TrueTails

New Book Release!

2010-03-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

People often ask me why I wrote this book and why I am donating half of the profits to animal rights and animal organizations from the sale of this book.

When I left the missionary life, I had not really watched much, if little, television. Back in late March of last year, I had been ‘channel surfing’ and came upon a series called “Whale Wars”. It was a reality television documentary of a small group of whale activists battling Japanese from killing whales.

What I saw only in one hour - the insanity of the Japanese Whaling vessel, plus the fact that these huge creatures are being hunted for ‘a delicacy’ - made me sick to my stomach. The truth is not that even the meat is needed for man’s survival or that some portion of the meat cures anything. Instead, some arguments are that people will lose their jobs in a small whaling village, or that these people don’t know any other vocation, or somebody just wants sushi. Another argument is that killing whales is part of an ‘ethnic tradition’ of a national culture.

It was gross and truthfully a justification.

At that moment, while watching this program, I felt I had to do something about the senselessness and insanity. I had to say something. These creatures were friends. They were and are aware. Their species is over 65 million years old. We are just beginning to understand them. We have fished them and killed them and yet, scientists are beginning to see that whales communicate, save humans at times, and travel great distances around the globe with a purpose. Because man has not figured out how to communicate with them, some of us treat them like meat on a table. Whales are not like cattle, where we grow them and replenish. It’s not even like we really need their meat as a species.

I have had very personal experiences with whales and other creatures. I felt that writing a book, telling what I had personally experienced, would be a way of raising public awareness. I had to step over the line, come out from my comfortable life and say something. Not just anything, but the truth I always knew and never spoke about.

All of the experiences existed. To help prove the point I shared intimate moments of my life. But it wasn’t just the happy moments. Having others there in those personal moments and experiencing what I was hearing and seeing, putting this down in my book, was a way that would make the book more real for everyone.

So the purpose and reason I wrote this book is for my friends, all creatures great and small. As the writer, I feel they have contributed to my story in a very big way. So I decided that half of the profits from the sales of the book would go to animal rights and animal protection. It’s how I can help them, my friends.

When is an Apple an Apple?

2010-03-12T23:56:00.000-08:00

I have often wondered why psychologists see the obvious and ask questions that make answers obtuse and oblivious.

Imagine a government funding studies to refute that man is more intelligent and more aware. Imagine psychologists battling to first that man is more cognitive and then in the same breath label him with more isms and 'iac', followed by perscriptions which sugar coat oblivion.

We consistently try to separate ourselves from the creatures of this earth. Somehow that knowledge is supposed to give us power, when it is already evident we can destroy this planet without anyone's help but our own.

And yet the battles ensue for a difference. It is like the person constantly asking 'Why am I here?'

Yet the fact is that we are here. And at this point of evolution, man now pays other men to write papers of philosophies, to spend time asking that question.

Some people try not to know. Some people don't care. Some people cannot sleep at night as they cannot fathom that they have a place in this world and therefore need to be somewhere else.

Some are willing to dupe others, some are willing to help. Some forget that they are part of this planet and therefore abuse it.

Today I walked out from a movie and looked at the floor. Have you ever done that? It's a mess. The think is that 'someone else is gonna clean it up'.

How does this relate to animal consciousness?

Well, you don't see them littering or abusing their bodies or others.

So who is more conscious?

ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2009) — J. David Smith, Ph.D., a comparative psychologist at the University at Buffalo who has conducted extensive studies in animal cognition, says there is growing evidence that animals share functional parallels with human conscious metacognition -- that is, they may share humans' ability to reflect upon, monitor or regulate their states of mind.

He says "comparative psychologists have studied the question of whether or not non-human animals have knowledge of their own cognitive states by testing a dolphin, pigeons, rats, monkeys and apes using perception, memory and food-concealment paradigms.

"The field offers growing evidence that some animals have functional parallels to humans' consciousness and to humans' cognitive self-awareness," he says. Among these species are dolphins and macaque monkeys (an Old World monkey species).

Smith recounts the original animal-metacognition experiment with Natua the dolphin. "When uncertain, the dolphin clearly hesitated and wavered between his two possible responses," he says, "but when certain, he swam toward his chosen response so fast that his bow wave would soak the researchers' electronic switches.

"In sharp contrast," he says, "pigeons in several studies have so far not expressed any capacity for metacognition. In addition, several converging studies now show that capuchin monkeys barely express a capacity for metacognition.

"This last result," Smith says, "raises important questions about the emergence of reflective or extended mind in the primate order.

"This research area opens a new window on reflective mind in animals, illuminating its phylogenetic emergence and allowing researchers to trace the antecedents of human consciousness."

Smith, a professor in the UB Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Sciences, is recognized for his research and publications in the field of animal cognition.

He and his colleagues pioneered the study of metacognition in nonhuman animals, and they have contributed some of the principal results in this area, including many results that involve the participation of Old World and New World monkeys who have been trained to use joysticks to participate in computer tasks.

Their research is supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Development and the National Science Foundation.

Smith explains that metacognition is a sophisticated human capacity linked to hierarchical structure in the mind (because the metacognitive executive control processes oversee lower-level cognition), to self-awareness (because uncertainty and doubt feel so personal and subjective) and to declarative consciousness (because humans are conscious of their states of knowing and can declare them to others).

Therefore, Smith says, "it is a crucial goal of comparative psychology to establish firmly whether animals share humans' metacognitive capacity. If they do, it could bear on their consciousness and self-awareness, too."

In fact, he concludes, "Metacognition rivals language and tool use in its potential to establish important continuities or discontinuities between human and animal minds."

Does Animal Consciousness Exist?

2010-03-10T21:51:00.000-08:00

IN this paper, Grandin discusses the idea that animals have consciousness - but not a consiousness similar to ours. Per my own personal experience I would suggest that consciousness is the act of surviving with the survival parameters for the living entity in question. That is to say (as I have stated earlier) that animals do not necessarily talk about the weather, the latest movie, etc. But where their attention is focused is on being who and what they are and surviving to that degree.

Where communication enters in to the picture is where one communicates AT the level of understanding. For example, one doesn't talk rocket science to a baby! Communication is limited to direct the child's attention to the needs (or pleasures of the moment).

My point is that never in my experience have I just communicated to an animal to discuss the weather. It has always been based on a need - a need where the other creature or myself - demanding attention. It is at that point where communication has always ensued, mentally or visually.

Temple Grandin, PH.D. - October 1998
Department of Animal Science
Colorado State University

Some scientists and philosophers believe that animals are not conscious and do not lead internal mental lives. They think animals are like robots which just respond to changes in the environment in mechanical ways. Others believe that animals have a form of "animal consciousness" which is totally different from human consciousness. This debate between philosophers and scientists has raged for decades. As a person with autism, my "autistic like" consciousness is different from normal people. I think in pictures and language is not used to form thoughts or make decisions. In this paper, I discuss my views of animal consciousness using comparisons from my experience with autism, and examples from a large body of scientific evidence on other neurological disorders which affect consciousness.

Selective Attention

Although people who are familiar with cats, dogs, horses, even cattle have no problem with the question of consciousness, scientific evidence indicates that there may be many different levels of consciousness in animals. In 1890, William James, the founder of modern psychology wrote; "consciousness grows more complex and intense the higher we rise in the animal kingdom." According to James, a relevant property of consciousness is the capacity of an animal to compare and selectively attend to experiences. As a visual thinker my ability to consciously compare experiences and make choices is less complex compared to people who use both visual knowledge and internal verbal dialog to make choices. In the following description of how I avoided a car accident, I explain how I use thinking in pictures to make conscious decisions. This example illustrates a level of consciousness that may be in some ways similar to consciousness in higher mammals. The near-accident occurred in fairly light traffic on a sunny day while I was driving to the airport on Interstate highway 25. Cruising along at 70 miles per hour in the southbound lane, I suddenly saw a huge bull elk running full speed across the northbound lanes. I knew I had to react quickly to avoid hitting him. Instantly, three pictures appeared in my mind. Each picture represented the end result of an option available to me. The first picture was of a car rear ending my car. I knew from experience that slamming on the brakes could cause this. The next picture was the elk smashing through my windshield. From my understanding of animal behavior, I knew that swerving or any sudden movement of my car might cause the elk to stop or slow down. The third picture was of the elk passing harmlessly in front of my car. In this picture I saw what would happen if I gently applied the brakes to slow down. These pictures were like the picture menus one can click on an Internet web page. They appeared in my mind one at a time, but all within one second. This was enough time for me to selectively compare the options and chose the slow down gradually picture. I immediately calculated the elk's trajectory and speed coming across the highway, and my speed and position in the southbound lane, and began to slowly apply the brakes. This choice prevented me from being rear ended, or having the elk crash through my windshield. The conscious choice was a visual process without the use of internal verbal dialog.

At the moment I became aware of the elk crossing the northbound lane, I resisted the urge to make a panic response and slam on the brakes. In just seconds, I evaluated the three pictures in my mind. To use computer jargon, I conducted a basic cost-benefit analysis of the options. After running a quick video like simulation of the elk passing harmlessly in front of my car, I simply clicked a mental mouse on the "slowing down gradually" picture. I made a conscious choice from visual simulations played in my mind In another mishap on the highway, my ability to make a conscious choice was overridden by sudden panic. I was driving along a section of straight level highway on an icy night when a sudden gust of wind caused the car to skid. In this situation, I did not have time to make a conscious decision. It seems that conscious behavior can only occur when there is time to think, whereas instincts, reflexes, and simple conditioned responses take over when there is no time to think. For example, a grazing animal suddenly being attacked or chased by a lion relies on instincts and reflexes. These behaviors may not be completely consciousness. However, when an approaching predator is far away, an animal has time to decide on the best evasive action. When I hit the patch of ice, reflexes took over and I lost the ability to make an appropriate response. No option pictures appeared in my mind which could be used for making a decision. Reflexively, I began swearing uncontrollably and jerking the wheel in the wrong direction as I was skidding off the highway. I had no time to recall what I had learned about steering into a skid. My car ended up on the median strip, and fortunately, neither of us were hurt.

Some people question why I had three visual choices instead of just one. This is due to my visual associative way of thinking. In everything I do I see different choices as pictures on a computer monitor in my imagination. My thinking is not linear. I have learned by interviewing highly verbal thinkers that their thoughts are in language and they do not consciously see choices. Language may be another layer of thinking which covers up the visual pictures. I have no purely abstract thoughts. I only have pictures.

The "autistic type" of consciousness I used in both near accidents may be in some ways similar to conscious processes some animals use when they encounter danger. In both animals and people, conscious processes may have evolved as mechanisms for both avoiding danger and finding food. In other words, consciousness evolved as a means of allowing higher mammals to perform intelligent, adaptive responses to challenges in their environment. Rather than always relying on reflexes, simple conditioned responses, or hard wired instinctual behavior patterns, consciousness allows animals to make choices between several different options. Although consciousness is important, in most animals both instinctive and reflexive behaviors are also important. The instinctive killing bite to the throat that most predators do, the reflexive response of a horse kicking at a predator on its heels, or the conditioned response of learning to avoid places that are full of predators, all evolved as mechanisms used for survival and may not require consciousness to perform. The questions of whether non-human animals have consciousness depends on what we mean by consciousness.

Orienting Response

On Thursdays, the garbage truck picks up trash in the neighborhood next to where Mark stables his horses. The moment the back up alarm sounds, all the horses turn and orient towards the sound. Like soldiers at attention, all the horses aligned their eyes, ears, head and body in the same direction. The orienting response is accompanied by increased heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure. The orienting response is also the point when animals switch from unconscious behavior to consciousness. Both animals and people orient towards novel sounds. In the wild, animals orient and freeze when they hear or see something that might be dangerous. A deer that hears the rustling sound in the bushes instantly freezes and turns both it's eyes and ears towards the sound. A deer will turn and face the noise before it flees. The orienting response provides time for the animal brain to make a conscious decision instead of just acting on reflexes and instinct. During the orienting response, the deer can decide to either flee or continue grazing. When I avoided the elk on the highway, I had time to make a conscious choice. But, when I skidded on the ice, there was not enough time to make a conscious choice.

