Say it with me now: Awwwweeeee!

ME WANTS!!!!!1!!!1 ME WANTS NOW!!!!!1!!!1

Because CNN apparently does not allow embedding of “their” videos (Zum, iReports, anyone? Not really “theirs”!), you’ll have to go to CNN to experience the cuteness. Here’s a direct link. Which I could only retrieve by emailing the video to myself. Seriously, WTF CNN? Even Comedy Central has hopped onto the embedding bandwagon. It’s 2008, for dogsake.

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare video cnn dog canine sheep pet companion animal ethology animal behavior animal emotions love interspecies bonding animal rescue

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jun 21, 2007 6:16 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: “Ethical living: Do fish have feelings too?…” UK Guardian, 21 June, 2007

The UK’s Thursday, June 21 Guardian has a piece headed, “Ethical living: Do fish have feelings too?: Animal rights campaigners are turning their attention to aquariums. But should we really get worked up about angel fish and guppies, wonders Harry Pearson.” (p 18)

Pearson opens with:

“When I was a child, my Aunt Nancy had a tank of tropical fish - guppies, black mollies, angelfish - in the front room of her house in Redcar. If anyone asked if the fish had enough space, her reply was automatic. ‘Oh yes,’ she would say. ‘You see, they only have a memory of five seconds.’ The fish, it seemed, swam to one end of the aquarium and by the time they had got there, they had forgotten everything they had seen. As a result, the fish found this small box of water as infinite and fascinating as the universe.

“That fish have an incredibly short memory is known to everyone. Unfortunately, like many well-known ‘facts’, it is not true. Several years ago researchers at the Australian Veterinary Association blew the five-second-memory idea right out of the water. Today, the generally held view is that fish have a memory span of at least a few months.

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Apr 17, 2007 10:45 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times on chimps –”Almost Human, and Sometimes Smarter.” 4/17/07

The Tuesday, April 17, New York Times has an interesting article on the cover of the Science section (page F1), by John Noble Wilford, on the intelligence of chimps. It is headed “Almost Human, and Sometimes Smarter.”

It tells us that certain similarities between chimps and humans “go beyond expressive faces and opposable thumbs.”

It says:

“Chimps display a remarkable range of behavior and talent. They make and use simple tools, hunt in groups and engage in aggressive, violent acts. They are social creatures that appear to be capable of empathy, altruism, self-awareness, cooperation in problem solving and learning through example and experience. Chimps even outperform humans in some memory tasks.”

It discusses researchers having “found that chimps as social animals have had to constrain and alter their behavior in various ways, as have humans.” That phenomenon is compared to human morality. It notes that chimps use tools.

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Apr 1, 2007 4:28 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Unforgettable elephants PBS Sunday 4/1/07. Great review in New York Times.

This evening, Sunday April 1 at 8pm, the PBS Nature series will air “The Unforgettable Elephant.” I will paste below information about the program, and a strong review from Saturday’s New York Times.

If you miss it this evening, you should be able to catch an encore. This page will help you find out when it will air again: www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/schedule_airdates.html.

(I share this email with those not in the US as your public stations may air the show at other times, and you can keep an eye out.)

If you catch ‘Unforgettable Elephants’ and enjoy, please don’t forget to express your appreciation. Nature takes feedback at www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/feedback.html.

There is a little promo video, with a scene from the documentary, at www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/unforgettable/video.html.

Here is the Introduction to the show, from the Nature web page www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/unforgettable/index.html:

NATURE chronicles African elephants families through stunning film and still photos in UNFORGETTABLE ELEPHANTS, premiering Sunday, April 1.

We have seen them dressed in costumes and dancing at circuses, living solitary lives at zoos or giving our children a thrill with a ride on their back. But the largest land animals live a life that is completely foreign to us when left to their own in the wild-one complete with battles and births, kidnappings and camaraderie. Fifteen years ago, Martyn Colbeck chose to document in film and photos the life of one family of African elephants. For the better part of two decades, his subject, the elephant matriarch Echo and her close-knit family, have never failed to astonish him, amuse him and inspire him.

