Animals and Me

As promised! Today we shall discuss my interest in: Animals and their intelligence and their abilities to communicate.

I would have a hard time pinpointing exactly when this became an interest of mine. I guess maybe since I was a kid and I saw gorillas speaking sign language? It's become much more of an interest lately. Especially since reading Alex & Me, which is about a scientist who tries to determine how much language a parrot can learn. And Wesley the Owl, wherein another scientist took in a barn owl and wound up developing a very close relationship with him over the next 19 years. Both books are amazing, but will make you cry.

And also learning about Temple Grandin's work. I want to learn more - but at the moment I'm in something of a book debt. People keep giving me books as gifts and I want to read them - I do! - but that conflicts with my lifelong love of the library. Anyway, at the moment I have quite a few gift books waiting for me, and so another book called The Animal Dialogues that I got from the library will have to wait.

I just feel like, this weird thing where people think we're so awesome that we're the only ones who can communicate on a complicated level is so ... obnoxious. So full of ourselves. Other cultures in other times have felt closer to animals. Now we ignore their suffering so that we don't have to really think about the terrible things we do to them. It's tough, because I know animal experiments do help save human lives, but I hope there comes a day where technology becomes advanced enough so that we don't have to resort to that.

Anyway, it's a subject I'm deeply interested in and something I feel like there is so much more to know about. I don't currently own a pet, but it would be nice to, to try and develop a deeper, communicative relationship with something outside my human realm. Someday. More research and more hands on research!

We'll see if I blog over the weekend. Not that I have a ton of stuff going on, I just don't generally spend a lot of time on the computer on Saturday and Sunday. But I'll be back Monday, and I'll share with you the last of what I think of as my trifecta of interests.