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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Of horse horrors, outdoor cats, squirrels en masse & spring storms

Besides shipping horses abroad for slaughter – which has happened since 2007, when that heinous practice ended in the US -- this subject can also include the slaughter of horses in the horserace world.  Long before triple crown races began this spring, race horses have died in training at tracks, for causes often claimed to be unknown.

Then, during races, or shortly after, horses are injured, die and are put down right on the track.  And this is called a “sport”!

Killing horses for meat is “the final betrayal of their connection” with people – as companions, faithful steeds at stables, competitors or working horses -- as the HSUS puts it.   (photo below: horses in export van) 

                                                                                                      HSUS pic

Happily for horses, new legislation has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives:  the SAFE (Save America's Forgotten Equines) Act (H. R. 3475).  This bill would permanently ban the domestic slaughter of American horses and their export for that purpose. 

Please: contact your representative(s) to request support for this crucial bill!  https://tinyurl.com/7hnvcmrn

Needy cat or not?

A timely question during kitten season: Does that outdoor cat need to be rescued?  The answer, no longer, is an automatic “yes.”   In a guest blog post for the HSUS, its senior analyst for cat protection and policy writes well and convincingly about “How can I help this cat?” 

                                                      HSUS pic

Bringing a cat inside may not be the right thing to do because we understand much more these days about cats and their behaviors.  After the practice of keeping cats indoors became widespread, seeing a cat outdoors often leads to a well-intentioned impulse to bring that cat in or take her/him to a shelter.

Don’t automatically do that!  For the “why-not,” please read what Danielle Bays has to say:    https://tinyurl.com/3mwp2e9m   

Squazillion squirrels

Try to imagine stepping out your front door into a ground cover of gray squirrels, visible as far as the eye could see. 

In 1842, and then a few more times since then, an amateur naturalist saw just that sight: “thousands of squirrels scurrying across the landscape in an unbroken wave.”  They were Eastern gray squirrels, moving in a roughly southeasterly direction, usually in autumn.

For reasons only guessed at even now, they went through forests into prairies, through cornfields like locusts and through water – crossing the Ohio, Niagara and Mississippi Rivers -- like “great furry armadas.”  (What an image!)

Later, an analyst quantified the total number in squirrel mass movements as 30 thousand per mile, concluding these waves could have included more than 400 million squirrels.      https://tinyurl.com/2p844k27 

Remember it now?

Finally, approaching hot, dry (maybe!) summer, we’ve almost forgotten this year’s wild, wet spring.  But nearly a century ago, a poet described it.  Beautifully.

from “The Land”

by Vita Sackville-West

That was a spring of storms. They prowled the night;

Low level lightning flickered in the east

Continuous. The white pear-blossom gleamed

Motionless in the flashes; birds were still;

Darkness and silence knotted to suspense,

Riven by the premonitory glint

Of skulking storm, a giant that whirled a sword

Over the low horizon, and with tread

Earth-shaking ever threatened his approach,

But to delay his terror kept afar,

And held earth stayed in waiting like a beast

Bowed to receive a blow. But when he strode

Down from his throne of hills upon the plain,

And broke his anger to a thousand shards

Over the prostrate fields, then leapt the earth

Proud to accept his challenge; drank his rain;

Under his sudden wind tossed wild her trees;

Opened her secret bosom to his shafts;

The great drops spattered; then above the house

Crashed thunder, and the little wainscot shook

And the green garden in the lightning lay.

                 (published in Poem-a-Day on 4-3-22, by the Academy of American Poets)

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These days, people and animals are together in misery

For many, many people, times are hard these days.  Bitter national divisions, long covid, mass shootings, frightful storms and climate-change fears . . . . For our fellow (non-human) animals, times have always been hard -- for at least as long as we’ve been on earth with them! 

Now and then come rays of hope, surprisingly merciful deeds and happy times, but inevitably, cruel and inhumane behaviors dominate the news.

Peter Singer, for me the philosopher-king of animal welfare, in an Earth Day column last month discussed why, since 1970 – 47 years ago! – he has not eaten meat.  In that year of the first Earth Day, he realized “there is no ethical justification for treating animals like machines for converting feed into meat, milk and eggs.”  

Since then, Singer has added another, possibly world-saving reason for boycotting meat: climate change.  Think methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that’s much more destructive than carbon dioxide.  “Meat and dairy production,” he writes, are major sources of methane.