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Get right with D-O-G!:

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

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From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Nov 10, 2006 5:20 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Wall Street Journal on monkey fairness — 11/10/06

The Friday, November 10, Wall Street Journal covers another one of those studies likely to make laugh those of us who live with animals — the astonishing discovery that other animals have emotions like ours. But what should make us smile with satisfaction and relief, rather than just laughing at the obvious, is that this kind of information is being reported in the Wall Street Journal. It is hard to miss the increasing attention that bastion of capitalism has been giving to animal issues. We can only hope the coverage affects societal attitudes towards animals, and, eventually, the way our species treats them.

Today’s report, by Sharon Begley, is headed, “Animals Seem to Have an Inherent Sense of Fairness and Justice.” (p B 01.)

It describes experiments in which monkeys in adjoining cages pulled in trays with cups of food.

We learn,

“When pulling the tray requires two monkeys’ efforts, but only one cup is filled, the lucky monkey often shares its spoils.”

And we read:

“Animals other than humans are not only sensitive to unfairness, but are driven to rectify it. Philosophers have long argued that this ability underlies much of our human morality.”

(more…)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Nov 10, 2006 6:07 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Miami Herald op-ed on animal emotion — 11/10/06

As a perfect compliment for the Wall Street Journal article on monkey sense of fairness, the Friday, November 10, Miami Herald includes an op-ed by PCRM’s Jonathon Balcombe headed, “Animal Rights. They think, feel pain.” (p29)

It opens:

“Recent news that Happy, a 34-year-old Asian elephant, recognized herself in a giant, shatter-proof mirror at the Bronx Zoo is just the latest in a burgeoning list of eye-opening revelations into the minds and motivations of other beings.

“Recent studies have shown that mice empathize with familiar mice who are suffering, that captive male monkeys will hand over a bottle of fruit juice for a chance to ogle photos of female monkeys’ bottoms and that rats accustomed to being tickled will come running for more, making high-pitched chirps linked to the origins of human laughter.

“Such discoveries are not confined to mammals. Pigeons navigate using human roads, ravens slide or roll down snow banks just for kicks and iguanas will shun boring food to brave the cold for a gourmet treat.

“Fish, too, can no longer be dismissed as mindless, unfeeling things. Three fish biologists recently described fishes as: ’steeped in social intelligence, pursuing Machiavellian strategies of manipulation, punishment, reconciliation and cooperation.’

“The once-long list of uniquely human traits is dwindling almost as fast as you can say ‘human supremacy.’”

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Nov 2, 2006 3:52 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times editorial calls for valuing other animals for their differences — 11/2/06

On Thursday, November 2, the New York Times includes an editorial, (the newspaper editorial page’s official opinion) commenting on the recent discovery that elephants understand mirrors. (See Tuesday’s DawnWatch alert at tinyurl.com/ylh2gn if you missed that story.)

The editorial is headed, “Horton Sees an Image.” (p A26)

It describes the elephants’ newly discovered ability, then comments:

“Such tests appear to mark a boundary between animals that display some form of consciousness and those that don’t. But what they really do is raise questions about the value we attribute to consciousness and our inevitably human definition of it. It is always us setting the rules.

How many tests set by elephants could we pass?”

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Oct 31, 2006 2:25 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Elephant mirror tests front page Wash Post and AJC, in NY Times and others — 10/31/06

The discovery that elephants understand how mirrors work, and the suggestion that the understanding proves self-awareness, has made big news today, Tuesday October 31. The story is in hundreds of papers across the world and even on the front page of some leading papers.

The Washington Post has the story, by Rick Weiss, on the front page, headed, “Who’s That Pretty Pachyderm?”

