New Book Release!

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.

A Test for Self- Awareness?

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….

Watching Whales Watching Us in California

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.

Thoughts from Adam Henne

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?

CROCODILE WHISPERER

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

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.

Why Bother?

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?

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.

Do Japanese eat Akitas?

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

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.

Why Not?

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?