Ahem! How about animals who live in water. . . ?!

All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact:

in suffering the animals are our equals. -Peter Singer, philosopher (1946- ) 

                                                                                              NYTimes image

Amazing:  that a blog for and about animals should almost wholly omit references to the watery world that makes up most of our planet -- and its inhabitants.   

Here’s a person who loves water in all its forms, who believes in the ocean’s healing powers and who even writes poetry about swimming.  But does she allocate any blog posts to marine mammals, crustaceans and fish of all kinds?  Not in recent memory. It’s embarrassing.  

But now all that is about to change.

So, water.  Let’s start with two startling facts from Wikipedia:

*  Water is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance that is the main constituent of Earth's streams, lakes, and oceans, and the fluids of most living organisms.

*  Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface.  It is vital for all known forms of life. On Earth, 96.5% of the planet's crust water is found in seas and oceans. . . .

And this pertinent summary: Water provides habitat for various animals in the form of ponds, rivers, seas. 

As for the animals who live in that habitat, think everything from plankton to whales, with multitudinous creatures in between.  (Just googling for an idea of animals with watery habitats is a huge undertaking.)  And now the big reveal: those watery creatures do not include “sea kittens,” pictured in a couple recent blog posts. 

Thank PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) for inventing the name “sea kittens” to substitute for “fish.” If fish were so named, the thinking went, people would be much less likely to hook them, asphyxiate them or eat them.  The word “kitten” suggests soft vulnerability and helplessness -- most humans wouldn’t harm a kitten.  

At the same time, though, they think nothing of treating fish like prey and potential food without feelings.  And yet, as the “sea kitten” campaign pointed out, “Scientists tell us that fishes’ brains and nervous systems closely resemble our own and that fish are just as able to feel pain as cats or dogs.”

What’s in a name?  Consider “Chicken of the Sea”! 

Summer songs & bug lights

“Songs”?  Well, I think of them as music, anyway. That is, the day or night sounds of crickets, cicadas and katydids that began early this month.  Each year I remind myself that it’s cricket chirps I hear at night, while most cicadas “sing” during the day, depending on species and  weather.  Katydids are night callers. 

Those summer sounds disappear with the first hard frost.

But long before that happens, the blinking firefly lights have already come and gone.  Starting in June, they seem less frequent each year, with environmental changes being blamed -- too much man-made night light and (man-used) insecticides among them. 

‘Tyger tyger burning bright’

Next Sunday is International Tiger Day -- just one day of 365 to raise awareness of tigers’ peril. 

Endangered animal stamp

PAWS (Performing Animals Welfare Society) reminds us of the “great need to conserve these magnificent animals and the habitats on which their lives depend” . . .  and to “examine the exploitation of captive tigers in circuses, roadside zoos, cub petting, and other ‘entertainment.’”

Helpless cubs are forced into operations where people pay to handle them and have pictures taken with them, while other tigers become “exotic pets” or perpetual breeders.  None of this is natural, or right.  Shades of Dominionism.

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