Research has shown that the brain takes longer to process conscious awareness of a stimulus compared to an unconscious reaction to it. Up to half a second is required for full conscious awareness to occur after a stimulus is applied to the brain. For example, if you touch a hot stove, an unconscious reflex controlled by your spinal cord has already pulled your hand away before you feel the pain. Conscious processing of incoming information takes more time than a simple response governed by a reflex. A zebra kicking at a lion is probably relying on reflexes, but a zebra that hears a far away sound which may signal danger has time to weigh his escape options.

From my own experience, I have felt the difference between an orienting response and a fear flight response. For twenty years I have taken anti-depressants to calm constant anxiety attacks. Before taking the medicine I would wake up at 3:00 in the morning with my heart pounding. I was ready to flee from non-existent danger. This occurs because my nervous system has defects that put in a flight or fight stage for no reason. The medication blocks the massive fear response, but it has no effect on my tendency to orient towards intermittent high pitched noise. If I hear a garbage truck backing up in the middle of the night I still orient towards it.

Simple Consciousness

Worker bees communicate the location of food sources by performing dances when they return to the hive. When the colony gets ready to swarm, the workers go out and scout for suitable cavities in trees or buildings to build a new hive. Is this conscious behavior? Scientists have successfully built robot insects which mimic many of the behaviors of insects such as crickets and roaches. Although social insects such as bees and ants perform more complex behaviors than crickets and roaches, electronic circuits have been designed which can learn to walk by using a hierarchy of simple circuits. Scientists have also designed computer circuits that evolve and design themselves, or do amazing things such as compose Mozart like music. These circuits will often behave in ways that look intelligent, but they are definitely not conscious. None of the electronic components are conscious. They are based on physical principles. Although the animal brain is not the same as an electronic computer, I agree with writers such as Roger Penrose, and Daniel Dennett, that if improvements in computing continue at the present rate for a few for decades, it will possible to build a machine that simulates the way a human brain works.

For me, it is difficult to accept that individual bees are conscious. Could it possible that bees are more like elements in a biological computer? Perhaps the entire colony has a kind of collective consciousness where individual bees are like clusters of neurons in the brain, or electronic components in a computer. The creators of Star Trek came up with a scenario where humans loose their individual consciousness and become like bees in a hive. Called the Borg, their mission was to assimilate all life into the collective consciousness. By implanting electrodes in the brains of captured prisoners, everyone's thoughts are transmitted into everybody else's brain. Bach brain becomes like a component in a biological computer. A biological computer with a single collective consciousness is created and all individual self awareness is lost. An individual on patrol does not react as an individual, he only reacts after the Borg collective has processed the information.

Perhaps we will never know if bees are truly conscious, or if they're like a biological computer with a collective consciousness, or maybe something else. Barbara Shiffman, a mathematician at the University of Rochester has discovered that bee dances follow the same pattern as a theoretical mathematical shape called a flag manifold. Changes in the bee's dance can be predicted and explained by mathematical formulas. The flag manifold also explains the geometry of subatomic particles called quarks. Shiffman theorizes that bees may be sensitive to movements of subatomic particles which follow the principles of quantum mechanics which govern the movement of subatomic particles. I prefer to think of a bee colony as a biological computer because much of this is over my head.

Moving up the evolutionary ladder from insects, many biological scientists agree that mammals and birds have primary consciousness because they can process simultaneous stimuli and they have an internal representation of their experiences. Svene Sjolander states that a snake may not be conscious because it does not have a centralized representation of its prey. It seems to live in a world where a mouse is many different things. Sjolander explains that striking the mouse is controlled by vision; following the mouse after striking is controlled by smell; and swallowing the mouse is controlled strictly by touch. There is no integration of information from all the senses. Each sensory channel operates independently of the others. When a snake has a mouse held in its coils, it may still search for the mouse as if "the information from its body which is holding the prey did not exist." It appears that the snake has no ability to transfer information between sensory channels. Sjolander further explains that a snake has no ability to anticipate that a mouse running behind a rock will reappear. Cats and other predatory mammals are able to anticipate that the prey will reappear. According to Sjolander, snakes are not conscious. Using this definition of consciousness, than an autistic person experiencing severe sensory overload is not conscious. Sensory overload causes them to loose the ability to integrate input from all the senses.

Higher Consciousness

Since I do not think in language, there is a whole layer of abstract language consciousness that I do not have. Some of the papers I have read are so abstract and verbal that I simply do not understand them. So I have to study things that are understandable to me such as neuroscience experiments and research on animal behavior. I can visualize how the brain works and understand a brain scan study, but a linguistic concept such as "linguistic referants" in the mind is incomprehensible. Brain research has concrete data that I can understand. Many scientists believe that there are different levels, or degrees of consciousness. The different levels are determined by the complexity of the brain. Humans with the most complex brains have a higher level of consciousness than dogs which have smaller, less complex brains. As an autistic person, I believe I have a unique perspective. In some highly verbal people, they have forms of higher consciousness that I do not have. Some philosophers believe that language is required for the highest form of consciousness. In this view, I would not be fully conscious because I do not think in language.

After reading several books and scientific papers on consciousness, I concluded that the biological theories which correlated the level of consciousness directly to the level of brain complexity are the most appealing. Animals with more complex brains have a higher form of consciousness than animals with a simpler brain. It is particularly interesting that warm blooded animals such as dogs or birds have more complex brains than cold blooded animals such as reptiles. Maintaining a high internal body temperature requires huge quantities of food compared to a reptile. The ability to make flexible choices improves an animal's ability to both find food and avoid predators. Perhaps the degree of consciousness shown by most mammals avoiding predators is similar to the degree of consciousness I used to avoid hitting the elk. It was a deliberate, conscious decision. Why did consciousness evolve ? If my response was based on simple reflexes, I may have caused an accident. I avoided the elk because there was sufficient time to bring the pictures into consciousness and make a decision. However, the ability to make a conscious decision was lost when I found myself suddenly skidding out of control on an icy road. As the car skidded out of control, I began screamed like an animal being attacked by a predator. My screams came out as an uncontrollable, panic induced string of swear words. Screaming and fish-tailing on the highway, my conscious self was thinking I can't believe this was happening. Reflexes had taken over. My conscious self did not regain control until my car stopped on the median strip. Even when I was screeching swear words during the swerving, my conscious self was observing but could not override the reflexive movements my body was making. I remained calm in the elk incident because I had the time to make a conscious choice in how best to avoid danger.

The dawn of true consciousness would also be closely related to the ability of an animal to think in a flexible manner in a new situation. Marian Stamp Dawkins at the University of Oxford, defines thinking by discussing what it is not. True thinking is not instinctual behavior, and it is not a simple "rule of thumb", or a conditioned response. Instinctual behavior is governed by neurological circuits hard wired into an animals brain. Mating rituals in birds and egg retrieval behavior in geese are instincts. Modern scientists call them "fixed action patterns". These are patterns run like computer programs. Fixed action patterns are triggered by a "sign stimuli". Geese will retrieve any object that is the approximate size of an egg and roll it back into the nest. Even beer cans will be retrieved. The beer can is the sign stimuli. A basic principle is that higher mammals have less instinctual behaviors than reptiles.

Conscious behavior and true thinking does not necessarily occur after an animal learns a conditioned response. An example of a conditioned response is; when a red light comes on a rat must press a lever to get food. When a green light comes on, the rat must jump over a barrier to avoid a shock. Cows lining up at 4:00 for milking does not require thinking. The cows and mice learn a simple "rule of thumb". In a classic experiment, blind mice were trained to run a maze almost without error. This required that the mice make correct turns at about twenty junctions in the maze. The maze was cleaned after each trial to remove olfactory cues and the orientation of the maze was rotated to prevent sound orientation from the laboratory. Temporary regressions were produced after new orientations of the maze, however the mice soon overcame this and were performing hardly any mistakes at all. After three months, the mice were successfully trained to the maze and four different variations of the maze were introduced. In the first, the size of the maze was enlarged, in the second the angles of the turns were skewed from 90 degree turns to 45 and 135 degree turns, the third was a reverse of the second and the mouse had to turn through 134 and 45 degree turns and the fourth was a mirror image of the original maze. Before long, the mice had successfully mastered all the different mazes. The success of the experiment proved that the mice had transformed the information learned from the first maze which the mice then used to solve the problems of the novel mazes.

When ever animal thinking is being evaluated, the "Clever Hans Effect" must always be taken into account. Hans was a famous horse which had been trained to count by tapping his hoof Many people were very impressed and thought the horse really could count. Hans did not know how to count, but he was a very perceptive horse who picked up subtle cues from his trainer.

Experiments with pigeons have shown that birds are capable of real thinking because they can use previously learned knowledge to solve problems. Research done by Herb Terrace demonstrated thinking in pigeons. To determine whether or not animals are really thinking about what they are doing requires testing under novel conditions. Some very elegant research with birds has shown very clearly that even our feathered friends can think. Herb Terrace, the famous chimpanzee trainer, trained pigeons to peck at a series of lighted buttons to obtain food. The task was designed to make it impossible for the pigeon to use simple "rule of thumb" such as "red light equals food." All of the experiments were conducted in an enclosed box and controlled by a computer to insure that the pigeons did not receive cues from the trainer.

After all the precautions necessary to rule out the Clever Hans Effect were taken, the pigeons were trained to peck four colored lighted buttons in the correct order. Pigeons who learned the correct order of the buttons were rewarded with food. When the positions of the buttons on the wall of their box were switched, the pigeons were still able to peck the colored buttons in the correct order.

To rule out the possibility that the pigeons accomplished this task as a great feat of memory without real thinking, Terrace did a second experiment to determine if the pigeons really had a concept of order that would hold up under several conditions. The birds were presented with one familiar colored button and three new buttons with patterns of lines or diamonds. For one group of birds, the familiar colored button was in the same order as the previous test. A second group of birds were presented with the colored buttons placed in a different order. Would having the colored in the previously learned orders help the birds to learn the correct sequence for pushing lines, diamonds and colors ? Pigeons that had the colored button in the old familiar order in the sequence learned the new sequence more quickly. The colored light and pattern buttons were randomly moved on the wall in the box to force the pigeons to learn the order concept and not to rely on the spatial cues such as button position on the wall. The ability of the pigeons to do this task satisfied Dawkins' criteria, who concluded that the birds were not responding to a "rule of thumb," but were, indeed, able to think.

G.M. Edelman (cited by Lindahi) states that mammals have primary consciousness and have mental images in the present but they may not have higher-order consciousness with both the past and future represented. Terrace's pigeons did not solve the problems using primary consciousness alone. They had to use both information from memory and information in the present. When I first considered my experience of avoiding the elk, I thought the experience depended on primary consciousness alone. This is not the case. In order to create an image of the elk crashing through the windshield, I had to have knowledge in memory of what happens when a car hits a large animal. I knew from memory that it often goes through the windshield. Without this knowledge, I might have pictured that hitting the elk would only cause a minor dent. I had memories which contained pictures of large animals crashing through the windshield. These memories were used to construct an image of that particular elk prone on the hood of my car just as the windshield was shattering. I pictured him a fraction of a second before his antlers would have gored me. Information from my memory was also used to create the simulated picture of a car rear ending me.

Brain Damage

Research on people who have brain damage provide much insights into consciousness. When one part of the brain is damaged, a certain aspect of consciousness is lost. Damage to the visual cortex where visual memories are stored makes it impossible for a person to think visually the way I do. Damage to the prefrontal cortex destroys the ability to integrate information between the senses. Brain imaging studies have shown that the transfer of information between the senses occurs in the frontal cortex. If a person feels a key in their pocket and then tries to find one that looks like the one lying on the table, activity in the frontal cortex increases. The frontal cortex is the CEO of the brain. It receives input from all other systems. It enables both animals and people to have flexible behaviors. People who have severe injuries to the frontal cortex can do routine activities such as cooking breakfast, but they have great difficulty dealing with novel things.

Damaging the frontal cortex in mammals has profound effects on behavior. Higher forms of consciousness probably require a frontal cortex to integrate information coming from the senses and from the limbic system, the emotional part of the brain. Rats with frontal cortex damage can perform species typical behaviors, but the sequence and pattern of the behavior is disrupted. Many types of learning are also affected. A normal rat can quickly learn that it can reach a piece of food through a small hole in a barrier. It will quickly shift strategies an use it paw to get to the food. A rat with frontal cortex damage will continue to make futile attempts to get the food with its mouth.

