Warfare

Did you know, for instance, that ants can do many of the things that men can do? They raise mushrooms, have slaves to wait on them, have a form of chemical warfare, weave, keep small flies-aphids which they milk like cows, and they work as we do, probably harder. Unlike the action of the crane how-ever, this can all be called instinct.

Ants use a variety of cues to navigate, such as sun position, polarised light patterns, visual panoramas, gradient of odours, wind direction, slope, ground texture, step-counting … and more. Indeed, the list of cues ants can utilise for navigation is probably greater than for humans.

Animal Instincts

Instinct, you see, is something an animal or man does without having to think about it. For instance, animals, without having to he taught, know which food is good for them that is instinct. Ants, since the dawn of time, have been doing just as they do today. Intelligence, however, is the ability to solve an unusual problem that is uncommon to the particular animal.

In the province of Ontario, Canada, there is a large game reserve called Algonquin Park. Within the boundaries of the park it is not permitted to kill animals. In Canada the deer hunting season begins in late autumn. For some years, it has been noticed that every November, large numbers of deer move into the protection of Algonquin Park. How do you suppose the deer knew where they were safe?

The Digger Wasp Innovator

A famous zoologist tells how a digger wasp amazed him with its intelligence. He had been walking by a small river, when he noticed the wasp. It had stung and paralysed an enormous spider. Digger wasps bury such food with their eggs, so that when they hatch, the grubs will have food to eat. The wasp was trying very hard to drag the spider back to its burrow. The load was too heavy to fly with, and as there were so many barriers even dragging was impossible. The wasp wasn’t beaten however. Deciding on a new course of action he managed to pull the spider down to the river. Here, taking a firm hold, the wasp floated its kill out onto the stream. With wings buzzing at top speed, it slowly manoeuvred its strange craft seventy yards down the stream. Then, pulling the spider ashore, it dragged it the remaining few inches to its burrow.

Instinct or intelligence? To the zoologist it was an unforgettable experience. Even insects “have their Columbuses and Galileos,” he said.

The Heroic Wolf

Mr. Lyman Jackes was out with the ranger of a large national park in America, when they noticed a number of deer frantically running. Climbing a small hill they saw the reason. Across a nearby swamp, eleven wolves were carefully making their way over the treacherous footing. As part of the ranger’s work was to keep the wolf population down to a suitable number, he took careful aim with his rifle, and fired the only five bullets he had with him. One by one, five wolves fell as he shot, the others retracing their steps as fast as possible. Both men picked up a stout piece of wood to act as a club, and began to descend the hill to examine their kill. As they did so, however, a large she wolf, somehow sensing that they were out of ammunition, came toward them snarling and showing her fangs. At twenty feet from them she stopped, but continued her menacing snarls. Mr. Jackes and the ranger raised their clubs and tried to advance, but the wolf held her ground as much as she dared, effectively barring their way to the swamp.

For half an hour the she wolf stood her ground against them, and then suddenly, without warning, turned and ran as quickly as possible across the floating islands of the swamp. After the delay, search as they might, the two men could find no other trace of the shot wolves than here and there a few spots of blood.

Was that instinct, to so quickly realise that given time the wounded wolves could drag themselves away and hide? If it had been a human, it would have been called “quick thinking,” and an “act of bravery and intelligence.” I for one am sure it was with the she wolf, too.

Pigs are Smart Too

Most people just think of pigs are bacon sources, but new research shows we really need to rethink our relationships with these portly animals. Pigs are some of the smartest creatures on Earth, with intelligence on par with chimpanzees, dogs, and even 3-year-old children.

The of results of research were surprising. Pigs form relationships just like we do, with a society focused around the relationships between parents and offspring. Pigs recognize other pigs as individuals, can understand symbolic language, have amazing long-term memories, and form close bonds with familiar humans.

Probably the most human-like trait they have developed is that, like countless teenagers, pigs love wasting their time playing video games. Researchers have developed games for pigs that let them move color lights to targets on touch screens. They will even play the game against a human player and do better than dogs do at comparable games. It’s only a matter of time before they learn Call of Duty, so maybe it’s time to rethink pigs.

The Future

In millions of years, when humans have destroyed themselves or moved on to another planet, it will be up to animals to take over the Earth. But never mind the distant future: some animals alive now have already developed intelligence that rivals our own. They’ll probably be the next sentient race.

