First: Why Animals Don't Get Their Due
There are many humans among us that continue to refuse to appreciate and respect animals around us. We first must acknowledge that many people participate in 'leveling' others. I am not going to go into the psychology of leveling in this blog, but it does serve at least a couple purposes for the person doing such activity. First, a person of good moral fiber would never try to level an individual who is obviously lesser in some way than the individual doing the leveling. Other than to satisfy a severe need to climb a hierarchy, no matter how pathetic it is, a person would have no real need to level someone already lower than himself. The other most obvious reason is, "There is something in that guy that I can't stand about myself." Many people go about their daily lives, attempting to degrade singers, musicians, artists, designers, etc, while there is a really good chance that the person being degraded has exponentially more talent than the person doing the degrading, thus the need for the lesser person to bring the greater person to his level. The farther apart two people are in talent, ability, financial status (and the list goes on for quite a while!), the harder the lesser person will try to close that gap.
Back to the animals.
When a person degrades an animal's intelligence, it is most likely because the human 'degrader' is threatened because that animal must might be (read: IS!) more regal, intelligent and creative than the assailant. Because the person that feels threatened is already in denial about the animal's intelligence, any additional show of intelligence on the animal's part would be a moot attempt. Basically, the animal is defenseless against such an attack, making an easier target for someone who must so this leveling in order to make himself (or herself) feel better about living in their own skin.
As a segway, no amount of leveling will appease such a need. You need to do things to make yourself feel better. That is the only solution to your problem. Good people do not feel bad about themselves.
KANZI - the Bonodo!
The first clip in this blog is about Kanzi, a bonobo. A bonobo is a chimpanzee relative. They are not kept in zoos for reasons that you will discover in this clip. I have the issue of Time Magazine that Oprah is talking about, "What Animals Think" from Time Magazine. In this article, a reporter arrives to do an interview with Kanzi and his trainer. Upon his arrival at the facility, Kanzi signals to the lab supervisor, Tyler Romine, "Get us some coffee." The Tyler retrieves 4 cups of coffee, one for Sue, the primatologist in the following clip, one for himself, one for the reporter - and one for Kanzi.
After a few minutes of the interview, Kanzi decided that he wanted to play a game with Finlay, the reporter. Kanzi tells him to go into another room and get a ball to play the game with him. Finlay is not familiar with this facility, and he takes a bit longer than anticipated to retrieve the ball. When he walks back into the room with the ball, he asks Kanzi, "Are you ready?" Kanzi answers him, "I'm past ready!"
Let's take a look at the cognitive steps needed for that simple exchange, alone (Just the "playing ball" concept - I don't think I need to cover the "Get us all coffee" concept!)
1) Kanzi wanted to do a fun activity with a visitor.
2) Kanzi asked the visitor to retrieve a tool (the ball) needed to play the game.
3) Kanzi had to wait (a complicated concept, in itself) for the reporter to return.
4) When the reporter asked him, "Are you ready?" and he answered, "I'm past ready!" , that exchange covers another group, all into itself, of complicated thought processes.
a) A sense of time passing.
b) "I am waiting to BEGIN something."
c) "I know how long it would take the average person to go into a room and get a ball, and you took longer than that!" - an advanced sense of time.
d) I am getting impatient! (impatient, meaning he has to be aware of this particular emotion, and he knows how to describe it!)
This is Kanzi, as seen on the Oprah show:
Slow + lettuce = Kale
Big + water = a flood he had seen on TV - the flood in Iowa
Bread + Cheese + tomato = pizza
That is not random stuff.
This episode of Oprah also features people who help raise orphaned baby elephants. The woman that started this elephant refuge said that a few years ago, she had to take a short business trip. It was while she was gone that one of the baby elephants in her care grieved himself to death, because she was gone. Grieving over an absent individual is a higher cognitive thought process. She says that after that loss, she has learned to have her assistants stay with the babies, on a rotating schedule so that no baby elephant becomes attached to any individual person. When I say STAY, I mean STAY. These keepers sleep in a loft just overhead of the sleeping baby elephants. Each baby elephant is individually put to bed: He has his own pillow, and is covered up with a blanket.
When these elephants reach the age that they can fend for themselves, they are released into the wild. Yet, when "past orphans" have babies of their own, they will always return to the camp to show this wonderful lady their new baby. When the proud new mother reaches the camp, the other elephants at the camp put their trunks over the baby, as if to hug and welcome him into their world. The keeper also tells the story of a young female elephant who was shot with arrows from an idiot poacher. She was able to walk, and she walked back to the facility. She alerted the keeper that she had a problem, and laid down on the ground so the staff could remove the painful arrows from her body.
Elephants also mourn (another advanced cognitive thought process!) other dead elephants. If the elephant has recently passed, they move their trunks over the body, and visibly mourn this passing. If they happen upon the bones of an elephant, they will explore the skull, and identify the individual that passed. Once again, they mourn. There is far more to the intelligence and cognitive abilities for each of these animals, and these are just a few of the many available examples.
