Latest Blog Posts

 Dognapping Baboons

Dognapping baboons? If you don’t believe me, check out this  video clip. Aside from being fascinating, this is the kind of clip that makes me glad I’m an independent scholar in the realm of the human-animal bond. That way I have access to academics like bond scholar Hal Herzog who pointed me to his blog about this interspecies incident. (Read Hal Herzog’s blog for the inside scoop on this event.)

But events such as these also make me relish my status as an independent scholar because it gives me the freedom to think the unthinkable, the weird or possibly just plain crazy thoughts about what might be going on here…and what it might say about us and our relationships with our dogs.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:44 — 5.3MB)

Meditation on Animal Play

When you listen to this podcast, you’ll notice that there’s no mention of Bamboo the cat’s behavior during these intervals. This is because from the first instant that he made the connection between the woodstove, and warmth, and my clawably comfortable yoga mats, he decided that no interactive toy could compel him to budge from that location. I suspect this occurred because his idea of a good interactive toy is a rodent who dares venture into the basement through the dry stone foundation. Compared to that, even the most creative manmade toy lacks pizazz.

The meditative setting                        The clawed mat

Because of this, I’ve had to resort to devious tricks to keep him off the mat. Thus far my greatest successes come in cold weather because—great outdoor explorer though he is—he does not like to be cold in the house. To capitalize on this feline weakness, I immediately stoke up the woodstove first thing when I get up in the morning. My goal isn’t to warm the house so much as to warm the brick center chimney that serves as the flue for the stove. More importantly, said chimney runs through my office right behind the corner of my desk where Bam sleeps.

Upper half of chimney with Bam’ bed: 

If all goes well, by the time I download the day’s email and reply to the most pressing, the chimney’s warmth will have lulled him into that comatose sleep favored by felines. Then the dogs and I sneak downstairs and the day unfolds as described in the podcast.

What happens on a good day:

If the chimney fails to do its magic… well, let’s just say that yoga is apt to give way to aerobics as cat and human vie to maintain possession of the mat for the next hour. On a good day for me, it’s a draw.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:23 — 5.0MB)

Rewriting the Rules

Even though I recognize the need for rules in order for a society to function (regardless of species) I also recognize that, like all behavior their meaning depends on their context. In spite of what we may like to believe, nothing is written in stone.

This doesn’t mean that I’m one of those people who believes that rules were meant to be broken simply because they’re rules. Hardly. But I do believe that when new information makes it clear that rules that once held no longer do, then it’s time to let them go.

This podcast was triggered by a change in a once inviolate rule—that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light—that shocked the physics world in 2011. As it turns out, apparently a sub-atomic particle called a neutrino can. (You can read about the experiment in this article from the New York Times.) While few scientists want to publicly say that Einstein got it wrong, some already begin to speculate on what this might mean…

Which naturally got me thinking about what some consider those equally inviolate rules regarding animal cognition and emotion.

Under circumstances when long-established rules exist, how much proof is enough for a society to think the once unthinkable? How much would it take you to accept that something can travel faster than the speed of light? How about that animals are capable of cognition and emotion?

The answer to those questions results in an intellectual paradox in that sometimes the more we know about a subject, the more proof we need that existing rules no longer hold true. For those of us who can’t comprehend the complex rules of theoretical physics, the idea that a particle could move faster than the speed of light doesn’t seem that alien at all. Similarly when we’re not constrained by rules that limit cognition and emotion to  Home sapiens, we more readily accept evidence of that those same capacities exist in animals.

What we don’t know is how much evidence it takes from either “side” of these debates to trigger a society to either reassert or scrap a rule, to reaffirm the old view of reality or to adopt a new one.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:51 — 5.4MB)

Behavioral Webs

Sometimes when I listen to these podcasts after I’ve recorded and edited them, it strikes me that I may have meandered a little bit more off the path than I usually do. This time, I could say that I detected an annoying clunk in the recording, the origin of which I couldn’t determine any more than I could completely eliminate it.