It opens:

“Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror and use their reflections to explore hidden parts of themselves, a measure of subjective self-awareness that until now has been shown definitively only in humans and apes, researchers reported yesterday.”

The test is described:

“The new study involved three female Asian elephants at the zoo, in New York City. Workers built a 64-square-foot acrylic mirror, cemented it to plywood, framed it in steel and bolted it to a stone wall of the elephant enclosure.”

At first the elephants explored the mirror. Then:

“That was followed by an eerie sequence in which the animals made slow, rhythmic movements while tracking their reflections. Then, like teenagers, they got hooked.

“All three conducted oral self-exams. Maxine, a 35-year-old female, even used the tip of her trunk to get a better look inside her mouth. She also used her trunk to slowly pull her ear in front of the mirror so she could examine it — ’self-directed’ behaviors the zookeepers had never seen before.

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Oct 27, 2006 5:34 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Huge Wall Street Journal Weekend article on animal intelligence — 10/27/06

The Friday, October 27, Wall Street Journal has huge article on the front page of the Weekend Journal section (W1) headed, “What Your Pet is Thinking.” The article, by Sharon Begley, actually focuses not on “your pet” but on nonhuman intelligence.

It opens with the description of a dog who hated the sound of the ringing telephone so would pick up the receiver and put it back down again to shut it up.

We read about research animal intelligence are told:

“The research is also coloring thinking about everything from science labs to farms and food-production facilities.”

I will share the passage on the test of primate awareness:

“At the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Robert Hampton, who has made some of the field’s most significant findings, studies whether rhesus monkeys know if they know something. In one series of experiments, he gave the monkeys memory tests over a period of weeks. After seeing four images on a monitor, the monkeys would be asked to choose which one they had seen before. But before taking the test, the monkeys had a choice of pressing one of two icons whose meaning they already knew. One meant, ‘Yup, I’m ready to take the test.’ The other meant, ‘No test for me, thanks.’ They had an incentive to take it only if they remembered the target image: Failing the test brought them no reward, passing it got them a handful of peanuts, and declining to take the test got them monkey-chow pellets, which they don’t like as much as peanuts but are better than nothing.

“When the monkeys chose to take the test, they passed more than 80% of the time, apparently declining to take the test when their memory was poor. When they weren’t given a choice and Prof. Hampton gave them the test anyway, they chose the correct image much less often. That suggests they knew the contents of their memory and assessed it before deciding whether to take the test — a sign of self-reflective consciousness. ‘The monkeys know whether they remember something,’ says Prof. Hampton, who reported his latest monkey findings in May in the journal Behavioural Processes.”

It is disturbing to read about monkeys held captive in facilities nothing like their native jungles, just so that we can perform tests that satisfy our curiosity about their thinking. But given that primates are still used in lethal tests for new household products, or for studying illegal drugs such as ecstasy, perhaps we have to be willing, for now, to accept the tests that bring knowledge that we hope will make those lethal tests illegal.

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Oct 9, 2006 3:16 PM
Subject: Dawnwatch: NY Times on dolphin intelligence and our similarity to other animals 10/9/06

Yesterday I shared an op-ed from the Los Angeles Times that discussed the likelihood that fish feel pain. Though pleased with the piece, I noted, with some annoyance, that it expressed any possible doubt as to whether nonhuman animals feel emotion, while millions of people who live with animals have no doubt that they do. It seems serendipitous that today’s (Monday, October 8 ) New York Times includes an op-ed by Professor Frans de Waal headed, “Looking at Flipper, Seeing Ourselves.” (Pg A17)

De Waal refers to a South African scientist who says that the intelligence of dolphins is vastly overrated. Then De Waal describes various dolphin feats, including “One female dolphin that was rewarded with a fish for every piece of debris she managed to collect from her tank managed to con her trainers into a bounty of snacks. They discovered she had been hiding large items like newspapers underwater, only to rip small pieces from them, bringing these to her trainer one by one.”

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