Shunya's Notes

Stories of Collapse

[The 17th in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. It first appeared on 3 Quarks Daily. The previous part is here.]

The peopling of Polynesia was an epic chapter in world exploration. Stirred by adventure and hungry for land, intrepid pioneers sailed for days or weeks beyond their known horizons to discover landscapes and living things never before seen by human eyes. Survival was never easy or assured, yet they managed to find and colonize nearly every spot of land across the entire southern Pacific Ocean. On each island, they forged new societies based on familiar Polynesian models of ranked patrilineages, family bonds and obligations, social care and cohesion, cooperation and duty. Each culture that arose was unique and changeable, as islanders continually adjusted to altered conditions, new information, and shifting political tides. Through trial and hardship, most of these civilizations—even on some of the tiniest islands, like Anuta and Tikopia, discussed in the preceding essay—persisted for centuries or millennia, up to the present day. But others faltered, failing to thrive or even to maintain continuity.

Most Polynesian societies that met the tragic fate of famine and disintegration were on remote islands measuring but a few square miles. But size alone was not the decisive factor. In fact, the most famous case occurred on a substantially larger island of about sixty square miles, called Rapa Nui^1, widely known as Easter Island. Despite its relatively generous size, Rapa Nui suffered certain drawbacks. Owing to its more southerly latitude, outside the tropics, it was cooler, drier, and windier than most Polynesian islands—suboptimal conditions for some of their primary crops. Freshwater sources were also few, relative to the island’s size, and sometimes difficult to access. And the cooler surrounding ocean didn’t support the shallow reefs more common to tropical seas, making the islanders’ survival dependent on deep-sea fishing.

On the other hand, when the migrants first arrived, almost eleven hundred years ago, the pristine island was crowned with a dense forest of enormous trees, including a colossal species of palm found nowhere else on Earth, as well as other edible and useful plants. Small fish and shellfish could be gathered along the coast. In addition to several species of non-migratory birds inhabiting the forestland, seabird rookeries crowded the surfaces of rocky mounts just offshore. And the island’s three dormant volcanoes provided great quarries of stone suitable for making fine tools. The fate of the Rapanui people was in no way preordained.

Stories About the End of the World

(This essay first appeared in Pangyrus literary magazine, June 2019.)

My first visit to a science museum, when I was kid, had a remarkable impact on me. I might have been eleven or twelve; it might have been in Los Angeles or San Francisco or Seattle. In one hall of the delightful exhibits, an electronic signboard hung mutely overhead. It displayed only a number—a very large number, of a magnitude difficult to grasp, though I don’t recall how many digits—that represented the estimated number of species currently living on our planet. This number was silently ticking down, like a clock running backwards. I watched the display for a while, as the last digit dropped. And dropped again. Five species lost. Then ten. Right before my eyes! Unsettled by this, unable to accept the implications, I wandered off to find a fun distraction in the museum. When later I returned to check, I saw that dozens of species had already gone extinct that very afternoon. Nobody else in the museum seemed alarmed. I told myself this must be because it’s a bigger number than I can comprehend, and I’m childish to be concerned; everyone else understands it’s not such a big deal. But there was no denying that it was dropping very fast, and it’s haunted me ever since.

It’s possible that seeing the extinction clock struck me with such force because I’d already noticed living things disappearing around me at home. As a child growing up in the arid hills of southern Idaho, I’d once discovered a colony of tiny creatures living on the side of our home. Each one was about the size of a thumbnail on my six-year-old hands, bearing a curled shell, like a snail. But these shells were soft, and the animals within seemed dry and sticky, rather than slimy. Their rate of movement was imperceptible to me, but every summer a great throng of them clung to the sunbaked red bricks of our southwestern exposure. A couple of summers after I’d first noticed them, I realized that there were fewer of them. Their numbers shrank every year, until, by the time I was eleven, they were simply gone. I never found out what kind of animal they were, and I’ve never seen or heard reference to animals like them anywhere again.

I’d already noticed, too, that the shimmering explosion of grasshoppers, which once erupted from our every footfall as we walked through the weedy grasses, where our lawn gave way to tumbleweed, sagebrush, and juniper, had gone still. The long, fat earthworms that exhumed themselves during every rainstorm, to twist awhile and then dry up on the pavements, no longer left their brown stains along the sidewalks. Stinkbug beetles and roly-poly potato bugs, once our playthings on idle summer afternoons, had become harder to find. The little scorpions that occasionally took shelter in our house, hiding in our shoes, stopped coming inside (though I habitually tamped out my shoes before wearing them for years after). No longer did we have to scrub our car’s windshield and grille clean of the bugsplats that coated them after every night drive along the highway, for the swarms of flying insects that once hovered ubiquitously over the sundowned desertscapes had thinned and finally vanished.