Damage to the hippocampus will interfere with some types of learning and memory but not others. Hippocampus damage affects conscious learning but it has no effect on unconscious learning. This indicates that conscious learning and unconscious learning work via different brain systems. A person with damage in the hippocampus can easily learn classical conditioning. A blast of air in the face and a light occur at the same time. After a number of trials the light by itself will make the person blink and flinch. However, a person with hippocampus damage can not learn the task if there is a delay between the air blast and the light. Having a delay requires them to be consciously aware of the relationship between the light and the air blast. Normal subjects Who were given the test only learned to blink in response to a delayed light when they were consciously aware of the relationship. Robert Clark and Larry Squire at the University of California suggest that a conditioning task with a delay between the two stimuli could be used as a test of conscious awareness in animals. A review of the literature indicate that rabbits can easily learn the relationship between two events that are delayed.

In the most severe cases of autism, consciousness fragments when the subsystems in the brain fail to work together. People with very severe sensory processing problems loose their body boundary when they become overloaded with too much sensory stimulation. Called mono-channel, these people are unable to determine where their body stops and a table or floor begins. They cannot attend to, or integrate both auditory stimulus and visual stimulus at the same time. What makes this even more complicated is the fact that in the visual system, separate subsystems of circuits process color, motion, and seeing edges. This was described to me in a conversation with Donna Williams, an autistic person with severe sensory processing problems. She related an experience she had while talking to a friend. A cat jumped up on her lap but she did not perceive it as a cat. All she saw was a vague black blob. The color circuits in her visual system perceived the black color of the cat, but the motion and edge detectors were shut down. She said; "Ongoing conscious awareness is a luxury that overload can not afford". In other words, when her nervous system is overloaded with too much stimulation, she looses conscious awareness of her actions. Her brain systems are no longer able to work together and she states that she has periods where she looses conscious awareness of her actions. She can go on sort of an auto pilot and not be fully aware.

It appears that the brain processes information in a compartmentalized manner. Seeing words, hearing words, thinking about a word and speaking a word activate different brain regions. Donna's experiences indicate that self awareness can become separated from the rest of the brain. When her sensory systems become jumbled, she looses some of the ability to extract meaning from sensory input. When she was a child, she described how she looked for meaning in the jumble of sensory input. Only a few sounds, such as the patterned sounds of the cat purring, the clock ticking, and the washing machine, had any meaning to her.

Research on people with autism shows that there are defects in the sensory processing and attention shifting mechanisms. The autistic brain takes longer to shift attention back and forth between a visual and an auditory task. A normal person can shift attention in microseconds, the autistic person can take a full second to shift attention. The cerebellum is underdeveloped and this may affect timing and coordination of all the different brain subsystems.

Self Awareness

Being able to solve problems in a flexible manner is necessary to have thought, but being able to think does not automatically make animals conscious. Thinking is not a necessary prerequisite for consciousness, but maybe intelligent behavior can occur without being self aware. LeDoux writes in his book The Emotional Brain, consciousness occurred when the brain expanded in mammals. Consciousness in animals enables them to relate several different things at once. This is a conception of the self as the experience. Chimpanzees have self awareness. When they look at themselves in a mirror, they do not react to the image as if it was another animal, and if paint is applied to the chimps face, it will try to wipe it off Because dogs are not able to do this, one should not jump to the conclusion that dogs are not self aware. Dogs may not be visually self aware, but are possibly smell self aware. A dog marking its territory is able to discriminate between its own urine and a strange dog's urine. It may be that self awareness can occur in one sensory modality and not in another. In Animal Minds, Donald Griffin writes how a bear must have a body self awareness to hide from hunters. I agree with LeDoux's and Griffins ideas about consciousness.

An ability to relate present experiences to memories is a critical component of consciousness. This agrees with both LeDoux's, and Griffins views on animal consciousness. In a natural environment, animals must learn about things in their environment, and learn to predict which of their actions are rewarding or aversive. This requires the integration of different sensory systems into coherent and meaningful memories. The brain receives input from the eyes, ears, skin, tongue, and nose, from which it learns and stores representations of valuable stimuli. Recall of these representations are used to control adaptive behaviors.

If you hold a peach, you need to be able to feel its shape and see its shape. Holding the peach to your nose can integrate smell into the representation of the peach. For adaptive behavior to occur, animals have to have some ability to anticipate the future. Even simple invertebrates can learn a conditioned response and use information from past experience. For example, in humans with the highest levels of consciousness, we are able to look into the future and know that if we don't eat the peach soon it will rot. How far an animal can anticipate the future may depend on the complexity of the brain. Dogs can anticipate a trip to the vet's office when the car goes down a certain road. They can also anticipate a pleasurable event. A dog will come running and will jump up and down when it anticipates being petted. The difference between a dog and a person is understanding that the past and the future is a matter of degree. A dog can anticipate an event which will be coming up in the next five minutes but it is probably unable to think a year into the future. A person with frontal lobe damage loses the ability to anticipate the future. However, some animals that hunt may be able to know that the food will go bad if it is not eaten in a few days. I agree with the biologists view that there are degrees of consciousness and that the degree of consciousness is due to the ability of different subsystems within increasingly complex brains to integrate information and make associations.

Conclusions

As brains become more complex the complexity of consciousness increases. Maybe in some animals only one sense is fully conscious. It may be easier to define consciousness by saying what it is not. It is not a reflex, it is not simple conditioning, and it is not a hard wired instinct which works like a computer program. Conscious behavior is flexible. Conscious behavior allows animals to make choices between different options. It is difficult for some people to imagine a consciousness that is different from themselves. Language based thinkers often have difficulty imagining that animals can think. They can not imagine thinking without words. Collin Allen in the philosophy department at Texas A & M University states that many scientists can accept the idea that animals have internal representations of memories and events. Some people think animals are not conscious because they do not have beliefs and desires like humans. I do not have some of the higher abstract consciousness most people have, so I have to define "belief" and "desire." If I say I desire chocolate cake I immediately see a slice of cake. In fact I see it at a particular cafe'. Desire has no abstract meaning. I just see pictures of things I would want such as an ice cream cone. I use the word belief to describe things where there is a high probability that something may be true, but I am not 100% sure.

Are Dolphins Aware?

2010-03-07T22:21:00.000-08:00

Here is an extract from a symposium held on dolphin awareness. What do you think?

Diana Reiss , Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, United States

Bottlenose dolphins are highly social mammals with large and complex brains. Studies conducted in the field and aquaria have provided increasing evidence for the dolphin’s cognitive-social prowess, revealing that dolphins are cultural animals - much of their behavior is learned and passed down through generations.
They have demonstrated the capacity for mirror-self recognition (MSR), a hallmark of a level of self-awareness, previously thought to be restricted to humans but also shared by the great apes, elephants and magpies. Despite profound differences in neuroanatomical characteristics and evolutionary histories dolphins, primates (human and great apes), and elephants show striking parallels in both the progression of behavioral stages and actual responses to a mirror providing compelling evidence for convergent cognitive evolution. MSR may index an increased self-other distinction that also underlies the social complexity and altruistic tendencies shared among these species.

Can our scientific knowledge be used to influence international policy decisions and ethical considerations of the treatment of dolphins? Do scientific facts translate and transcend cultural boundaries? In the dolphin drive hunts in Japan, there are no restrictions on capture or killing methods of the highly sentient dolphin and other small whales. The killing methods fail to meet even the most minimal requirements used in U.S. laboratories and slaughterhouses. Scientists are making the argument on the basis of the scientific evidence that the drive hunts are unjustifiable and indefensible in that they inflict pain and suffering on animals that are intelligent, sentient, socially complex and have capacity to experience pain and suffering.

A Test for Self- Awareness?

2010-03-05T22:54:00.000-08:00

I came upon a short argument for and against animal awareness. What surprises me is how the author chooses to separate man from an animal by becoming, what I would call 'significant'. In this case it is the argument that seeks to raise man far beyond any animal by the mere fact that he can 'be aware of being aware'.

In the animal kingdom very little time is spent on being aware of being aware. Animal societies, where they exist (and they do) focus on the survival of the species. In most cases the survival of the species requires knowing the limits and abilities/duties of the creature within his group.

Whales chose, over 65 million years ago, to move from land to water. Interesting to note that it was about at the same time that the earth was recovering from a major asteroid hit. SOunds to me that whales were not so dumb after all! They have certainly outlived and survived most species from that period. Think for a second. In most cases they feed on microscopic organisms which convert the energy of the sun into protein. The micro-organisms, plankton, have a rather fast life span but multiply at pretty fast rates. Whales also can go without food for extremely long periods of time. And yet their sizes dwarf man!

It's interesting to note that man has gone the way of electronics and skyscrapers.

Here is the article. What do you think?

Written by Michael Ricciardi

Published on August 4th, 2009

The test is now referred to as mirror self recognition (MSR). The test indicates self-awareness of a higher, and formerly, distinctly human level. The test is also thought to correlate to higher brain behaviors such as empathy and altruism.It was called the “red mark test”, or just the “mark test”, and it was first tried out on a Gorilla over two decades ago. Scientists applied a smudge of red powder to the forehead of a sleeping gorilla, then placed a large viewing mirror close by, and waited for the ape to awaken. To the surprise of all, after the gorilla first noticed its reflection (and reacted to it as a social response), it then began to recognize that it was looking at itself, somehow, and, noticing the smudge over its eyes, immediately began trying to wipe it off. Later, the gorilla would use the mirror to groom itself and even examine parts of its body.

Most every animal in nature, when confronted with a mirror, will interpret the image therein as another animal, possibly a threat, and may attack the image, or, be scared away. After awhile, the animals habituate and ignore the reflected image entirely. But the gorilla–a “higher” ape–recognized the image as its own, a feat that require a degree of abstract thought and cognitive association.

Dolphins too recognize their image when confronted with a reflecting surface and have shown other remarkable abilities such as abstract reasoning (regarding object series recognition). and self-selected vocalizations with human trainers.

Now, we can add elephants to the very short list of animals besides humans with self-awareness.

Researchers (Plotnik, et al, reporting in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Science ) working with Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at the Bronx zoo, conducted an MSR test. They applied “real” and “sham” marks to the rights sides of the pachyderms’ heads and waited to see how the elephants would respond to these when a large mirror was placed in their presence. Sure enough, the elephants demonstrated that they understood they were looking at themselves (and not another elephant) and begin touching the marks with their trunks. In all, their behavior during the MSR tests matched those of apes and dolphins. According to the paper’s authors: “These parallels suggest convergent cognitive evolution most likely related to complex sociality and cooperation. ”

The intelligence of elephants has long been known (though tribal lore, and from field observations) and established. They have complex social lives and relations and do indeed have excellent memories. Also, a full grown male’s brain may weigh 14 pounds (the actual measure of “intelligence” is brains size to body mass ratio). It is believed that the size (relative to body size) and structure of our larger, more recently evolved brains enables higher states of conscious perception (such as self awareness). The animals tested here all possess large brains–some, like the dolphin and elephant, larger than our human ones. Each has a cerebral cortex (the outer-most layer of brain matter, known as theneomammalian brain), although this is quite small in the gorilla as compared to humans.

But we humans are not just self aware, we are aware that we are aware. We express this “higher” form of awareness primarily through speaking (e.g., Isn’t this a strange conversation that we’re having?) or through symbolic manipulation and recursion (e.g., “This statement is false.”) This is called meta-awareness*, and so far, it has not been found outside of our species.

* Author note (January, 2010): Meta-awareness seems, in large part, to be enabled by symbolic communication/language (spoken and written especially), and some would argue that if these other animals had such a mode of communication, they might also exhibit meta-awareness, This is a difficult “what if” to argue with, but I would note that meta-awareness can be expressed purely visually as well (through a visual device known as a Droste image (e.g., a picture of a person holding an identical picture of himself, which contains the identical image, and so on…), or the “Droste effect”, interpretation of which depends upon abstract, cognitive representation in the brain, and not the ability to write or speak in symbolic terms. If some clever scientists could figure out a way to present Droste type imagery to these animals, and then also figure out how to interpret/measure the animals’ awareness or understanding (or lack thereof) of what it is seeing, then maybe….

What is Self Awareness? Is it Consciousness?

2010-03-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

Having a sense of self is being able to be aware of one's self. When an animal grooms it self, it is aware of it self been groomed. This is also a gesture of love towards ones self and sometimes towards the ones that you love. For example: when one animal wants to prove to another its affection, most of the time, if it is a mammal or a bird, it shows this with a grooming gesture towards the other.

