Societies Within and Between Non-human Animals

I think the class has a good idea of my opinions about the intelligence, awareness, and communication that exists in, and between, many non-human animal species.

Just as I began writing this passage Dulcenaea, my oldest cat, and great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother of some of my other cats, jumped onto my chair, purring, she nuzzled into her usual spot - between the left arm of my recliner, tucked under my elbow, with her body resting over my left hip, her left paw against the computer, with her head over it, she is observing the letters appearing on this blog while she continues purring. There is a rythym, a comfortable pattern, known and observed by all three species within our household.

Did you know that chimpanzees that were taught sign language by humans not only learned to use the language to communicate with their human teachers, they were also observed by these humans to be using sign language between themselves independent of human contact?

I find it interesting that supposedly less valuable, morally deserving chimpanzee animals were able to learn a human-animal language so well as to communicate with them and each other in their "second language." How can we adequately explain why the "superior" human-animal is unable to reciprocately learn chimpanzee?

This week the Today show had a golden retriever on their show because she had been raising 3 tiger cubs, who had been abandoned by their mom, for 7 weeks. There were 3 other goldens, who, while not nursing the cubs, were assisting her in nurturing them and teaching them the appropriate social values for their age.

"Extraordinary Animals" on Animal Planet had a show on "'Rio', a sea lion residing in California,who solves logical questions that puzzle most humans." Another segment titled "Bird Braniac" features an African gray parrot who has mastered English vocabulary sufficiently to identify shapes, colors, objects, and perform simple addition. African Greys are said to have the same capacity to learn as 7 year old humans. They did a segment on "'Skamp,' a schnauzer, who predicts the death of residents in a nursing home with near 100 percent accuracy." I've seen other programs where a cat and a different dog have also been able to reliably recognize when a nursing home resident is preparing to pass over, and always go in and sit or lie on the patient until they have died.

Then on "Natural World," also on Animal Planet they showed an episode "Saved by Dolphins." Dulcey's grand-daughter RooNey, and RooNey's son "Nim" have joined my Blogging endeavor. RooNey is sitting on the right arm of my chair with her behind against my right elbow. Nim, who is younger with less polished social skills horned right in between them, resting his heavy body over my right arm, making typing challenging. Dulcey grew impatient with his youthful disregard of appropriate interspecies social decorum and bopped him on the head, and with a hiss left us momentarily. His mother, RooNey, a bit ashamed of her youngest's lapse left us for my bed and the company of a half dozen or so other felines. Dulcey reappeared, jumped up and sat on my right, looked at me, purred, pushed her face into mine before perching on the back of my chair.

Back to "Saved by Dolphins." This shows is about a pod of dolphins that protects a group of 4 swimmers from a white shark for 40 minutes. This dolphin-protecting-man behavior has been written about for centuries.

Do you remember the story of the elderly man, who lived alone with his cat, who fell, broke his hip and was unable to get up? For a week his cat kept him alive by going outside hunting, and daily bringing birds right up to within his reach. She was credited with keeping him alive for the week until he was found.

There have been several documentaries of different men relating and living safely with black bears, grizzly bears, and wolves.

There have been many empirically documented accounts of positive, human-with-"wild" animal social relationships. The ways that service animals help humans are too numerous to list. There are many accounts of "pets' saving families from fires, drowning, and dangerous animals.

Hopefully, I will be successful in my attempts to add pictures to this post to illustrate some of the sources of my beliefs.