ALL ANIMAL POST THAT EVOLVED THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION OF READINGS, PICTURES, RANDOM FACTS, QUOTES AND INSTINCTIVE MUSINGS

http://chronicle.com/article/Our-Animals-Ourselves/129873/

"Before and after Darwin, the specter of the animal in man has been compensated by a hierarchical scheme that separates our angelic nature from our merely circumstantial, and hopefully temporary, beastly one.

Until the decisive human victory over other predatorial megafauna several thousand years ago, and the subsequent domestication of certain large animals…human beings lived in a single community with animals, a community that included animals as actors and as persons."

"In that world, animals and human beings made up a single socio-natural reality. They killed one another, yes, but this killing had nothing in common with the industrial slaughter of domestic animals we practice today: Then, unlike now, animals were killed not because they were excluded from the community, but because they were key members of it. Animals gave themselves for the sake of the continual regeneration of the social and natural order, and in return were revered and treated as kin."

But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if had been put on his trial by oxen, certainly would have bee…Go to the meat-martket of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? Who is not a cannibal?---Herman Melville. Moby Dick

Notable Quotables

The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.
James Thurber

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.
Milan Kundera

- "Most people have forgotten how to live with living creatures, with living systems and that, in turn, is the reason why man, whenever he comes into contact with nature, threatens to kill the natural system in which and from which he lives.
--Konrad Lorenz.

“The rabbit is considered a kind and intelligent creature in Cambodian culture.” – Bugs Bunny

NOTE TO READERS: SINGLE CLICKING (ON MACS) ANY EMBEDDED PHOTO OR IMAGE WILL ENLARGE THE IMAGE IN A NEW WINDOW. AND IF IT DOESN'T ON THIS SITE FROM YOUR COMPUTER, LET ME KNOW...OR JUST SHRUG IT OFF AS YOU WOULD ALL OTHER TECHNOLOGY FRUSTRATIONS.



It is apparent that it is not by a true judgment, but by foolish pride and stubbornness, that we set ourselves before other animals and sequester ourselves from their condition and society.” Michel Montaigne

FFFT

Rats like to be tickled. High-pitched chirping is how they laugh, and some rats prefer being tickled to eating.

Sometimes an (abused, deprived, abandoned, mal-nourished) elephant will commit suicide, shutting off its own air supply by stepping on its trunk and refusing to budge.

In his book The Whole Hog, biologist and Johannesburg Zoo director Lyall Watson writes, "I know of no other animals [who] are more consistently curious, more willing to explore new experiences, more ready to meet the world with open mouthed enthusiasm. Pigs, I have discovered, are incurable optimists and get a big kick out of just being."

Play is costly in terms of energy, but evolution has made it such fun that mammals spend between up to 10 per cent of their time at play.


Bonobos do it missionary-style. About 30 percent of their heterosexual couplings are face-to-face, belly-to-belly.




We can claim many advantages over the other species, but experience isn’t one of them…

500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians,
◦ 475 million years of land plants,
◦ 400 million years of insects and seeds,
◦ 360 million years of amphibians,
◦ 300 million years of reptiles,
◦ 200 million years of mammals,
◦ 150 million years of birds,
◦ 130 million years of flowers,
◦ 65 million years since the non-avian dinosaurs died out,
◦ 2.5 million years since the appearance of the genus Homo,
◦ 200,000 years of anatomically modern humans

There is an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence suggesting interspecies altruism-- and new scientific research is starting to corroborate those anecdotes. A current study with chimpanzee toddlers indicates that they harbor something akin to interspecies altruism. Everyone living with a pet can testify that their non-human companion seems to know and respond to their needs. In some cases, pets have been known to aid their owners during an acute or chronic illness or an accident. But it doesn't end there - animals of different species who don't know each other often provide help and comfort to one another.




Colonel Richard Martin (15 January 1754 – 6 January 1834), was an Irish politician and animal rights activist His actions resulted eventually in Martin's Act of 1822, entitled "Ill Treatment of Cattle Bill"


A painting of the Trial of Bill Burns, showing Richard Martin with the donkey in an astonished courtroom, leading to the world's first known conviction for animal cruelty



Readings

Some we love, Some we hate, Some we eat.
By Hal Herzog.

The Moral Lives of Animals
by Dale Peterson

Animal Life in Nature, Myth and Dreams
by Elizabeth Caspari

“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck
“that simply smote thee from blindest instinct!
Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing,
Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”
Herman Melville, Moby Dick