Whales and dolphins are known as cetaceans, which means “big fish” in Latin, even though they aren’t fish. Bravely triumphing over this horrible misnomer, cetaceans have evolved into amazing creatures that are super smart. But their intelligence isn’t just doing cool tricks. They have made their own pictorial language.

Cetaceans produce sound to find out how far away things are, like sonar. It’s a skill not just used for navigation but also as a language completely unlike our own. Cetaceans can learn the shape of a creature or object and then project that sound profile to other members of their species. For example, a dolphin can learn what image a fish makes when they bounce sound off of it. Then, if the dolphin wants to tell another dolphin that it saw a super rad-looking fish that it just has to tell a friend about, it can project that sound profile to its dolphin buddy.

It works really well, and cetaceans have developed complex social structures using communication. Researchers are still trying to figure out how complex cetacean language is, but we probably aren’t too far off from them figuring out how to talk to us and tell us, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

Elephants mourn their dead

Nature doesn’t care about emotions. We watch lions just tearing up gazelles willy-nilly and animals just leaving their dead to rot. But a few animals have developed at least a little bit of feeling (or a lot of feelings, as we are reminded whenever we are around moody teenagers). Shockingly, elephants have led the charge on this, mourning for their dead and even holding funeral practices.

Researchers have long suspected that elephants do this but find it nearly impossible to get any video footage of it. Elephant funerals are really exclusive affairs evidently, and they aren’t fans of humans showing up to film. Frankly, after all the poaching, we wouldn’t trust humans either if we were elephants. However, really sneaky researchers have watched elephants bury their dead under foliage. Researchers have even discovered elephant cemeteries. Some elephant families go through the effort of burying all their dead in the same place.

We also know that when a member of their family dies, elephants become more stressed and depressed. How they developed a respect for the dead is still a mystery, but it’s a fascinating example of how animals can feel in ways similar to humans. Knowing that, it makes the ivory trade even sadder.

Octopi are surprisingly mischievous

If we had to make a list of animals that were the most different from humans, octopi would find themselves pretty close to the top. They’re super weird-looking and have evolved in totally different ways from humans, but they’re one of the few creatures that has near-human intelligence. Researchers have observed octopi doing really intelligent things like showing self-awareness, complex defensive strategies for their homes, and being really stingy with their friend groups. Those are impressive, but what freaks us out is that they use their big brains to troll their human counterparts.

In Germany, an octopus named Otto got sick of the lights above its aquarium. Wanting to do some redecorating, Otto shot water at the lights, knocking them out one by one. The aquarium staff had trained him to shoot waters at guests, and Otto turned that skill back around to destroy lights and cause mayhem for the staff. Across the ocean in California, another octopus figured out how to dismantle the plumbing in his tank and flooded a whole aquarium, just because he could. With this sort of mayhem, Cthulhu is probably very proud.

Eurasian Magpies are Self-Aware

Self-awareness is a trait only a few animals have. Most animals, when shown a reflection of themselves in a mirror, don’t realize the reflection is themselves but think it’s an animal of the same species. Hilariously, sometimes, animals like parrots will befriend their own reflections. Only the smartest animals can identify a reflection of themselves as themselves. Only one bird can. As smart as crows and parrots are, that achievement belongs to the Eurasian magpie.

To test magpie self-awareness, researchers stuck little stickers on the magpie and put them it in front of a mirror. As soon as they did, the magpie got super agitated and started trying to pull off the sticker, probably because it was a color that didn’t match its eyes or something. Oddly, the magpie didn’t mind the feeling of having the sticker on its neck, it just freaked out when it saw the sticker in the reflection.

What is really weird about the results is that for years, biologists have thought that self-awareness resides in the part of the brain called the neocortex. But birds don’t have one. Magpies aren’t really animals that people pay too much attention to, but it turns out they’re a big mystery for animal researchers.

I believe that intelligence is in every living thing – for we are all creatures of the amazing and miraculous universe.

I The Animal

The animal in us all, including the story of the Wolf Boy and Frankenstein.

by Tony Crisp

This feature originally appeared in the Australian magazine SIN

Frankenstein

The story of Frankenstein is in part at least depicting a person suddenly awakening as a full adult, with all the difficulties of adapting to who they are and what the world does with them and they with it. In this situation, the preparation and de-briefing of childhood never took place, so the wonder and shock were deep.