Sometimes when animals are passing through stressful situations in which there is no way out, they, in turn, start punishing themselves, for they bestow the anger of failure and frustration towards themselves. If it is a parrot, instead of grooming itself, it might start plucking its own feathers. If it is a dog, it might start chewing on its own fur or chasing after its own tail. These are usually signs of self punishments that can only be seen in beings with a well developed sense of self.

Some animal behaviorists try to find out which animals have a sense of self, by placing each animal in front of a mirror to find out if it can recognize its own mirror image. This test also involves a mark which is placed on the body or the forehead of the animal. If the animal sees itself in the mirror and understands that such image is itself, it will try to take the stain off while looking at the mirror. This will show if such a being is aware of itself since it has understood its own reflection.

Although this is not a good way of finding whether that animal has a sense of self, it is a good way to understand whether particular animals are intelligent enough in the area of understanding reflections.

As we shall learn, recognizing one's self in the mirror is the act of certain types of intelligent thinking processes, not self awareness.

It is very difficult for some animals to understand that their image could be someplace else, other than within themselves. Because of this, a lot of animals can not understand their mirror image.

Most animals have an imprint, a mental image of who they are. This makes it quite difficult when they get to meet their mirror image, for in their perspective, it is not them in the mirror, but some one else mimicking their actions, which, in turn, might cause some types of animals to become quite angry at their own reflections.

Some animals also seem to perceive reflections as having volume. Meaning that if the animal's self image is perceived by the mind as having volume, not just a flat unreal reflection, the animal's brain will not be able to understand it correctly; and it will view its own reflection as being another individual.

When adult chimpanzees are given mirrors, they take some time to understand that the image in the mirror is themselves. So because chimpanzees do not understand their reflections at first view, that does not mean that during the time in which they could not understand their reflections, they where not self aware and that right after understanding their mirror image, all of the sudden, they became self aware. Therefore, this event is only showing that they became aware, not of themselves, for they were already that, but of their own reflections.

So the abilities for chimpanzees, dolphins and other intelligent animals to understand their mirror image comes from their intelligence, not from their self awareness. This ability only means that some animals have the type of intelligence which can help them find out that their image can be some place else other than within themselves.

To understand yourself in the mirror you need intelligence in the area of unnatural phenomenon, but this is only relative to the animal that does not have the intelligence to recognize that particular event. In other ways, a mirror to some animals is like a magician's trick to an audience. An audience can not understand a magician's trick, for it is an action in the realm of unnatural behaviors which the audience's minds are not fit for understanding.

Unlike many other animals, because we humans have great communication skills, we can teach others about those unnatural behaviors and they, in turn, can be able to trick others with no knowledge of such information.

Although in today's societies we do not think much about the mirror, in the past, even ourselves have been fulled by it, for a lot of people throughout history have thought of the mirror as a magical object where a parallel universe existed, where they could meet themselves in. At other times, some people have thought of the mirror as a powerful object that could capture their souls, and, therefore, thought that who ever owned this magical object also owned their souls.

So when it comes to the mirror, we can not rely on it to prove our self awareness, for it is, indeed, a very strange and mysterious object, even for some of us to understand.

The Real Self Awareness:

Self awareness is proven by the many behavioral patterns which animals exhibit which suggest, without the shadow of a doubt, the possessions of certain mental stimuli; some of which are: status, pride, self esteem, territoriality, self punishment, self love, supremacy, and submission.

As an example lets take supremacy and submission: supremacy and submission are feelings which can not exist without self awareness, for if you are not aware of yourself, how can you be able to understand how great you are or how small you are.

Supremacy and submission are emotions which exists in fish, reptiles, mammals and birds. The reason why it exists in so many animals is because, along with territoriality, it is the most primitive of all feelings within self awareness.

It is my belief, that the sense of self awareness might have evolved as the by-product from some of the senses of self preservation, such as supremacy and territoriality. In other ways, when you evolve these adaptations, which are neurological, instinctive factors in the brain, what you get as the by-product of such, is the primitive self awareness which is present in fish as well as reptiles.

Self awareness is a very important adaptation, because it gives animals the ability to recognize their environment and themselves in order to avoid being hunted, create and defend their territorial grounds, groom themselves, protect themselves, and help themselves survive in many situations which require the love and the caring of one's self.

As an example, lets take territoriality: to own a piece of property you, most likely, will need to be aware of your self in order to understand the ownership of your property. If you where not self aware you would not have the need to own any property, for you will not be aware of your own needs.

For example: as a territorial animal, if you would put to words the feelings and thoughts that will come to your mind during a territorial dispute, you would say "Get off my territory!" you can not say "Get off the territory!" for you will be implying that the territory is not yours. You have to use an indication of self worth, which in this case would be the pronoun "my". Therefore, if you are a territorial animal which does not show much of any other signs of self awareness, you most likely will be self aware.

Some animal behaviorist would explain a territorial dispute with the phrase "back off!," but that would imply that the animal is uncomfortable with another and just wants to be left alone. So in this case, these two words would not apply within this behavioral action.

Self Esteem:

Another part to the sense of self is self esteem. This is what dictates the level of control that an animal has within its social group. For example: if a dog thinks of a person, lets say a woman, as her being his boss, and he has just done something wrong which has caused her to yell at him or hit him, the dog will most likely put his tail between his legs and lower his head, getting a hump between his shoulders, while perhaps giving out a high squeaky sound. This is a sign that his self esteem is low and has been temporarily damage by this action. He is ether ashamed of what he has done or thinks that he is not good enough to go against that person's willful actions.

In turn, if the dog has the impression that he is the matriarch or alpha male (the one in control), and that person would do the same behavioral action, the dog instead of being submissive, could now ether bark with a strong voice at that person or fight back and bite that person who hit him, to show his disapproval.

A behavior such as this, would be significantly affected by the type of relationship which individuals have with each other.

This body language that some animals have, is used as a means of establishing status within groups. The majority of animals who possess this behavior are pack animals, such as wolves, lions, homosapiens, chimpanzees, hyenas and others which are social animals that need each other in order to improve their survival.

Most of these animals also possess a strong emotional communication behavior. Animals who are social and have a strong emotional communication behavior, are able to be a stronger part of each other, which, in turn, ables them to significantly hunt better and fight together against any negative event which their natural environment might provide.

Status:

Following self esteem comes status, which is the position that an animal occupies within a group. Status gives the animal an idea of how big or small it is within its group. It is an awareness of that animal's self worth, relative to its social group. For example: if you could explain the behavioral patterns of status in a verbal manner, you would probably say it in one of these statements: "I am better than you, because of my position." "I am not as good as you, but I am better than him/her because of my position." or "I am not as good as any one else, so, therefore, I always have to beg because of my position."

Most of the time, status is influenced by ether one, or both of these factors: the level of will power and self esteem that an animal has, which causes it to fight or not to fight for a better position within a group; or by how that group feels about the individual claiming that status.

It is quite ridiculous to consider that because a human is a human and a dog is a dog or a cat is a cat, that the same behavioral patterns which they all share mean different things between them, for if this was the case, we humans would not be able to communicate with a dog or any other animal in the way that we do behaviorally, as well as emotionally.

Usually, same environment creates same adaptations; even if the species are different.

We also have to understand that about two percent of our genes are actually unique, and that most of our behavioral patterns comes from the fact that we are mammals, not from the fact that we are humans. If other animals were not related to us at all, then maybe, we could have enough evidence to prove differently, but in this planet, this is not the case.

Pride:

Although pride is a feeling (mental stimulus), it is another part of the sense of self, because it concerns the importance of one's self. This stimulus gives animals a certain higher feeling of self worth which some animals use, to prove to their opposite sex that they are worthy of mating with, and it also helps individuals, such as matriarchs, behave in a manner that will show importance and higher status.

In the world of some bird species, pride is very important, for it helps male birds do their ritual dances with the finesse required to win the females. These ritual dances show the females the beauty, health, style and self expression which the males possess.

In some bird species, when the male appears too desperate and gets nervous, this feeling is expressed in his ritual dances, making the females loose interest and fly away. Such a behavior is probably due to the bird not thinking of himself as being good enough, for it has failed too many times before, and therefore, panic and desperation starts to show through the ritual.

In order for these male birds to win their females, they must perform their rituals without hesitation, which means that they must have an above average sense of pride stimulus to help them perform without getting desperate.

Birds that have manage to do their rituals right are able to breed and spread those proud qualities on to their species, while the birds that are not as proud, are most likely not to be able to do their rituals right and end up not breeding at all, making that species have a well developed pride stimulus.

Pride is a stimulus which evolved to stimulate all of the sociological senses of an organism towards performing their best. It is an adaptation made to do just that.

A Sense of Belonging:

An animal needs to be self aware in order for it to recognized another individual as a part of itself. Therefore, a sense of belonging is yet, another part of the sense of self awareness. This is what tells pack animals that they are a part of one particular group, and separate from other groups of the same species. For example: lions in Africa travel in groups, but each group has a sense of belonging, a sense of us, so when one group of lions meets a member of another group, lets say a female lion, and that lion asks for food, it could be hard for that lion to get food from that group, since that lion would not be considered a part of their group, and therefore, she might be considered an enemy.

This sense is also the reason why two groups of animals from the same species can be able to fight against each other. Such is the case with hyenas, lions, wild dogs, wolves, humans, chimpanzees, baboons and many other species.

By having this type of system, the group that works better can be able to succeed better, therefore, replacing the other groups with behavioral systems that might not work as good.

Taking into consideration the diversity caused by natural selection, it is quite possible that within different species of animals, there are also different or/and advanced senses of recognition which can make them see reality in different manners. Manners that our own perceptions can not understand.

Decision Making Processes:

These processes are a conjunction of thoughts, intelligence, instincts and feelings, which gives animals their mental freedom and helps them develop their personalities. Most of us who have pets, know that most animals have their own personalities and are always trying to do what they want, unless they are highly trained not to do so.

Decision making processes vary in their complexity depending on the intelligence of the animal, its environment, the skill or experience that it has at makings those decision, its social rank (if any), and a few other mental interactions and adaptations.

Decision making processes give animals an upper hand in deciding how to operate their escapes, how to operate their hunting strategies, where to rest better, when is best to play, how to protect their young, and so on. It also gives some intelligent animals the abilities of self expression.

1997 Samuel Vergio Miensinompe

The Case for Dolphin Consciousness

2010-02-26T22:38:00.000-08:00

Excerpted from David Kaiser

The largest brain ever to appear on the planet belongs to the sperm whale (Physeter catodon), a member of the Cetacean Order, whose brain can weigh up to 9200 g, with an average of 7818 grams. One scientist has suggested, solely on brain weight, that the sperm whale possesses a higher development of conscious-ness than humans, despite a relatively low brain-to-body weight ratio: 37,093.0 kg to 7.8 kg, (Lilly, 1967). Opinions vary as to how indicative brain size and other neuroanatomical correlates are of brain function and overall intelligence. How to measure a creature's intelligence, or level of consciousness or sapience, is problematic (as noted by cf. Jerison, 1986); the relationship between the brain and the mind is not an obvious one. Ignoring dualist arguments, consciousness is a brain function, a product of a specific organization of neural groups, but its anatomy and phylogeny are unclear. Consciousness in its present form in Western cultures may have emerged recently, during historic times but features of consciousness may be prevalent to different degrees in other mammals, specifically in larger-brained species such as apes and higher primates, carnivores, elephants, and whales.

Dolphins demonstrate many behaviors that show signs of conscious awareness. For instance, behaviors which are illicit and punishable are often performed only when a dolphin believes no one is around (e.g., Savage-Rumbaugh and Hopkins, 1986). When a dolphin squirts water at a human (to show annoyance), he will often raise his head out of the water to curiously observe the effect his behavior had on the unsuspecting victim (personal observation). Both examples show an awareness of effects one's behavior has on others. They also have voluntary penile erections, which may suggest that they are conscious of things of which humans are not.

Whatever cases are made for or against dolphins possessing human-like sapience, it is interesting to remember that they already possessed their present mental life (presumably) 15 to 25 million years ago.

This belief that mental experiences are a unique attribute of a single species is not only unparsimonious; it is conceited. it seems more likely than not that mental experiences, like many other characters, are widespread, at least among multicellular animals, but differ greatly in nature and complexity. -- D.R. Griffin, 1981.

All Dogs Go To Heaven?

