We emotion-sharing animals save one another

“Mutual Rescue”: doesn’t that sound appealingly two-way?  Many of us are, or try to be, animal rescuers.  But in fact, helping an animal often helps us at least as much as the animal.

That’s the title-thesis of a book I mentioned here (May 12 post) as one of three new books animal people might like.  I’ve just finished Mutual Rescue: How Adopting a Homeless Animal Can Save you, Too -- and “like” doesn’t begin to say it.  It’s highly readable and hugely true, as I know and many readers here probably do too.

Carol Novello (writing with Ginny Graves) has filled her book with stories about how rescuing an animal made much better people of the rescuers. That’s because in fact, animals can be exemplars and inspirations, and in the process of picking up on that, and often imitating it, people start to see themselves in a different light.

The authors say, “. . . these endearing, willful creatures unleash our ability to feel compassion -- the life-giving pulse at the center of meaning.”

For example, there’s the story of a woman whose relationship with a caring and smart pig helped cure her sadness and depression, eventually prompting her to start a pig rescue. And of the man with rock-bottom self-esteem who began helping community cats to the point of abandoning his original career goal so he could continue that highly satisfying activity.

Novello & Graves make this crucial point: “Our strong emotional response with a variety of animals actually seems to be innate -- a relic of a long-ago time when humans saw themselves as part of the fabric of the natural world, one animal species among many, rather than separate from it.”   

(How often now do we separate sentient beings into “we” and “they” -- human and non-human animals -- in spite of how fundamentally we’re all linked?)  

A key link among humans and non-humans alike is our emotions. We all have them and we all show them. There can be no doubt that animals experience fear, joy and all the rest. 

Reviewing Frans de Waal’s book, Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves, Sy Montgomery says “nothing could be more essential [than emotions] to understanding how people and animals behave.”  Measurable “hormones [connected with emotions] are virtually identical across taxa, from humans to birds to invertebrates.”

Mama & daughter   de Waal pic

Emotions, she says, “give meaning to everything”; they “enable us to survive.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/books/review/frans-de-waal-mamas-last-hug.html

Spider status

My BBFSF (Best Bathroom Female Spider Friend) now lives, I hope, outside.  After days of craning my neck to find her as she moved around the ceiling perimeter, I finally spotted her bobbing up and down right over my head.  Having just heard about a man who suffered long-lasting ill after-effects of a bite by a brown recluse spider, I decided I didn’t want to tangle with any spider in my hair.

So, with apologies and a hope she’d find a “kindred-spirit spider,” I transported her to our deck, where other spiders were already constructing webs.  No doubt I’ll walk right into hers sometime soon -- they all seem to be located on my path to the hose spigot.

Two days later: another spider, decidedly bigger, appeared on my bathroom ceiling: an avenging- angel spider?   

Time off

So much more to talk about -- from animal-related bills in the NJ legislature (now recessed) to elephant poaching in Botswana, and from racehorse deaths to fish-free fish (!). But summer break calls, irresistibly. Till I return later this month, maybe you’ll look into one of the books mentioned here and/or rescue a homeless animal!

But take care: a book about crazy laws still on the books warns that you can’t keep a walrus as a pet.  

                                                                                                                                           National Geographic Society pic

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