Another sort of awakening is played out in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, where the civilised doctor is confronted by a violent animal-self running out of control. It is a classic story because it depicts something we all meet in one form or another – the animal within! Considering that one of the great animal urges is to fight over territory, modern warfare as irrational as it is, makes one realise how important it is to meet the animal within and ease it into our ‘civilised’ self.

But there is an even older story in which an animal wakes up and realises it is a human. This story is portrayed in its incredibly varied forms by the animal headed gods of many ancient cultures, and in the animal bodied gods of mythology. The drama of such stories lie in the pain and confusion arising from having self awareness while still remaining an animal.

I believe this is one of the greatest well kept secrets, the pain we went through in early childhood when we were artificially woken up to self awareness – you know, having an ego with all the conflict and eternal anxiety, fear of death, pain of love, that goes with it. And what I mean by artificially woken up is that children never exposed to language do not attain self awareness. They remain in a guilt free world of a present day Eden where there is no right or wrong, evil or good. Apparently not even time ruins that unspoilt place of the soul.

The Wolf Boy

A headline in the Daily Star on April 17 1991, at the time the film Dances With Wolves was popular reads: “TRAGIC BOY’S DANCE IN WOLF’S LAIR.” It goes on to say:

A tragic orphan brought up by a pack of wild wolves will never be able to live like a normal man, say doctors. The boy who REALLY danced with the wolves was aged about seven when he was found 29 years ago in the wastes of Southern Russia by a team of oil explorers. He howled like a wolf and savagely bit one of the oil men who christened him Djuma – the Wolf Boy.

Professor Rufat Kazirbayev said doctors had battled to re-educate him to act like a normal human being – but failed.

So where is the being who existed before we learnt to talk? Does it hide in dark corners of our mind keeping out of sight? Perhaps it only comes out at night when we dream. In fact most of us meet this animal not only in the dark hours of our sleep, but also when events surprise us and for moments we drop the circus training we went through as a child. Even if the meeting is wonderful as in the following dream, it is still difficult to accept our own potent untamed self. Maybe because it wants us to be so honest and passionate.

When the horse saw me it ran to me and become very excited and loving, rubbing against me and licking me with a very long tongue. I was both pleased and slightly threatened. Threatened because it was so intense. At one point though we rubbed against each other with a degree of sexual pleasure.

The Many Brains

Some recent studies of the brain by Paul Maclean suggest that anatomically we have in fact more than one animal in us. Our brain, like an ancient dwelling that has been added to over the millennia, has three levels. The oldest, the brain stem (medulla), is like the brain of very ancient creatures, the reptiles. In us it deals with just what it does in them – flight and flight, reproduction, territory and ritual behaviour. From this comes rigid behavioural response to an event. Next is the part of the brain we share with other mammals such as cats and rats, the limbic system (cerebellum). Maclean sees this as dealing with the fine sense of caring for young, social relationships such as heirarchy in animal groups and fine survival skills. Overlying these two like a mantle is the cerebrum, the large part of the brain that gives us the potential for human characteristics such as highly developed language and reasoning skills.

The skills and information linked with the cerebrum add to and extend the impulses from the other two ‘older’ animal brains we have. So usually we modify and augment our internal animal. But occasionally the cerebral influence gets distracted or knocked out by drugs, such as alcohol, or exhaustion. Then our animal can live through us again without having to hide in the obscurity of sleep. At such a time we might make love for the first time in our life with total passion, sensation and abandonment of guilt. A sudden extra awareness as if with sharpened senses might arise, enabling us to precisely read another persons body language and non-verbal communication.

But there is a darker side too. A young man of usually gentle behaviour, whose work in his home town in USA, was to spray peoples lawn with a powerful weedkiller, abruptly murdered one of his clients. He had suddenly, and quite out of character, wanted to urinate while working. Instead of finding a toilet he had peed in the customer’s garden. She had come out and complained to him, whereupon he killed her.

Findings show that one of the chemicals in the weedkiller produce a diuretic effect making one want to urinate. It also acts on the brain, and possibly inhibits the cerebrum and cerebellum. If that is so, what the young gardener was left with was his reptilian responses without moral judgement.

So if you want to say hello to your natural self, better not walk alone into that garden of Eden where it dwells, free of morals, words and time. Better take your cerebrum with you.