2010-02-24T23:18:00.000-08:00

Although it might have been 'staged' I have to say that there are a lot of people out there who go to church and say their prayer with far less intensity than this young boy's friend.

Animal consciousness is not being aware of what's on the TV or in the news. It doesn't work that way. It's about seeing the importance and recognizing it, sometimes without knowing what it's (life) is all about.

We all have pets we talk to. We even believe they understand us. Is it only extended to our pets? I remember watching a National Geographic episode, which took place around a watering hole. There were many kinds of large and small animals. Elephants, for one and turtles, for two. In this case there was a small turtle beneath a large elephant. As the elephant began to move forward, one would have thought that the elephant would have simply crushed the small turtle without care or concern. Instead, the elephant carefully and determinedly, stepped around the turtle, careful not to crush it.

Two completely different species. One acknoweledges the other and gives life. Consciousness is not just being self-aware, it is also being 'other-aware'.

Maybe the above is just a cute photo. But even if just a game, the dog participated. And got a result.

We attribute more awareness to our domesticated pets. But the truth is they have no reason to be more aware than their distant 'wild' relatives.

Watching Whales Watching Us in California

2010-02-22T21:32:00.000-08:00

Joel Reynolds

Director of NRDC's Urban Program, the Marine Mammal Protection and So. California Ecosystem projects, Santa Monica, CA

Posted July 13, 2009 in Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places

In New York Times Magazine ("Watching Whales Watch Us"), author Charles Siebert lays out a compelling case for what many people have long suspected: that great whales are conscious, social, interactive animals with complex social structures and cultures. The article is beautifully written and full not just of anecdotes of remarkable whale-human interactions but interviews with leading scientists who have documented that whales teach, learn, cooperate, grieve, and even use tools in their quest for food.

Using the 'friendly gray whales" at Laguna San Ignacio on the west coast of Baja California as the touchstone, Siebert covers a range of topics in making his case -from military sonar (calling NRDC's litigation to control it a "turning point" in the relationship between humans and whales) to commercial whaling to personal and historical anecdotes of interactions with these massive creatures in the wild. He suggests the remarkable proposition that these ancient creatures, once hunted virtually to extinction by humans, may somehow have learned now to forgive and even trust us, in spite of our centuries-old efforts to slaughter their ancestors for oil and other whale byproducts. Siebert argues that whale-human relations have long been characterized by a "stark dualism: manic swings between mythologizing and massacre; between sublime awe and assiduous annihilation, the testimonies of their slayers often permeated with a deep sense of both remorse and respect for the victims."

And nowhere is this more clearly the case than at Laguna San Ignacio.

At this extraordinary place - now a World Heritage Site, a biosphere reserve, and the last undisturbed breeding and calving lagoon of the California gray whale - this large baleen species that migrates each year along the west coast from Alaska was hunted by whalers like Charles Scammon, who would trap the calves in the shallow lagoon as a means of enticing the full-grown mothers within range for harpooning. After reaching near-extinction at levels below 1,000 whales, the species began to rebound when commercial whaling was outlawed in the mid to late 20th Century, with the eastern Pacific gray whale stock now reaching an estimated 18,000 gray whales at least - one of the most dramatic recoveries of any large whale species. It is in this lagoon today that whale-watchers come every winter to ride the protected waters to see and even touch 40-ton, 45-feet long wild animals and their babies in their natural habitat.

As but one example of the continuing, post-commercial whaling threats to these magnificent animals, it was in this lagoon that, in the 1990's, Mitsubishi Corporation and the government of Mexico proposed to build the world's largest industrial salt works - 116-square miles of industrial development, with 17 enormous diesel pumps sucking 6,000 gallons per second from the lagoon 24-hours a day; a million-ton stockpile of salt; a two-kilometer pier into the Bay of Whales where ocean-going tankers would dock to receive the salt for transport to Japan; and billions of gallons of toxic salt brine, stored in ponds adjacent to the lagoon and eventually dumped into coastal waters. Together with the largest environmental coalition ever formed in Mexico and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, NRDC mounted the largest public campaign in its history to challenge and, against tremendous odds, ultimately defeat the salt works project. Now, ten years after President Zedillo of Mexico announced that the project would be abandoned, NRDC and a coalition of international and Mexican non-profits have undertaken a conservation initiative to preserve in perpetuity one million acres around the lagoon through easements and land acquisition - to ensure that the whales will be protected from a return of the salt works project or any other major development.

This is a success story, but the international struggle to protect and restore whale populations around the globe will never end. Charles Siebert's article is a powerful statement of why that struggle, by NRDC and others, is essential.

Some Basic Scientific Facts about Whale and Dolphin Consciousness

2010-02-20T23:30:00.000-08:00

This is an excerpt taken from David Noha:

I have seen numerous statistics on whale and dolphin brains; unfortunately these are the kinds of statistics that people get emotional about and hence tend to exaggerate. Several smart science authors I trust have repeated this general point: neuron counts in the neocortex are about ten times higher in humans than chimps, about the same in humans and bottlenosed dolphins, and some whales have up to ten times as many as humans. Of course neurons have synapses, around 5000 per in humans (increasing with age) and I haven't seen numbers on cetacean or sirenian synapse counts.

What "consciousness" is, of course, is not a question we have one solid answer to. Symbolic reasoning may be a better characteristic to consider. Those who argue against animal reasoning typically cite primate research and ignore dolphin research. Dolphins have certainly been shown to have the capability of understanding sentence structure and prepositional relations.

For me, the deeper moral issue is decided by the principle of parsimony (akin to Occam's Razor). If the preponderance of evidence suggests that whales and dolphins may be conscious, we shouldn't be murdering them. Since we can identify the neocortex as the seat of consciousness, or at least symbolic reasoning, and we can observe a rough correlation between cortical complexity and behavioral complexity, I think it's rather obvious that we should look before we leap/kill for the two classes of animals with neocortices similar in complexity to humans: dolphins and whales.

Thoughts from Adam Henne

2010-02-19T00:21:00.000-08:00

Whales, we now know, teach and learn. They scheme. They cooperate, and they grieve. They recognize themselves and their friends. They know and fight back against their enemies. And perhaps most stunningly, given all of our transgressions against them, they may even, in certain circumstances, have learned to trust us again.

I just picked up at the library, but have yet to read, Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce’sWild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. I’m intrigued by the way animal behavior researchers are letting go of their fear of anthropomorphising animals and beginning to acknowledge and investigate their social and even moral relationships.

Especially compelling about this whale story, beyond their social complexity and apparent morality, is the appearance of new relations with researchers. When a whale consciousness encounters human consciousness, what does that look like? There’s a now widely available essay by Derrida in which he discusses his relationship with his cat –L’Animal que donc je suis. His cat meets his eyes, his cat sees him stepping naked out of the shower, his cat is the archetypal alien Other. But! An Other undeniably engaged in a two-way relationship with Derrida, a relationship whose very nature is premised on the incommensurable difference between their species. What does it mean to be seen by your cat? Or, as it appears in the Times article on whales:

The baby gray glided up to the boat’s edge, and then the whole of his long, hornbill-shaped head was rising up out of the water directly beside me, a huge, ovoid eye slowly opening to take me in. I’d never felt so beheld in my life.

To me, the ur-text on understanding relationships between species is Donna Haraway’s recent-ish When Species Meet. Like everything she writes, it is brilliant, rigorous, fun, and impossible to summarize. Building off (way off) of her earlier Companion Species Manifesto, Haraway examines the nature and quality of relationships between humans and non-humans – in particular the way that history and power have interleaved with evolution and ecology to produce strange and sometimes beautiful hybrid assemblages. Like especially, of course, the domestic dog. What Haraway does that Derrida (not to mention Buber) do not is consider what kind of responsibilities emerge from the relationships we generate. What we as humans owe to dogs, for example, for having enrolled them in our 10,000 year co-evolutionary strategy.

What might this tell us about whales?

Teresa Wagner's blog about Whales

2010-02-16T23:41:00.000-08:00

One of the most transformative and pivotal things the whales told me many years ago is that “higher consciousness is not related to species, breed, intelligence or ego. It’s the result of a soul’s choice to accept and embrace opportunities to grow, regardless of the form (or formlessness) a soul may be experiencing at any time.”

Before hearing this from the whales, I had placed them and their wise messages on a towering pedestal, assigning them a greatness I thought achievable only by whales and perhaps saints and bodhisattvas. They called me on the carpet for this view!

I was told that “wisdom is not meant to be shrouded in mystery, intellectualized, or admired from afar as if unattainable, but to be utilized and lived.” Furthermore, they admonished me (affectionately!), “not to idolize or worship others’ greatness but to access it as guidance as I find my own greatness and live it.”

Another significant message came when a client asked “What is the future of the whales?” The response was:

The whales will be fine.
The tides have turned.
The energy of light consciousness on earth has passed the 50% mark.

50% doesn’t represent numbers of people or animals who have changed, but the amount of light that has been generated.

Great compassion has been increased within the consciousness of many who are witness to violence and wrong doings on earth. It may not appear so. But there is light greater than we can see.

The energy of love and light emanated from beings on earth now is greater than the energy of confusion and fear. The light in the heart of one being with pure intention to share love with others can serve and help millions in one moment.

What Do you do think?

2010-02-14T12:26:00.000-08:00

I was traveling on the dirt back roads of Entre Rios, a province of Argentina. The land is flat and fertile and it was summer. As we were rolling along the road and with three other passengers, I suddenly saw a huge four and one half foot (1 1/2 meter) lizard on the road, struggling.

I signaled our driver to stop and back up, as we were traveling about 60 km/hr, which is about 45 miles per hour in the U.S. No one had seen the big lizard except for myself.

When we stopped near him, I realized that he had been hit by an earlier car. There was no blood, but I could see he was struggling to gather his wits and get to the side of the road. By now my wife was next to me. He was slightly hissing and looking at the both of us, but I could see he had not recovered from the impact and was having difficulty moving to the side of the road.

I looked at him and with my mind, I said " I can help you but you have to trust me." The large lizard stopped thrashing and lay there, looking at me.

"You can speak with me?"

"Yes. You are in pain."

"Yes, I am. It is hard for me to move."

Looking at this huge lizard, I had never come in contact with one before. Apparently they are native to Argentina and called 'Tegus'. I knew that they are related to the monitor family, and so if bitten I would possibly receive a very infectious bite or even poisonous one, as well as the fact that this kind of lizard, once having a hold of anything, does not let go.

I knew I could not leave him there in the road to take his chances. He was beautiful shades of reds and greys.

"You will have to trust me. I can leave you here, but doing so you may be hit by the moving machines once again. Your life may end. Or you can trust me. Allow me to pick you up carefully and I will put you off this path. I cannot care for you, but I can move you to safety, where you may have a chance to recover."

The lizard looked at me.

"Then do it so."

"What are you going to do?" asked my wife.

"Trust, me, Dine."

And with that I carefully knelt down and gently placed one hand under the rear legs of the massive lizard. All the while he watched me. Then, ever so softly, I said "I am now putting my hand under your neck. Then I will lift you carefully and take you to the side."

The lizard never took his gaze from me.

"I will trust you, but if you squeeze I will bite. I hurt."

"I understand my friend, trust me."

With that I lifted the large lizard up. By now our friends in the car had their heads out and watched me in amazement as I gingerly carried the creature to the side of the road, gently placing him on soft tufts of wheat grass. All the while he looked at me. His breathing was now smooth and not erratic.

As I took my hands away from him, I said

"I am going now, the rest is up to you."

We exchanged glances.

"Remember you are not alone. We are never alone. There is a great hand that guides us all, as it guided me to you."

Getting back into the car, my friends looked at me in amazement. We then went on our way.

So tell me, are animals really just wild and they bite and they have no awareness. What was that which just happened?

You tell me.

Science News Begins to get it right

2010-02-13T00:18:00.000-08:00

A recent report by Susan Gaidos peers into the possibility that animals do have consciousness. But where it goes off is that it tries to equate brain synapses and a nervous system is responsible. This might be an answer but for one thing, not all animal brains, creature brains are the same. So what is consciousness after all? See if you can figure it out. Is it just meat and synaptic charges, or is it something else?

By Susan Gaidos, Science News

One afternoon while participating in studies in a University of Oxford lab, Abel snatched a hook away from Betty, leaving her without a tool to complete a task. Spying a piece of straight wire nearby, she picked it up, bent one end into a hook and used it to finish the job. Nothing about this story was remarkable, except for the fact that Betty was a New Caledonian crow.