ALEX - the African Grey Parrot
I have an African Grey Parrot (Conrad), myself. I cry huge tears every time I watch the end of this video.
I do have to take issue with one thing that Diane Sawyer said in the beginning of this clip. She says that Alex the Grey was "kind of a genius in the parrot world". This is not true. Alex was bought by the trainers from an average pet store. He has the average intelligence of any African Grey parrot. His selection was made completely at random. African Grey parrots have the cognitive sense of the average 4 year old. Both Conrad and myself are insulted when somebody approaches his cage, and talks to him in "silly bird language".
ALL parrots have some sort of cognitive level. They have been tested many times, and it has been found that the African Grey parrot is the most cognitive, with Yellow Caped Amazons coming in a close second.
An African Grey knows quantity - they can count, and I am not talking about simply reciting numbers. If they have been so trained, they can express these things: (Hey - you didn't learn how to spell or count until you went to school, did you? They have to go to school, too!)
1) You can put 3 pennies on a table, and ask, "How many?" He will answer, "Three!"
2) Show him a tray with 3 red blocks and 4 blue blocks. Ask him which color has more? HE will answer, "Blue"
3) Show him two plastic keys - one small yellow key, and one larger green key. Ask him, "Which color is bigger (since they are both keys!)? He will answer, "Green"
They know the difference between shapes, sizes, quantity, color, hot / cold, and what matter something contains (wood, metal, wool, etc). I don't care who you are, I will not let you tell me those things are "lucky, random answers!" If those are lucky, random answers, I need every African Grey Parrot on the damned planet to play the lottery for me!
Not only do African Greys have an advanced cognition, they express a wide range of emotions:
love, anger, shock, fear, worry and they are master manipulators. In general, African Greys are rather clumsy birds. Falling off a perch happens all to frequently. When Conrad falls off a perch, he will climb back up on the perch, and then for an hour, he will sit there and shake. His eyes are huge, and he is an emotional wreck. African Greys are capable of thinking, "What would have happened if...... I could have been hurt, etc?"
On more than one occasion, I have caught Conrad rummaging through his food bowl, in with good African Grey fashion. He will pick up a fist (claw!) full of food that he doesn't want to eat - then he will hurl it through the bars of his cage, and across the room! I will tell him, "Stop that!" He answers me, "No, you stop that!" Meanwhile, he has a fist full of food, but he is staring straight ahead, hoping I wouldn't see the food in his claw. The second I turn my head, I will get food against the back of my head!
On another occasion, I was feeding him his breakfast. He asked me, "What are you doing?" I answered, "I'm giving you your breakfast." He responded, "Awww, that is stupid!" I said, "Stupid, my ass! There are starving little birdies in China that would love to have your breakfast! I should cut you back to your daily rations for a week, and give you no treats!" He hung his head and said, "No, daddy, daddy, daddy! Conrad is a GOOD boy! I love you!" I had to laugh!
Often, as Mark is getting ready to go to work, or we are getting ready to leave the house to go shopping, etc, Conrad will say, "Bye, Bye, buddy! Bye, bye!" One morning, Mark was getting ready to go to work, and Conrad started, "Bye, Bye, buddy!" Keep in mind that Conrad owned ME before we met Mark. I am Conrad's mate, and there will be no other. At any rate, as Mark was getting ready to leave the house, Conrad was getting upset because Mark hadn't left the house in the time that Conrad thought was appropriate. After his last, "Bye, Bye!", Conrad asked Mark, "Well, are you gone, yet?" Mark said, "I will not have you run me out of my own damned house!" I laughed histerically.
I will not go into the entire saga, but we also have to keep in mind that an African Grey parrot has no vocal chords, no teeth, and they don't use their tongue to speak. They have literally no structures required for human speech, yet they are capable of using human speech appropriately.
On the other hand, great apes have all the structures necessary for speech, and with the exception of a few vocalizations, they use very little of their voice. I'm hoping Kanzi's son enlightens the world, and has some capability of appropriate speech.
Conrad can mix the sound of a kitchen blender with the sound of a vacuum cleaner and get the sound of an electric drill, for example. They can mix sounds to get many other sounds.
African Grey parrots have no vocabulary of their own. A study was done on a flock of wild Greys, and they were found to be using the entire repertoire of 9 other individual species of birds - and two species of bats, and they used these alien sounds to communicate with each other.
I have not yet mentioned that Orangutans love to groom so much that they will groom their own reflections in a mirror. These are the only animals that recognize themselves in the mirror: great apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, humans, and gorillas), rhesus macaques, bottlenose dolphins, orcas, elephants, and European Magpies.
Many animals (crows, apes), are capable of using tools to perform tasks. Rats and squirrels will learn complicated, multi-step tasks with lightning speed.
...and the list can go on and on......
For more information and more videos, look up on YouTube:
Koko / Gorilla
Bonobo / Kanzi
Alex / parrot
crow tool use
and check out this squirrel maze!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eDSubTVYEQ
- Michael
