Unusual animals & their strange relationships

How often have we heard something new, different and not like us described as “alien”?  With little experience or practice at accepting life forms different from our own, we may have said it ourselves.   Anything “not-us” can be mysterious and/or intimidating.  One cure is getting to know that seeming “alien,” then often befriending or even protecting it.

At first, I puzzled over the subtitle of Sy Montgomery’s 2015 best seller, The Soul of an Octopus – “A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness,” but once I started reading and looking at the color illustrations, I got it.  And I marveled at Montgomery’s eager acceptance of this highly unusual being (to me, to us!) and her desire to interact with it and its own unique consciousness.

 “I wanted to meet the octopus.  I wanted to touch an alternate reality.  I wanted to explore a different kind of consciousness. . . ,” she wrote.  Different indeed: octopuses are invertebrates (no spine) and they live in open oceans, where most animals on this planet – usually also invertebrates -- live.   

In no way do they resemble human beings!

The octopus’s basic body plan includes 2 eyes, a mantle (containing its organs), a funnel (or siphon) and at least 8 arms – or, as Montgomery describes it:

an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen.  It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange.  It can change color and shape.  It can taste with its skin.  Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart.

. . . their body organization goes body, head, limbs.  Their mouths are in their armpits . . . They breathe water.  Their appendages are covered with dexterous, grasping suckers, a structure for which no mammal has an equivalent.    

Would you like to see eye-to-eye with an octopus?  Or feed a treat to one?  First, you’d have to locate its eye(s) and then you’d have to find out where, what and how it eats.

Montgomery did much more than that.  Over time spent visiting them in aquariums and talking with specialists, she became a friend and admirer of a few (named) octopuses, starting with “Athena.”  She communicating with them in ways clearly indicating 2-way relationships existed.  And she mourned her octopus friends when they died. 

More on octopuses

Judging by frequent media stories about them, these cephalopods seem to be coming into their own.  A primary example: the rights of octopuses in research.  Acknowledged to be notably intelligent, octopuses are now thought to deserve the same protections (and respect!) other animals are given by scientists.  https://tinyurl.com/mr3jsjc3   

True confession

“Salted slug”: No, that’s not a menu item!  Rather, it’s a description of a deliberately murdered creature who threatened the pansies I love.  After a twilight sighting of the villain approaching them, I grabbed a salt cellar and poured its contents on the slithering beast. 

Next morning I was confronted by a salty corpse on the driveway – and the need to remove and clean that area.  (Ugh! And yet comparable to the beer-in-a-shallow-bowl approach, requiring somehow disposing of drowned gastropods).   

Even though slugs are reputed to have ecological value, I’m an unrepentant recidivist.  And I’d do the same with a house fly, a tick or a mosquito.

(Blogger’s note:  My dispatch of the slug occurred despite the relation between octopuses (which fascinate me) and slugs (which don't!), both in the Phylum Mollusca: invertebrate animals without spines.  For more details, look into these 2 classes: cephalopods and gastropods.)  

                                                   

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Paws down, non-human animals handily beat human animals

I’m not familiar with (other-than-human) animals bitterly taking sides among themselves and working against the other sides; lying about the innocence of others in their group; manipulating in any way possible the minds of those on other sides . . . and so on. 

Once again, I conclude that the great inclusionary poet Walt Whitman was wholly right in saying, "I think I could turn and live with animals, . . . Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,/Not one kneels to another . . . ."

Compared with people, non-human animals are so comparatively virtuous (and sane!) that it's doubly unfair for them to be the mistreated, hunted and eaten ones in this world, now threatened with destruction because of long human abuse.

Sacrificial athletes

Just one for instance: the horses who die or are put down in the so-called “sport” of horse racing.  This has been a particularly tragic year for horses (think of them as the athletes involved) at Churchill Downs, the increasingly infamous home of the Kentucky Derby.  

Earlier this month, after 12 horses died over a few weeks there, the track suspended racing on the recommendation of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, which also called for an extensive safety review.  So ended, at least briefly, the commodification and death of these beautiful, innocent animals.    https://tinyurl.com/ycxu2tdu

Big cat protection

Now consider the world’s wild or captive big cats – larger versions of the domestic felines so many of us love.  Abused and hunted to near extinction worldwide, big cats in the US will now benefit from the Big Cat Public Safety Act that became law last December.  

They will be saved from the cruel, exploitative “cub petting industry,” that rips cubs from their mothers to become temporary money makers: able to be photographed with or petted by paying customers until they reach potentially dangerous ages and are cruelly disposed of.

  

                                  PAWS pic

The law also protects the public from unqualified private owners who breed, sell or acquire more big cats, often causing injuries or deaths to people involved.  In short, “the law prohibits physical contact between big cats the public.”         https://tinyurl.com/ycxu2tdu  

Horrific in every way

Here’s a fact about consumption of non-human animals that’s hard to imagine and much harder to accept.  The headline says it all: “More animals than ever before—92.2 billion—are used and killed each year for food.”  Just pause and think about that number of animals, innocent and unable to defend themselves, slaughtered and turned into food for human animals.  

The scale of animal suffering is unfathomable, according to the HSUS blog (linked below), but further, this food system is also a major source of stress on the climate.  As Peter Singer advised in a column recently mentioned here, switching to plant-based foods can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Please see the short video about factory farming that’s part of the blog post linked below and ask yourself, “Do these animals deserve such a life, such a fate?” and “Must we really keep eating meat when we know all this about the animal suffering and climate damage it costs us?” https://tinyurl.com/ycxu2tdu

Tree trunks & coexistence

Finally, a small but worthy example of peaceful coexistence with wild animals: the Parks & Outdoor Dept. in Chattanooga, TN, uses a mix of sand and latex paint “to deter beavers from gnawing on the trees” by painting the tree trunks.  “Managing” human-wildlife conflicts too often ends in wildlife deaths, as happened some years ago in Princeton, NJ, when the “animal control officer” shot beavers in a public park.         https://tinyurl.com/yc3nbbc2

‘Be prepared’    

Over the last few months, I've advocated assembling disaster/survival kits and what they should contain.  Here’s one more take on that subject from a Sunday NYTimes issue earlier this month.

Pooling suggestions from 8 thinking people who have faced disaster, the double-page illustrated article makes this persuasive case: “Hurricane season just started in the Atlantic.  In the West, fires have already begun to break out. But no matter where you live, extreme weather events are becoming commonplace.”       https://tinyurl.com/2rx657nj   

And finally, June is “Adopt a Cat month” and “Foster a Pet” month – a time for people who still have love to give to animals needing loving homes.  (Don’t they all?)    

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