That’s a major reason why Singer proposes that people halve their consumption of animal products – a step much more effective than other options he mentions to end factory farming and save the planet. 

“This means we can do something for the planet every time we eat,” he says.     https://tinyurl.com/uhtfauaw

Purloined pigs

Another story involves saving two piglets from a Smithfield Foods factory farm in Utah, where they were destined for slaughter.  Instead, the men who rescued them gave them a chance to live “happily ever after.”  

Neither stealing nor rescuing the piglets was the intent of those who removed them that night.  But the terrible condition both baby pigs were in prompted the men to take them when they left.  Nursed back to health and re-homed at a sanctuary, the piglets, by then named Lucy and Lizzie, are enjoying new lives.   

That wasn’t the only surprise.  The second one began with the men’s indictment for taking the pigs from the farm -- and ended with their acquittal.  They wanted people to “wrestle with the moral implications of how living beings end up in grocery stores as packages of meat.”

For three surprising reasons that included having their consciences stirred, the jury found the defendants not guilty.  It’s hoped the verdict will positively influence the way corporations treat animals under their care.

https://tinyurl.com/bdd4jd9z

What is Lucy?

Besides being very big and gray and popular, Lucy, of Margate, NJ (mentioned in the last post here), is a puzzling creature to identify.  Her ears suggest she’s an Asian elephant, but her giant tusks are all wrong: female Asian elephants don’t have tusks!

Lucy may have to “live” with disputes over her animal heritage and resign herself to being . . . a large, elderly faux elephant landmark at the Jersey shore.

Just for fun and with no doubt about his heritage, here’s a delightful video of a real live baby elephant who thinks he should charge a vehicle.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSRlUsQ7TJ8

Fur family update 

Billy and Jersey Summers – a.k.a. “the Summers boys” -- are such good buddies that I’m going to quit using pheromone diffusers.  They have steadily become better friends every day since Jersey arrived last October.

Billy remains my long-time friend and support, generally sharing my bed pillows and trailing me around the house, carrying his yellow fluffy ball: a signal for us to play.  So I invite him to trip down to the basement with me for cardboard box-time, with treats (that he's really after) along the way.

Jersey continues his independent, semi-domesticated ways (running from being picked up, so also missing nail clipping and brushing and, at the toss of a toy, breaking into a kittenish dance with small balls and mice.)  He also continues to gaze into the glass fireplace door at the cat he always sees there, looking back at him.  

And uh-oh: he recently noticed the clothes dryer’s round glass door facing out and showing him still another cat in our house.  Now he has one on each floor to stare at, charm or guard against.  

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Animals to people riding them: 'Get off my back!'

Lucy the elephant, of Margate, NJ, whose ears suggest she's an Asian elephant.  On her back is a relatively simple howdah, in which hunters, travelers and tourists make themselves comfortable.  

Objection to people riding elephants is more widespread than I had hoped!  No sooner did I post the article about Thailand’s "unemployed" elephants last time than I came across a thoroughly right-on article about the many animal abuses involved in tourism – including that very thing.

The story headline read, “Animal rides are cruel, advocates say. So why are we still doing them?”  And the subhead suggested a slow start toward reform: “Outrage over the unethical treatment of elephants, camels and horses is forcing attractions to consider alternate modes of transportation.”

One pitiful example of what happens to animals forced to give rides to people: photos of an Asian elephant in Thailand whose back “slopes down like a ramp, from visitors crushing her spine.”  Although that 70-something pachyderm is now retired, countless other elephants and beasts of burden around the world suffer the same fate.

(Years ago, feminist icon Gloria Steinem celebrated a birthday by riding an elephant during a trip to Asia.  That ride cost her at least one admirer I know very well.) 

Really, this story’s headline and subhead tell the story, but reading the entire thing and seeing the horrifying images with it give an excellent overview of the issue and this advice: “To ethically engage with animals, observe without touching.”      https://tinyurl.com/3c5cy5k6   

Donkeys: valued for heavy labor

It’s a dubious distinction for donkeys to be described as “humanity’s first beasts of burden,” yet once they were domesticated, around 5,000 BC, donkeys became major contributors in the developing world’s heavy-duty work. 

 Even though horses – their close cousins -- weren’t harnessed for 2 more millennia -- they nonetheless upstaged donkeys in attention but not laborious work.  Because donkeys are highly drought-resistant and able to tolerate water deprivation, they have remained in demand.