But the truth is that in my heart I know the events described in this podcast are related. But for some reason, my head apparently didn’t get the message. I will say that one possible explanation that I didn’t mention in the podcast because it didn’t occur to me until later, is that my dog did what she did because she made a connection between the words “pill” and “pillow.”  She’d have certainly heard my folks say both words often, plus research makes it clear that dogs are much better at understanding human speech than most of us are at understanding theirs.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:32 — 7.8MB)

Individual Life and the Bond

There are many sayings and phenomena in human behavior that remind us that connections between fact and fiction, art and life, and perception exist even if we don’t notice them. Sometimes we may go for years and never notice them. Then one day something happens that suddenly catapults the connection into our awareness. At such times I, at least, feel torn between berating myself for missing it for so long and being fascinated by the existence of such a process.

That’s what happened to me recently…

(Read more…)

Triple Resolutions 2012

I have a love-hate relationship with New Year’s. Because I’m a morning person who doesn’t enjoy late night events during which people get louder and more inebriated and suffer from Football Fatigue Syndrome (FFS) after being inundated by it during 9 years in Ohio, few of the traditional holiday activities appeal to me. On the other hand, the fact that this is the case caused me to create a New Years tradition of my own a.k.a. a quiet day with the animals and a specifically chosen book accompanied by some personal favorite food and drink. Depending on the weather, the dogs, cat, and I also may do the walk-about. If the weather doesn’t cooperate, we enjoy the  coziness of the wood fire indoors. In either cases we enjoy each other’s company and the peace and quiet.

Just me and my other not-so-party animals.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:19 — 5.8MB)

Holiday Greetings, 2011

Right after I recorded this, I heard a linguist talking about how often we forget the source of the words we use every day. One of the  examples given was creature which comes from the same root as create and creator. Not only do we rank as creatures among other creatures relative to the animals in the world around us, we also function as creators deliberately or inadvertently changing each other as we each strive to achieve balance. An awareness of the power of those interspecies connections is yet another miracle worth contemplating and celebrating this  holiday season.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:35 — 5.1MB)

Human-Avian Encounters

For those who never heard of parahawking (which I’ve since discovered has been demoted to a sport), here’s a trailer for a film on the subject.

Frankly I much prefer the encounters that occur spontaneously. To me, there’s something extremely special about a close encounter with any wild animals in their natural environments. There’s also something about the encounters with powerful raptors that seem to have particularly potent affects. Once early in my veterinary career, a young man brought in an osprey who had been so seriously injured there was no way we could save him. But even though the bird’s bones were shattered and he was covered with dirt and blood, it didn’t matter. He was such a magnificent creature we were all in awe of him.

Right to the end, he was so determined to fight for his freedom that I couldn’t imagine how the young man ever managed to pick him up from the side of the road, let alone transport him the considerable distance to the clinic. Later one of the techs who had gone to high school with him said it was probably because he was higher than a kite. Evidently he was no stranger to drugs back in the age of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. And serving in Viet Nam had only made the problem—and life—worse for him.

I don’t know what went on between that man and that osprey. But I do knew that whatever it was was very special. They both held it together long enough for the man to get the bird to the clinic. Within days after the bird died, the young man launched himself from a railroad trestle that spanned the river far below. Someone who saw it said it looked like he was trying to fly.The medical examiner said he probably died on impact.

Even all of these years later, I still wonder what have happened if we’d been able to save the bird.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:28 — 6.9MB)

Treatment Obesity

My guess is that once you listen to this podcast, you’ll be able to think of other trends that occur in physical health that have parallels in behavioral health and vice versa. Whether we seek to fulfill our animals’ physical or behavioral needs, we always need to beware of the Iago Effect. Never heard of this? That’s understandable because I just made it up.

Iago was a character immortalized by Shakespeare in Othello. He was a man who wanted to be remembered, not for loving unwisely but for loving too well. Poetic as that may be, it didn’t change the fact that the result of his loving Desdemona too well left her deader than a doornail…

which I suspect she would have considered unwise love had she lived to think about it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:29 — 6.0MB)

Holiday Cheer

Would it surprise you to learn that I was once an angel? For those considering renouncing your faith if the likes of me can achieve such status, permit to add that this occurred when I was in the second grade. And I’m sure it only happened because I happened to have access to a kick-butt angel costume.

It happened like this…