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.

Can an Animal Reflect?

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

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.

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.

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."

A Cat That Can Predict Death

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?

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.