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….

What is Self Awareness? Is it Consciousness?

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

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.

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.

Some Basic Scientific Facts about Whale and Dolphin Consciousness

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

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?

Another Voice for Animal Consciousness

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

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.

Animal Mind?

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...

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.

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.

Cultural Relativism????

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?

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.

Do You Agree?

"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