Animals as Dream Figures

Like any other animal, human beings have developed certain physical and behavioural traits. Some of these traits, such as a new born baby attempting to suckle the breast, and attempting to bond with its mother, are rooted in millions of years of past experience and can be thought of as instinctive. To be abandoned by ones mother, even for a short time, was a life threatening danger in the past, and is still felt as such today by an infant because of the millions of years of imprinted experience.

We can observe such instinctive traits in a dog in such behaviour as cocking of the leg in male dogs. We can see some of our own traits in such things as the human desire to elect leaders. Many of these habits are psycho-biological or social. In our dreams we represent these drives or habits in the form of various animals. Our restrained sex drive or aggression may be shown in our dream as a dog on a lead. The power of drives such as the urge to parenthood via sex might be shown as a horse which we are trying to control. More than anything else though, our dream animal represents our powerful feeling reactions to situations – reactions developed through centuries of human experience in frequently terrible situations. This aspect of ourselves is rooted in the older portions of the brain. The feeling reactions indicated are those such as the fight or flight reaction; the drive to protect property or territory even to the point of killing another human being; the urge, often not accepted in its naked power, to find a mate and to have sex in order to procreate; the desire to have standing and recognition in ones social group; the drive for dominance – or the resulting depression or sickness if no recognition or place in the group is found. See: animals in our brain.

Because dreams exhibit a powerfully precise way of using symbols, there is a difference in meaning between the wild animals and the domesticated animals we dream of. In general the domesticated animal such as a cat or horse represent urges we have more conscious control over and are therefore less threatening to our conscious desire to be in charge. The wild animals in our dreams often pose a much greater threat to our ego, but nevertheless offer rich rewards if we can develop a working relationship with them. After all they are aspects of ourselves, so the relationship can release more of our usable potential.

Example: I am sitting in the hotel staff room eating lunch at a large dining table. One by one I am joined by perhaps a dozen women. The atmosphere is pleasant, easy and light hearted. I enjoy the feeling of being the only male among a dozen attractive women. Then I notice a strange thing. One by one all the girls around me turn into cats, but carry on laughing and talking as if nothing is happening. I find this interesting and not alarming. I am aware each girl turns into the sort of cat that is right for her – a vivacious redhead becomes a purring orange tabby; an aloof, slightly superior lady becomes a Siamese; the only ex-girlfriend of mine present becomes a black witches familiar.

I remember turning to my left and asking: ‘Tell me Rebecca, how did you do this?’ The Rebecca cat giggles with a human voice and says: ‘He doesn’t have a clue, does he?’ As I look at the Rebecca cat I realise she still has her human eyes. This I realise is true of all the cats, they have human eyes in feline faces. As I realise this one says: ‘I think he’s beginning to understand now’ and laughs. Paul C. Teletext.

This graphic dream so well illustrates how our human personality exists within our animal drives and urges.

The animal in our dreams has commonly been seen only as the sex drive. A careful examination of animal dreams shows this to be untrue. The animal represents all aspects of sexuality and relationship. If this wider sexuality in an individual is damaged or traumatised, the person might become a parent who has lost the natural bonding and care for their child; an individual who has no sense of social status or responsibility; is criminally violent; or someone with disturbed and misplaced sexuality, a person unable to love or care for someone else. See: what does the animal in my dream mean.

Dominating or attempting to kill the animal in us can cause tension, depression and illness. The escape into dry intellectualism that might occur if the ‘animal’ aspect of oneself is denied, can be a cause of internal conflict. Complete permissiveness is no answer either. Our higher brain functions need expression also. So one of the challenges of maturing is how to meet and relate to our ‘animals’, and perhaps bring them into expression in a satisfying way. Such drives are fundamentally a push toward LIFE. Our dreams are selective in what animal is used to portray our situation. For instance a dog or horse are creatures that have been socialised for thousands of years, whereas a dinosaur has no history of socialisation. These different animals – domesticated or wild – can therefore be used to represent the socialised or untrained elements of ourselves.

In considering what our dream animal communicates to us, consider how you feel about that animal, what view you have of it, whether it excites, disgusts or frightens you. Is it funny because it exhibits some aspect of human nature so openly, like monkeys making love in public? Is it to be envied because it is so honest, like the dog growling at someone it doesn’t like or is frightened of, and giving obvious affection to someone it has a link with? With such straightforward questions we can arrive at what our dream animals represents to us personally.