I noticed a headline on the sidebar just now, it led to another link, and thus this second Saddy Animals post. At the Sunday Times of London, I could immediately tell that the first story I clicked on was a folo to one it linked, so let me present them to you in proper order rather than how I discovered them. Let us begin here:
A three-month-old baby died in its mother’s arms earlier this month. For hours the mother, Gana, gently shook and stroked her son Claudio, apparently trying to restore movement to his lolling head and limp arms. People who watched were moved to tears — unfazed by the fact that Gana and Claudio were "only" gorillas in Münster zoo, northern Germany.
It wasn’t just witnesses who were moved. A British woman who read about Gana’s loss online posted this comment: "From one bereaved mother to another — Gana, you are in my thoughts. My baby boy died last June and you wouldn’t wish it on any form of life."
Some, to be fair, reacted differently. One newspaper writer asked bluntly whether we are " too quick to project human feelings onto animals". However, Dr Bill Sellers, a primatologist at Manchester University, believes gorillas experience pain and loss in a similar way to humans, "but of course it’s extremely difficult to prove scientifically".
As Einstein said: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts." …
Reading that article will bring you astounding news, one way and another. And when you’ve finished it and had a good think, you can continue on to its shorter but hardly less thought-provoking companion piece, which begins:
As Gana’s loss of Claudio went round the world, the director of Münster zoo hailed the episode as "one of the greatest gifts that a zoo can bestow — to show ‘animals’ are very much like ourselves, and feel elation and pain. Gana lost a child, but I think in that loss she taught people here so much".
Others think that the story has opened a fresh line of attack on the existence of zoos and their breeding programmes in particular. "What in the world was the zoo doing allowing a female to breed?" asked Marc Bekoff, the ethologist. …
When you come back from those two, you’ll know you’ve been somewhere.
I think I remember from school that the emotions are centered in older parts of the brain beneath the neocortex. Don’t know why we think we don’t share that stuff with our evolutionary kin.
Oh, lotus, just saw that the National Geographic channel is featuring the Michael Vick pit bull rescue dog story on a new program “Dog Town” beginning September 5.