Last year’s study of donkeys’ family tree happened to be accompanied by the film Eo, starring a “soulful, barbarously misused donkey.”  (I welled up seeing that movie, and wholly agree.)

And it gets worse: now, except in developing countries where donkeys are still associated with the poor and with women more than men, they are sought after for their skins.  Boiled down, skins become ejiao, a gelatin used mostly in traditional Chinese medicine – a wasteful crime against a good, long-serving animal.  (And there again, the “traditional Chinese medicine” phrase signals nothing good, as pointed out in an earlier post here.)  

(A clarification: Mules are not the same as donkeys, but rather the sterile offspring of male donkeys, or jacks, and horse mares.)         https://tinyurl.com/58a9pt4s

                                                       A long-time sad sign 

Around Mercer County since January 15, a distinctive sign has been posted on windows and doors, poles and posts.  Its attention-getting message reads, “LOST DOG / Lawrence Twp / Village Park/ (609 phone number).”  Some versions include a picture of a beagle.

The caution “Do not chase” runs down each side, while a message across the bottom says, “Flyers willbe removed when no longer needed.”  I still see the sign around, so after 3 months, that poor, dear, loved dog must still be missing.  I can only hope s/he was found but the parent neglected to remove a few signs.

If it wouldn’t raise false hopes, I'd phone and ask.  If I hear from anyone who knows this story’s ending, I’ll happily report here.          

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                                Coming up: blogger's time off for reflection.  Back next month.                    

Thailand elephants, moms sharing & reformed circus

Recent media articles about animals have included one sad story about Asian elephants in Thailand and one idiotic story (the kindest way to describe it) about another Asian elephant . . . and a heartwarming story about inter-species kindness involving two moms with infants – one, an orangutan and the other, a human.

I’ll build up to the good news . . . !

In my reading, Asian elephants get much less coverage than African elephants, and their lives appear to be much less “wild animal” than working animal.  What a shame.

In parts of Thailand, for instance, their main activity seems to be carting tourists around -- a pathetic come-down for such intelligent and majestic creatures.  Adding insult to injury, more elephants there (an est. 3,800 of them) are “privately owned” captive workers than elephants who live in the wild (est. 3,600).  Still worse, owned elephants and their offspring are passed down through family generations, for servitude forever.

Picture this: outside the houses in a small village, one or more elephants are chained up, much as cars are seen outside homes here.  It fits: those elephants are used as wage-earning vehicles. . . for tourists.

Except that now, the country’s tourism industry has not yet rebounded from the pandemic so elephants are out of work, while still needing to be fed and cared for. Returned to their owners’ villages from resort areas where they gave rides, the elephants are now idle – and hungry, according to the newspaper story linked below.

This state of things has fed the already-ongoing debate about proper treatment of elephants here.  Although owners are struggling to feed them, supplemented by government help, they’re also skeptical about selling their elephants to others,  who may not treat them well.  At the same time the elephants are living in even more undesirable conditions than serving as live tourist rides. 

A natural habitat for elephants already exists, but because villagers have become so dependent on “their” animals, activists’ arguments have not gained support.  Yet.             

https://tinyurl.com/wcame5r  &   https://tinyurl.com/46hkbe8f     

Too tiny a triumph

I’m as much a fan of happy media stories about animals as the next animal advocate.  But . . . the big to-do about the Berlin Zoo elephant who can peel her own bananas: come on!  Whoever marvels at that must have no idea of just how intelligent elephants are and have been, for millennia.

If that’s the greatest thing this elephant has been extolled for doing, it just means she’s been sorely underutilized – starting with being held captive in a zoo cage.  I wonder whether those who herald this feat can peel their own                                                                                                              bananas.              

https://tinyurl.com/2m69xaby

Moms share how-to’s   

Finally, and best: the story about mom-to-mom kindness at the Metro Richmond Zoo.  There, after an orangutan gave birth, she didn’t know how to nurse her baby and zoo staff feared Zoey’s second baby would also need to be hand-raised by them instead of starting life au natural.

But a staff member who had recently given birth agreed with a request to bring her own baby in and demonstrate to Zoey how to nurse.  She sat outside Zoey’s cage, bared her breast and fed her son – sometimes talking and often pointing to what happened where.  The other mom watched carefully, and soon afterward, began nursing her own baby.           https://tinyurl.com/dups6mvd  

New-style circus on tap

The headline and first sentence say it all: “Ringling circus is returning.  Lions, tigers and Dumbo are not.  Shuttered since 2017, Ringling Brothers will bring back its circus in September 2023, but this time there will be no animal acts.”