Betty isn’t the only crow with such conceptual ingenuity. Nor are crows the only members of the animal kingdom to exhibit similar mental powers. Animals can do all sorts of clever things: Studies of chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins and birds have found that some can add, subtract, create sentences, plan ahead or deceive others.

To carry out such tasks, these animals must be drawing on past experiences and then using them along with immediate perceptions to make sense of it all. In other words, some scientists would say, these animals are thinking consciously.

Many people (some scientists among them) would like to believe that consciousness sets the human mind apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. But whether in humans or other creatures, behavioral signs of cognizance all arise from the tangled interactions of neurons in the brain. So a growing number of scientists contend that animals with brain structures and neural circuitry similar to humans’ might experience something like human awareness, even if a bit less sophisticated.

Still, everyone agrees that consciousness is one of science’s great unsolved mysteries. Something goes on in the heads of people when they are seeing, thinking or feeling that does not occur during dreamless sleep. For two decades or so, researchers have been conducting studies to see what kinds of brain activity match up with those specific experiences.

Drawing on this information, scientists are now poised to explore the possible presence of consciousness in animals. Neurobiological information gleaned from studies of brain activity, together with studies of animal behavior, may help scientists identify various types of conscious states in animals, says neurobiologist David Edelman of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. He and collaborator Anil K. Seth outlined a framework for probing animal consciousness in the September Trends in Neurosciences.

“In many cases, we still know nothing about the brain areas that would control consciousness in a particular animal,” Edelman says. “But we now have data in the human domain that suggests where to look and what to look for.”

Past studies have shown that specific monkey brain structures do what they do in humans when the animals engage in certain activities, such as tracking objects in their visual field. “This raises the intriguing question whether conscious experience requires the specific structure of human or primate brains,” biologist Donald Griffin wrote in Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness in 2001.

But today, Edelman says, most neuro scientists agree that consciousness probably correlates with the degree of complexity of the nervous system, not just a specific brain architecture. And studies are exploring self-awareness beyond monkeys and apes, even beyond mammals.

Another Voice for Animal Consciousness

2010-02-11T01:19:00.000-08:00

I know that I am not alone in my thoughts. There many like me, but not necessarily willing to put up a blog about animals. All the same, it does me good to see their thoughts and the thinking:

After reading some articles (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=animal+consciousness) on animal consciousness, I was surprised to find that so many scientists, psychologists and philosphers regard almost every animal but homo sapein as completely unconscious. They were making arguments such as animals feel pain, but they don't know they feel pain, basically they reposnd as if they feel pain, but they are not really experiencing it. Some of them, referred to as Cartesians, were theorizing that consciousness did not evolve until the development of art and other forms of culture in the Upper Paleolithic. Is it just me or is this just as non-sensical as multi-culturalism? Why would otherwise intelligent, educated people espouse such ridiculous ideas?

This all began with Descartes who proposed that man's soul was a 'ghost in a machine'. To Descartes it was the ghost that made man aware of being aware, etc. I had a philosophy professor who told me one time that Descartes was a *VERY* subtle philosopher and to exercise great care in how you go about interpreting him.

His driving passion, so to speak, was his fear of the Catholic Church and the Office of the Holy Inquisition. The royal treatment they handed out to Galileo was in Descartes' lifetime. Descartes' writing about the 'ghost in the machine' was one of those subtleties. Cartesian dualism might rest entirely on a mistaken interpretation of Descartes' writing. Suppose he wanted to criticize some aspect of Church teaching, such as the doctrine of the seperate existence of the soul. He could develop an argument that would lead to an obviously false conclusion that he assumed everyone as intelligent as he would get. Except nobody got it. He proposed that there was within man a ghost (the ghost in the machine) that was not present within animals. He then deduced that animals were not conscious. In line with this hypothesis he would have assumed that since it was obvious that animals are conscious and do feel pain that the theory of the ghost in the machine would stand as refuted and so would the church teaching about the soul (without him being guilty before the Inquisition). In other words, it was his intent to set up his own theory to fail in order to refute a church teaching. However, it backfired. He was taken for serious and so was his 'ghost in the machine'. Anyway, if I am right on this, so-called Cartesians are as thick as his contemporaries and just do not get it.

It should be obvious to any rational person that animals are conscious and do feel pain. If I can doubt that animals feel pain I can just as well doubt that fellow humans feel pain. What is the difference? They both emit noises when injured but since I am the only one I know for sure is conscious how can I be sure other humans feel pain? This shows that the whole argument amount animals not being conscious reduces to solipsism.

I should also add as a P.S. that many scientists would adopt animal non-consciousness as a methodological premise. In other words they would study animals, and sometimes humans, as stimulus-response machines. This would be, however, to reduce the number of variables in their behavioral model and not because they are really thorough going Cartesians.

At the end of the day they would still go home and play with their dog and yell at their cat.

CROCODILE WHISPERER

2010-02-08T18:17:00.000-08:00

If you thought the legend of the horse whisperer was impressive, here's an animal tale with even more bite.

Rather than trying to tame wild stallions, fearless Costa Rican fisherman Chito prefers a playful wrestle in the water with his best pal Pocho - a deadly 17ft crocodile.
The 52-year-old daredevil draws gasps of amazement from onlookers by wading chest-deep into the water, then whistling for his 980lb buddy - and giving him an affectionate hug.

Chito made friends with the croc after finding him with a gunshot wound on the banks of the Central American state's Parismina river 20 years ago.
He had been shot in the left eye by a cattle farmer and was close to death.

But Chito enlisted the help of several pals to load the massive reptile into his boat.
He says: "When I found Pocho in the river he was dying, so I brought him into my house
"He was very skinny, weighing only around 150lb I gave him chicken and fish and medicine for six months to help him recover.
"I stayed by Pocho's side while he was ill, sleeping next to him at night. I just wanted him to feel that somebody loved him, that not all humans are bad.
"It meant a lot of sacrifice. I had to be there every day. I love all animals - especially ones that have suffered."
It took years before Chito felt that Pocho had bonded with him enough to get closer to the animal.

He says: "After a decade I started to work with him. At first it was slow, slow. I played with him a bit, slowly doing more.
"Then I found out that when I called his name he would come over to me."
At one point during his recovery, Chito left the croc in a lake near his house. But as he turned to walk away, to his amazement Pocho got out of the water and began to follow him home.
Chito recalls: "That convinced me the crocodile could be tame." But when he first fearlessly waded into the water with the giant reptile his family was so horrified they couldn't bear to watch. So instead, he took to splashing around with Pocho when they were asleep.
Four years ago Chito showed some of his tricks to friends, including getting the animal to close his eyes on command, and they convinced him to go public with a show.
Now he swims and plays with Pocho as well as feeding him at the lake near his home in the lowland tropical town of Sarapiqui ..

The odd couple have now become a major tourist attraction, with several tour operators, including Crocodile Adventures, taking visitors on touring cruises to see the pair.
On the Crocodile Adventures website it describes the spectacle as: "One of the most amazing things that no cruise ship passenger will want to miss, the adventure show between the man and the crocodile."

They Are Out There

2010-02-07T19:23:00.000-08:00

I just found a site about a naturalist/artist, extraordinaire. Robert Bateman.

A rather incredible being. Animals caught in the act of being themselves and communicating. ONe can definitely see Bateman's passion for the environment. It's wonderful.

Sometimes people don't hear animals talk and communicate. And yet they DO hear animals when you see the end result of their communiaction as portrayed in their art.

Animal Mind?

2010-02-07T00:25:00.000-08:00

This is an excerpt from a book written by one of the leading behavioral ecologists in the twentieth century, Donald Griffin.

There has been a recent explosion of scientific research on animal mentality. Are animals consciously aware of anything, or are they merely living machines, incapable of conscious thoughts or emotional feelings? How can we tell? Such questions have long fascinated Griffin, who has been a pioneer at the forefront of research in animal cognition for decades, and is recognized as one of the leading behavioral ecologists of the twentieth century.

With this new edition of his classic book, which he has completely revised and updated, Griffin moves beyond considerations of animal cognition to argue that scientists can and should investigate questions of animal consciousness. Using examples from studies of species ranging from chimpanzees and dolphins to birds and honeybees, he demonstrates how communication among animals can serve as a "window" into what animals think and feel, just as human speech and nonverbal communication tell us most of what we know about the thoughts and feelings of other people. Even when they don't communicate about it, animals respond with sometimes surprising versatility to new situations for which neither their genes nor their previous experiences have prepared them, and Griffin discusses what these behaviors can tell us about animal minds. He also reviews the latest research in cognitive neuroscience, which has revealed startling similarities in the neural mechanisms underlying brain functioning in both humans and other animals. Finally, in four chapters greatly expanded for this edition, Griffin considers the latest scientific research on animal consciousness, pro and con, and explores its profound philosophical and ethical implications.

The point is, something is happening and something that is being measured scientifically. It's no longer something one just wonders about, but something that surrounds us everyday. We just have to listen, if we wish to.

The Debate for Animal Consciousness Continues...

2010-02-04T22:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a paper written which spells out the dilemma taken from Behavior Online:

So, are some animals conscious? We see now that the question itself is irrevocably tied to the human conscious experience, because human consciousness is all we can imagine. Consider a more fruitful enquiry, in my regard: How do animals interact with each other and their environment, and why do they behave in those ways? We can construe answers to these latter questions without the equivocation that discussions of consciousness carry in cross-species analyses. Further, we can build models of animal behaviour from a base of absolutely minimal assumption, exploring their world as one alien to our own rather than searching it for qualities that are familiar to us. It may well be that some animal species outside Homo sapiens share sensory experience akin to ours; to that end we would like to treat consciousness not as an all-or-none quality but something that can exist to many degrees. One may object: How could we study animal cognition this way? It’s impossible to imagine being half-conscious, or a third conscious! Yes, exactly: animal mental states may be so foreign to us that representing them would be akin to conveying eleven dimensions on a flat piece of paper. Rather than leaping into a cursory attempt at knowing exactly how non-human animals think and feel, it may be wiser to study the consequences, which are readily observable, of their mental states. Let us treat animal minds as an unknown landscape that acquires shape by virtue of its shadows, which we see in their behaviour. Dawkins takes steps toward this approach at the end of her book, but her analysis of emotional expression in animals again presupposes in them a degree of human consciousness. After describing an experiment on hen behaviour, the author suggests that, in their effort to reach nest boxes, hens “experience a strong state of frustration at not being able to find one” (Dawkins 1998, 155). This passage may seem relatively innocuous, but in fact it assumes that hens are conscious animals with mental states so similar to our own that they can “experience . . . frustration.” Her description makes no sense unless we take it in stride that hens are conscious like we are, at least in the limited context of emotional response. It is precisely such slips of thought and diction that we must avoid.

Explaining human conscious experience is among the most daunting and exciting projects modern science faces. The progress we’ve made to that end is exhilarating and uplifting, but, tempted as we may be to do so, extending our intuitive inferences about human minds to animal minds is not conducive to understanding cognition outside our species. Why: because those inferences carry tacit assumptions about human mental worlds, which do not apply to non-human mental worlds. We will probably never be able to put ourselves into animals’ shoes, so to speak, but we can certainly build extensive, impartial records of animal minds’ input and output. By exploring the patterns in those input and output records, we can achieve a greater understanding of cognitive architecture outside Homo sapiens.

Literature Cited

Boyer, P. Religion Explained. New York, USA: Basic Books: 2001.

Dawkins, M. S. Through our eyes only? The search for animal consciousness.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press: 1998.

Dennett, D. C. Consciousness Explained. Boston, USA: Back Bay Books: 1991.

Can an Animal Reflect?

2010-02-03T23:32:00.000-08:00

Here's an article written in 2009 which sheds some light about any animal's ability to think and reflect about itself or life:

Smith makes this conclusion in an article published the September issue of the journal Trends in Cognitive Science (Volume 13, Issue 9). He reviews this new and rapidly developing area of comparative inquiry, describing its milestones and its prospects for continued progress.

"This last result," Smith says, "raises important questions about the emergence of reflective or extended mind in the primate order.

"This research area opens a new window on reflective mind in animals, illuminating its phylogenetic emergence and allowing researchers to trace the antecedents of human consciousness."