The myriad animal activists who protested for so long against demeaning animal acts and cruel training, transport and living conditions for animals can rejoice – and move on to other animal-welfare issues.    https://tinyurl.com/meumnsk8 

 

                                                                                   image: Philadelphia Museum of Art

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Creatures 'great & small': something's fishy here!

Asked to imagine rescuing creatures who live in water, you might picture large sea animals being helped somehow.  Sure, that happens.  But how about goldfish --300 of them -- in a flooded basement?  What then?

That’s a job for New York City’s “on-call fish-rescuer,” Brenda Prohaska, whose lifesaving tendencies began with a casual interest in fish and grew to large-scale life-saving, attracted a partner in fish-rescue and earned recent publicity and kudos for both of them.

Well, why not?  They deal in aiding aquatic creatures in life-threatening situations who, as with other animals in distress, also need help: "Attention must be paid!”  And, with about 90 rescues in the last three years, this Bronx cosmetology teacher agrees.

Typically contacted for rescue via her Facebook page, Prohaska shows up in her “fish-rescue ambulance,” otherwise known as a beat-up hearse, carrying her rescue gear and space for those she saves.  Her partner, Laboy Wiggins, a disabled construction worker, drives up to three hours from his home in Pennsylvania to NYC to help in a cause that he also finds restful and healing.

Both rescuers also house fish in their homes, but Wiggins wins the “biggest tank" prize because he has opted to care for some surprisingly large fish.    https://tinyurl.com/mpan27rh 

Meanwhile, back off our coast          

Humpback whale

Fish stories like that one remind me of the ongoing coverage about much bigger marine creatures, like whales, dying off NJ’s coast, along with mass-strandings of dolphins.  The good news is that two NJ legislators have asked NOAH (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to hurry up with findings about these deaths so speculation can be put to rest and safety steps might be enacted.

Right now, various theories for why these deaths have occurred are in play – from boat strikes to offshore wind development -- with no definitive problem identified and therefore no protective solutions implemented.  A sad media photo of a dead humpback whale being hauled back from the water for beach burial must serve as motivation for quick action to protect humpback and right whales, as well as dolphins.

(assumed to be a sperm whale)

As Heathcote Williams details so convincingly in Whale Nation, whales are of huge importance to human survival.  Do enough people know that?       

Sperm whales are family folk

“Sperm whales are the loudest and largest-brained of marine animals.  They might also be the most tender.”

If that caption doesn’t prompt you to read the rest of the book review, replete with stunning whale photos, just read the highlights here.  After being nearly wiped out by the 1970s, this whale species is slowly repopulating.  Humans can best see (and hear) sperm whales diving deep, sleeping vertically, grooming, nursing and at play off Dominica in the Caribbean.

That’s where the author-marine scientist-photographer Gaelin Rosenwaks went before producing Sperm Whales: The Gentle Goliaths of the Ocean (Rizzoli).  In their complex matrilineal society, females (about 30,000 pounds) stay bonded for life, averaging 70 years, while males (who can reach 100,000 pounds) stay with their mothers for a decade before going off on their own.  Social beings who associate in families, then in clans, sperm whales use their rhythmic sonar clicks, or “codas,” to communicate and hunt.    

“There is nothing like looking into the eye of a sperm whale,” the author says.  “Their eyes are filled with wisdom that penetrates your soul.”   https://tinyurl.com/2s4k96e6

Watch a short video of the author with a sperm whale and listen to the clicks.    https://tinyurl.com/2rnpt3ps

Megalodons ruled ancient seas 

And finally, among water creatures, sharks – or one shark in particular: the megalodon, the biggest predatory fish of all time.  While long extinct, the megalodon “ruled the waves” and all other animals in ancient oceans. 

Today, in “Sharks,” a long-running exhibition at Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History, the gaping jaws of a scientifically accurate model of megalodon greets visitors as the start of the exhibition. This is a reminder of an earlier post here: Now is the time to pick a date for your NYC visit and order timed ticket(s) online  (AMNH.org/exhibitions/sharks) well before Labor Day/Sept. 4, when the exhibition ends.     

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