Smith, a professor in the UB Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Sciences, is recognized for his research and publications in the field of animal cognition.

Their research is supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Development and the National Science Foundation.

In fact, he concludes, "Metacognition rivals language and tool use in its potential to establish important continuities or discontinuities between human and animal minds."

A Cat That Can Predict Death

2010-02-02T18:04:00.000-08:00

Here is a recent article about a cat that has outsmarted even doctors:

SYDNEY (Reuters) – When doctors and staff realized that a cat living in a U.S. nursing home could sense when someone was going to die, the feline, Oscar, was portrayed as a furry grim reaper or four-leggedangel of death.

But Dr. David Dosa, who broke the news of Oscar's abilities in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, said he never intended to make Oscar sound creepy or his arrival at a bedside to be viewed negatively.

Dosa said he hopes his newly released book, "Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat" will put the cat in a more favorable light as well as providing a book to help people whose loved ones are terminally ill.

"After the New England Journal article you got the feeling that if Oscar is in your bed then you are dead, but you did not really see what is going on for these family members," said Dosa, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

"I wanted to write a book that would go beyond Oscar's peculiarities, to tell why he is important to family members and caregivers who have been with him at the end of a life."

Dosa said Oscar's story is fascinating on many levels.

Oscar was adopted as a kitten from an animal shelter to be raised as a therapy cat at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, which cares for people with severe dementia and in the final stages of various illnesses.

SIXTH SENSE?

When Oscar was about six months old the staff noticed that he would curl up to sleep with patients who were about to die.

So far he has accurately predicted about 50 deaths.

Dosa recounts one instance when staff were convinced of the imminent death of one patient but Oscar refused to sit with that person, choosing instead to be on the bed of another patient down the hallway. Oscar proved to be right. The person he sat with died first, taking staff on the ward by surprise.

Dosa said there is no scientific evidence to explain Oscar's abilities, but he thinks the cat might be responding to a pheromone or smell that humans simply don't recognize.

Dosa said his main interest was not to delve further into Oscar's abilities but to use Oscar as a vehicle to tell about terminal illness, which is his main area of work.

"There is a lot to tell about what Oscar does, but there is a lot to tell on the human level of what family members go through at the end of life when they are dealing with a loved one in a nursing home or with advanced dementia," he said.

"Perhaps the book is a little more approachable because there is a cat in it. We really know so little aboutnursing homes, and this tries to get rid of this myth that they are horrid factories where people go to die."

Dosa said the story of Oscar, who is now nearly five years old, initially had sparked a bit more interest in families wanting to send their loved ones to Steere House.

Oscar has even been thanked by families in obituaries for providing some comfort in the final hours of life.

But he said Oscar remains unchanged by the attention, spending most of his days staring out of a window, although he has become a bit friendlier.

"The first time I met Oscar he bit me. We have warmed over the years. We have moved into a better place," said Dosa.

"I don't think Oscar is that unique, but he is in a unique environment. Animals are remarkable in their ability to see things we don't, be it the dog that sniffs out cancer or the fish that predicts earthquakes. Animals know when they are needed."

(Editing by Miral Fahmy)

Animal Consciousness?

2010-02-01T22:06:00.000-08:00

I found an article, which, can make sense from a very linear viewpoint. I have made some comments in italics and red.

What do you think? If you read my soon-to-be-released book, maybe you should read this one more time and see how you think about it then.

The late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould concluded that consciousness has been “vouchsafed only to our species in the history of life on earth” (1997, p. ix). Is Dr. Gould correct? Or do other creatures possess self-awareness as well? Certainly, the answer to such a question hinges on the definition one assigns to “consciousness.”

One way to approach the problem is to define consciousness with the broadest possible stroke and in the simplest conceivable terms. Steven Harnad, editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, did exactly that when he defined consciousness as “the capacity to have experiences” (as quoted in Lewin, 1992, pp. 153-154). Roger Penrose followed suit in The Emperor’s New Mind when he said of animals: “I do not ask that they are ‘self-aware’ in any strong sense. ...All I ask is that they sometimes simply feel!” (1989, p. 383, emp. in orig.).

If these are the sole criteria for defining consciousness—the capacity to “just have experiences” or to “sometimes simply feel”—then animals obviously possess consciousness. The problem is that such simple definitions of consciousness are woefully inadequate. And, by and large, those within the scientific and philosophical communities have acknowledged as much. Robert Ornstein, in his book, The Evolution of Consciousness, noted: “Being conscious is being aware of being aware. It is one step removed from the raw experience of seeing, smelling, acting, moving, and reaction” (1991, pp. 225-226, emp. added).

That “one step” is a mighty big step, however! The difference between merely “being aware” (i.e., “just having experiences” or “simply feeling”) and actually being “self-aware” (i.e.,knowing that you are having experiences, and knowing that you are feeling) is colossal—a fact that appears to have eluded some who wish to imbue “other species” with the trait of consciousness. Are other species “self-aware”? Ian Tattersall admitted:

I have already said that nonhuman mammals are far from being automatons, and this is clearly true; but does it necessarily follow that they have a concept of self that would be broadly familiar to us? The answer to this is almost certainly no; but it has to be admitted that the degree to which nonhuman primates may or may not have an internal image of self is a devilishly hard question to approach (2002, p. 63).

This is a good point as far as primates could be concerned, however what do you do when a creature, such as a whale, talks about it's own soul?

Do other species “think about themselves” in “productive and adaptive” ways? Remember: we are not asking if animals possess instinct. Nor are we asking if they can “adapt.” We are inquiring as to whether or not they are self-aware—to the extent that they actually “think about themselves.” Sir John Eccles concluded: “It has been well said that an animal knows, but only a man knows that he knows” (1967, p. 10). Nick Carter said that we might think of animals “as beings that have extension and sensation, but not thought” (2002). In the context, he was speaking specifically of “higher thought”—i.e., the ability to think, to think about thinking, and to let others know we are thinking. Humans not only possess such self-awareness and thought capability, but also the ability to let other humans know that they possess those two things!

Paul Ehrlich confessed (from an evolutionary viewpoint): “...[H]uman beings are also the only animals that seem fully aware of the consciousness of other individuals and thus have been able to develop empathy, the capacity to identify emotionally with others” (2000, p. 111). Nowhere is this more evident than in the human response to death. Theodosius Dobzhansky concluded: “Self-awareness has, however, brought in its train somber companions—fear, anxiety and death awareness.... Man is burdened by death-awareness. A being who knows that he will die, arose from ancestors who did not know” (1967, p. 68).

But consider (to choose just one example) the animal that evolutionists contend is our closest living relative—the chimpanzee. Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey admitted:

[C]himpanzees at best seem puzzled about death.... The chimpanzees’ limitation in empathizing with others extends to themselves as individuals: no one has seen evidence that chimps are aware of their own mortality, of impending death. But, again, how would we know?... Ritual disposal of the dead speaks clearly of an awareness of death, and thus an awareness of self (1994, pp. 153,155, italics. in orig., emp. added).

Dobzhansky, et al., also addressed this point.

Ceremonial burial is evidence of self-awareness because it represents an awareness of death. There is no indication that individuals of any species other than man know that they will inevitably die (1977, p. 454, emp. added).

The information contained in the two quotations above can be summarized as follows: (1) chimpanzees are unaware of their own mortality, and have no ability to empathize emotionally with others (a peculiarly human trait, according to Ehrlich); (2) in fact, there is no indication that individuals of any species other than humans know they will inevitably die; (3) death-awareness arose as a product of self-awareness; and (4) ceremonial burial is evidence of self-awareness because it represents an awareness of death.

Now, note the logical conclusion that inescapably follows. Death-awareness and ceremonial burial are allegedly evidence of, and products stemming from, self-awareness. But chimps (our nearest supposed relative), like all animals, do not comprehend the fact that they will one day die, (has anyone asked them?) and do not perform ritualistic burials of their dead. If understanding death and burying the dead are evidence of self-awareness, and if no animal understands death or buries its dead, then no animal is self-aware! (Notice the sentence begins with "if")

The scientist who literally “wrote the book” on animal consciousness, Donald R. Griffin, published the first edition of his now-famous work, Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness, in 1992, and the second edition in 2001. In that second edition, he offered the following assessment of animal consciousness. “The principal difference between human and animal consciousness is probably in their content” (p. 15, italics in orig., emp. added).

OK, so two chimpanzees don't discuss the stock market or the latest football game. Yet in their environment they DO show awareness at their level of existence. This is known to be true. How about the one who learned to communicate with sentences and express emotion?

That statement must surely rank as one of the greatest understatements of all time. “Other than your husband’s assassination, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” “Except for the difference in their content, what’s the difference in human and animal consciousness?” Does anyone besides us see something terribly wrong here? As Tattersall put it:

But comfortable as monkeys may become with mirrors and their properties, it has also been shown that they cannot identify their own reflection in a mirror.... What do we make of all this? First, it is evident that there is a qualitative difference among the perceptions of self exhibited by monkeys, apes, and human beings (2002, p. 65, emp. added).

Key in on Tattersall’s reference to monkeys and mirrors, and allow us to explain the significance of his statements. For more than three decades, researchers have tried to concoct a way to test—objectively—whether any given animal is “self-aware.” Griffin noted: “Both reflective consciousness and self-awareness are often held to be uniquely human attributes.” Then, in speaking of animals, he asked: “What sorts of evidence might indicate whether or not they think about their own thoughts?” (2001, p. 277).

Good question. What “sorts of evidence” could lead scientists and philosophers to conclude that at least some animals possess self-awareness? There have been a number of suggestions offered, such as mind-reading (i.e., the ability to comprehend what another animal has in mind to do in order to alter behavior), divided attention (an ability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time), delayed response (acting later, as if on the “memory” of something), self-recognition (the ability of an animal to recognize itself, as opposed to other animals of its kind), etc.

But for the most part, it has been self-recognition that has captured the attention of researchers. In the late 1960s, Gordon Gallup, a psychologist at the State University of New York (Albany), devised a test intended to determine an animal’s “sense of self ”—the mirror test. His idea was that if an animal were able to recognize its own reflection in a mirror as “itself,” then it could be duly said to possess an awareness of itself—i.e., consciousness. Dr. Gallup’s report of the experiment, published in a 1970 article in Science, has been called “a milestone in our understanding of animal minds” (Leakey, 1994, p. 150). Here is how the test was carried out.

Looking in a mirror is a cognitive process. That is different than consciousness. It's like giving a chinese jigsaw puzzle to a kid. Besides that, if it does not deal with his existence, why now is the animal going to have a whole thought process on it.

An animal (such as a chimpanzee, a gorilla, or an orangutan) is left in a room to become familiarized with a mirror. After a period of time, the animal is anesthetized, and a dot of paint is placed on its forehead. The creature then is allowed to wake, and the mirror is brought back to see if the animal notices that it now has a dot of paint on its forehead. Most animals will take no notice of the dot, and will continue to treat the image in the mirror as if it were another animal. But certain ape subjects instantly recognize themselves in the mirror, and touch their foreheads as if they know that: (a) the forehead in question is their own; and (b) they do not normally have a dot on their forehead. Most animals in the experiment did not recognize or care about the spot on their forehead, but a few did.

So what do we make of data that suggest certain animals are indeed “self-aware”? Robert Wesson observed:

Self-awareness is different from information processing; even when confused and unable to think clearly, one may be vividly aware of one’s self and one’s confusion. The essence of mind is less data processing than will, intention, imagination, discovery, and feeling (1997, p. 277, emp. added).

Dr. Wesson is correct. Self-awareness is different from mere information processing. A chimpanzee or orangutan with a spot of paint on its forehead may be able to process the information that tells the animal it has a spot of paint on its forehead. But does that mean the animal possesses intention, imagination, discovery, feeling, and all the other things that we normally associate with consciousness and/or self-awareness? Hardly.

One of the things that sets the human mind/consciousness apart from that of animals iswhat the human mind can do! As Anthony O’Hear put it: “A conscious animal might be a knower...but only a self-conscious being knows that he is a knower (1997, p. 24, emp. and italics added). When Griffin asked, “Can scientific investigation of animal mentality tell us whether animals are conscious?,” and answered, “not yet” (2001, p. x), he fairly well summed up most researchers’ opinion of the matter. There are no scientific or philosophical data to date which indicate that any animal “knows it is a knower.” Only humans possess such capability.

So does that mean that any animal, for it to have consciousness, has to get a doctorate first?

Oh Please! And we pay these guys for brains.

Why Bother?

2010-01-30T21:28:00.000-08:00

Blogging on other sites, the comment or question about animal rights or animal consciousness, sometimes ends in "why bother" or "we should worry about ourselves first", etc., etc., etc. You know, man is the center of the universe.

My comment is that that viewpoint is the viewpoint which has gotten humanity into the state and condition it is today. The Burger King's slogan of the past "Have it your way", has worked its way into humanity. I guess you would call it instant gratification, without any responsibility.

It's the "me first", "me only" game. The truth is, we all depend on each other for our survival. Cars, Planes, Houses, sports, elections - you name it - depends on the help of others. What has happened though is that Madison Avenue advertising has found out what makes you tick, sexually or otherwise, and then candy coats the pill you are given.

For instance, there are a lot of anti-depressant drugs out there. While beautiful pictures of happy people and idyllic settings, there are words telling you that taking the pill can have serious effects, such as death. Music, music, death. Then there is Viagra. Sexual gratification. And yet people go blind from it. Hmmm. Music, music, encore, music...

Fortunately for mankind, there are a few, sometimes labeled 'rightists, right wing proponents' to name a few, that saw that there was a problem. Maybe it's just a guy who loves to scuba dive and sees less fish. Maybe its the fishing trawlers who take extreme risks because the 'ol fishin' grounds are empty. So we keep pillaging.

It is easier many times to look the other way. Thank God for those who don't.

Never Eat Meat?

2010-01-29T17:19:00.000-08:00

It is tough on a 'carnivore' like myself to consider being a vegetarian. But is being a vegetarian really dealing with the issues of animal welfare? You can have another group that asks about plant welfare/the environment and plant consciousness. Crazy at it seems, plants do respond to thoughts and to pain. So what do we humans eat - air?

Within the food chain of life, man exists. His only real known predator is himself. That would be on a planetary scale. Aside from his mental prowess, his 'body' requires food. In the animal kingdom there are no supermarkets, no fast-food chains, no health-food chains. The taking of life for another is matter-of-fact.

What separates us from the animal kingdom, experts say, is our consciousness, our mental prowess and our ability to convert the natural resources which exist around us to our benefit and our defense. As a result, man has created time for thought, reflection and consideration of his actions.

At an early age I was confronted with a problem. You see in my new book, "True Tails", I was forced to realize that animals DO talk and the DO communicate. That is an idea so off mainstream beliefs that I have had to deal with it my entire life. I hear them and they respond to me.

Hand that reality to a 2 year-old child. Tell him to ignore it. Tell him it isn't true and then go watch him sit in a field where butterflies suddenly land on him, or wild birds sit on his hand.

Convince him that he is 'just seeing things' and while you are at it, convince yourself , too, because YOU just saw it.

This is not fantasy, like the new movie "Avatar", directed by James Cameron. Here, beings need to 'plug in' to each other in order to have communcation. But my reality is that no one needs to do something to 'plug in' to life. They already are.

There were many wonderful messages in the movie. So much that the Vatican church has 'pooh-poohed' it and China has taken it off the silver screen.

But after the early experiences in my life and as they continue through the present, I have realized that if animals to a greater or lesser degree, eat meat and actually have nothing on that action, why should I? The realization (for lack of a better word) is that where one's actual food chain requires meat for survival and not pleasure (or because it's nice), then in my opinion, and it is my opinion, it's OK to eat meat.

To clarify. Where man eats meat, raises it, cares for it, and because of his understanding and consciousness takes its life in a manner it does not suffer, that to me is acceptable. But, for example, raising foxes only for their fur to line the sleeve of an ice skater (Weir), it is ludicrous.

What about whales? Well, they don't have a lot of natural predators. They are hunted by Eskimos, yes, but that is pretty limited. Certain countries do continue to hunt them en masse

such as the Japanese. But no longer for survival needs. It's a 'taste' need, or as someone put a 'cultural relativism' need. It's that, well we shouldn't interfere with ethnic tradition and the fact that Japan has been fishing whales for a very long time. So we 'should just let them continue'. Or another thought that 'well, whales are no longer endangered - the population is basically safe now'. So I guess that means that as long as it is 'safe', well someone can keep killing them.

Now, like we have in the United States, become semantic freaks - garbage man is now a 'sanitation engineer', we do the same with killing whales. Japan claims killing for 'scientific research'. Yes and my grandmother played football for the Minnesota Vikings!

Japan, doesn't need the industry any more. That is just the fact. Truth be told, it is an expensive delicacy. A nice to have.

My personal feeling is if there is a culture that requires the killing of whales for it's existence, well then, OK. Like the Eskimos. But that is a rather small population.

I think that as our population increases, then we, as a part of this planet, need to look at how we can maintain a balance, rather than rape and pillage life as most of us do.

I am still never going to be a vegetarian, but I won't do the special order stuff. That's a promise.

Cultural Relativism????

2010-01-27T16:56:00.000-08:00

I have been in a blog conversation with several people about the topic of Japanese Whaling.

A comment was made basically stating that since the killing of whales is part of the cultural tradition of Japan, somehow this makes it right. Another stated that as whales are no longer endangered and 'controlled killing' is the order of the day, that this somehow balances things.

It's amazing to witness individuals justifying the taking of life, especially when it is no longer necessary. Yes, we all eat meat to a greater or lesser degree. As we are at the 'top of the food chain' we do this. We also have the brains to change how we do it.

We are, by all standards, raping and pillaging our oceans. As the population on Earth grows exponentially, the need for food follows. By some good fortune, there are and have been a few people who have stuck out their necks to make a change, against powerful odds.

I am writing and started this blog because, for whatever reason, I have been sitting on something very real to me. Something others have experienced as a result of being around me. Something that changed my life for the better.

There has been arguments for and against the 'conscioussness' of all creatures. In my personal experience and at a very early age, I came to realize that all creatures, great and small, think and communicate. Maybe not the same as we do, but they do.

Some of us hear them, many don't or don't want to. Some just don't care. But as for me, I do care. I've been shouldered with the responsibility of talking about it and then doing something about it, cultural relativism or not.

The book will be released within the month and available through all major and minor bookstores. A good portion of the proceeds will go to helping and protecting our friends.

Do Japanese eat Akitas?

2010-01-26T14:58:00.000-08:00

You know, I just was on a blog site which was talking about Japanese Whaling. Some were for it, some against. Some were just busy doing nothing - you could see by their comments that it wasn't about whales. They just had nothing better to do!

I had this thought. You know, we all have our taboos, what is OK to eat and what isn't. Well, if every animal was 'fair game', I don't hear of Japanese eating Akitas, do you? What is the difference?

I don't think the Japanese take a long time to change their minds. I think it's just a choice. But honestly it boils down to dollars and cents. In this case, yen.

People Who Care

2010-01-26T09:58:00.000-08:00

I have been doing a lot of research work just to locate animal rights, animal protection, pet lovers and pet who just care a lot about animals, any animals.

There are millions of them. How many people have a pet, had a pet, loved a pet? How many, when confronted with Nature, made a beeline to not just see trees, rocks, canyons, and oceans, looked to see if they could find an animal in the wild?

We are closely bound to Nature. Living in big cities and going to the grocery market, sitting at home and watching televion, National Geographic, ice-skating or tennis, removes us from the world around us. But there is always a time in our life, when we look outward. We become moved by the great land around us, and the creatures that inhabit it.

Sometimes I wonder why we have pets, why we love them and care for them. It's almost like we use them as a bridge to Nature, to remind us who we are and what we are a part of - the bigger picture.

Do You Agree?

2010-01-24T21:14:00.000-08:00

"Society is evolving to recognize that animals are sentient and deserve to be treated as more than just property. We have the power to create a better world in which animals will be guaranteed certain rights. In the meantime, everyone can do their part by speaking out for animals and making lifestyle choices that do not support animal cruelty." –Doris Lin

"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" – Jeremy Bentham

What would you do?

2010-01-24T19:43:00.000-08:00

There is a group on the web called animal scam.com. There is a comment made that activists for animal rights have put animals ahead of humans. That such a group would have you eat beans and lettuce if they had their way.

It's a nice diversion to generalize and point fingers in another direction, but there are many animals who don't have a choice to be killed or maimed.

What if a whale fought back? Or for that matter an Orca? Yes, there are cultures that really depend on their existence as a way of life, like the Eskimo. But they are pitted against these mammoths one on one. However, look at Japan. They are one of the richest countries in the world. They have the ability to feed millions. Whale meat is considered a 'delicacy'. Is it needed? No. Does it have documented healing properties? No. Does it cure anything? No.

Well, jobs will be lost. Hmmm... let me see. How many jobs? Thousands? No. Maybe Japan does not have the technology to train people for other jobs. Hmmm....

It really boils down to money and profits. What a person will pay and what can be made from whale meat. Unfortunate but true.

What do you think?

Why Not?

2010-01-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

Daniel C. Dennett stated that "A better understanding of consciousness in humans is needed before the discussion can be extended validly to animal consciousness. Consciousness requires a certain kind of informational organization that does not seem to be 'hard-wired' in humans, but is instilled by human culture. Moreover, consciousness is not a black-or-white, all-or-nothing type of phenomenon, as is often assumed. The differences between humans and other species are so great that speculations about animal consciousness seem ungrounded. Many authors simply assume that an animal like a bat has a point of view, but there seems to be little interest in exploring the details involved."

But how many people out there, people in life and with their personal interaction with creatures of every size and shape, disagree with Dennett's ideas? Such writings lessen the possibility of animal consciousness, which then ignore animal rights.

So why then are there so many groups of people out there in favor of animal rights? Groups like the ASPCA, PETA, IWP and animal protection people like Doris Lin, who care for the legal rights of animals.

Why is this?

What do you think?

2010-01-23T09:39:00.000-08:00

I did some research today. There are papers published by the University of Stanford which look at the 'possibility' that animals have consciousness. In another report forwarded by Donald R. Griffin, there are documented and observed actions by various animals which has left the author suggesting "the fact that animals are capable of such versatility has led to a subtle shift on the part of some scientists concerned with animal behavior".

But the real question remains, do animals talk, and if they do, what do they talk about?

Truth about Whales

2010-01-22T22:31:00.000-08:00

I have seen a television series called Whale Wars, which shows how some groups are trying to protect whales. It is pretty gross that they are still being harvested. I believe they are sentient beings and think that they do communicate. Why else would people try to stop the insanity? I wonder if anyone out there has personal experience with this.

Real life Avatars

2010-01-22T21:27:00.000-08:00

I just saw the movie "Avatar". Although it is a Science Fiction movie, I wonder if there are other people out there who have the ability to communicate to animals. It's not "Hi, how are you" but actual communication. Where you know you are communicating to the animal and you know it hears you. Where a question or a problem was resolved and where, sometimes, there has been one of your friends with you that observed this.

Do animals really talk?

2010-01-22T21:17:00.000-08:00

I am wondering how many people out there have had personal and direct communication with animals. Where they have actually heard their thoughts and, where they have had learning experience from it. Do animals talk? What do you think?

TrueTails

New Book Release!

When is an Apple an Apple?

Does Animal Consciousness Exist?

Temple Grandin, PH.D. - October 1998Department of Animal ScienceColorado State University

Selective Attention

Orienting Response

Simple Consciousness

Higher Consciousness

Brain Damage

Self Awareness

Conclusions

Are Dolphins Aware?

A Test for Self- Awareness?

What is Self Awareness? Is it Consciousness?

The Case for Dolphin Consciousness

All Dogs Go To Heaven?

Watching Whales Watching Us in California

Joel Reynolds

Some Basic Scientific Facts about Whale and Dolphin Consciousness

Thoughts from Adam Henne

Teresa Wagner's blog about Whales

What Do you do think?

Science News Begins to get it right

Another Voice for Animal Consciousness

CROCODILE WHISPERER

They Are Out There

Animal Mind?

The Debate for Animal Consciousness Continues...

Can an Animal Reflect?

A Cat That Can Predict Death

Animal Consciousness?

Why Bother?

Never Eat Meat?

Cultural Relativism????

Do Japanese eat Akitas?

People Who Care

Do You Agree?

What would you do?

Why Not?

What do you think?

Truth about Whales

Real life Avatars

Do animals really talk?

Temple Grandin, PH.D. - October 1998
Department of Animal Science
Colorado State University