It seemed to me as though all the bugs, everywhere (except the pesky mosquitoes!), were disappearing. As in the museum, no one around me seemed concerned about this. My peers and elders carried on as though the world remained limitless and unchanging. In the fifth grade, I didn’t know much about bugs and I had no one to ask. I wasn’t aware at the time how much of the living world depends upon their daily toil, their unremarked—and still largely mysterious—interactions that link the microscopic and macroscopic worlds. Yet somehow I intuited that their demise was a dire warning, like canaries in a coalmine.

But it was worse than that: it was not a warning but a collapse already underway. Today we know that perhaps eighty percent of the world’s insect biomass has vanished in just the past three decades. The ticking signboard I saw at the museum, and the research results of scientists I’d learn about decades later, confirmed to me that the silent decline of the natural world was not merely my imagination.

Forest Man of the Northeast

Forest Man, an inspirational short documentary film (19 mins): "Since 1979, Jadav Payeng has been planting hundreds of trees on an Indian island threatened by erosion. In this film, photographer Jitu Kalita traverses Payeng’s home—the largest river island in the world [on the Brahmaputra river]—and reveals the touching story of how this modern-day Johnny Appleseed turned an eroding desert into a wondrous oasis. Funded in part by Kickstarter, "Forest Man" was directed by William Douglas McMaster and won Best Documentary for the American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014."

Also consider watching this insightful video on how to grow a forest in your urban backyard—a TED Talk by Shubhendu Sharma.

The Lives of Farm Animals

Peaceable Kingdom, an extraordinary, revelatory, and very moving American film about a few farmers and their farm animals is now online. I saw it when it first came out in 2012 and distributed DVDs to friends. I saw it again last week and I still can’t recommend it enough (the title isn't my favorite though!). Also consider watching this 24-min talk by its director James LaVeck who offers a wonderful reflection on Harriet Beecher Stowe and how her "famous antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, inspired the making of this documentary film" (78 min).

"A story of transformation and healing, this award-winning documentary explores a crisis of conscience experienced by several farmers questioning their inherited way of life. Growing more and more connected to individual animals under their care, they struggle to do what is right, despite overwhelming social and economic pressure to follow tradition. The film also explores the dramatic animal rescue work of a newly-trained humane police officer whose desire to help animals in need puts her in conflict with unjust laws she is expected to enforce. With heartfelt interviews and rare footage demonstrating the emotional lives and family bonds of farm animals, this groundbreaking documentary challenges stereotypes about life on the farm, offering a new vision for how we might relate to our fellow animals."

The Plastic-Filled Gau Mata

I discovered this excellent 2012 documentary on "the religious hypocrisy of the cult of the holy cow" in India. It shows that cows are not only much abused and neglected but people's pious sentimentality and unholy ignorance have also blinded them to a major public health risk — one that lurks in the milk we now get in India. For those inclined to see things in karmic terms, this is surely the cow's revenge on us!

The film considers the impact of our massive "dependence on plastic bags, which we use and discard carelessly every day, often to dispose our garbage and kitchen waste. Not only are these bags a huge environmental threat, they end-up in the stomachs of cows". Left to roam "because they're not milking at the time or because the dairy owner is unwilling to look after them, the cows have to fend for themselves and forage for food, which, like other scavengers, they find in community garbage dumps. Owing to their complex digestive systems, these bags, which they consume whole for the food they contain, get trapped inside their stomachs forever and, eventually, lead to painful death." A striking and heart-breaking part of the film is the surgical removal of 53 Kgs of hardened plastic (no kidding!) from a cow's stomach.

Watch this film (34 mins) and read here and here about the toxins that seep into milk from the plastic trapped in the cows' tummies.

Glimpses of Zambia

In this 18-minute travel documentary, I present some of what we saw and learned during our wonderful 12-day trip to Zambia in November 2015. We visited the beautiful South Luangwa National Park, Lusaka, Livingstone, Victoria Falls, and Mukuni village.

For more photos, notes, and other information, check out the Zambia page on shunya.net.

Narration, script, and editing: Usha Alexander
Videography: Namit Arora

Glimpses of Malawi

In this travel documentary (17 mins), I present some of what we saw and learned during our wonderful 8-days in Malawi in October 2015. We visited two areas on Lake Malawi's shores (Cape Maclear, Nkhata Bay), the beautiful Liwonde National Park, and the capital city, Lilongwe.

 

For more photos, notes, and other information, check out the Malawi page on shunya.net.

Narration, script, and editing: Usha Alexander
Videography: Namit Arora

Mysteries of the Unseen World

"We live in a world of unseeable beauty, so subtle and delicate that it is imperceptible to the human eye. To bring this invisible world to light, filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg bends the boundaries of time and space with high-speed cameras, time lapses and microscopes. At TED2014, he shares highlights from his latest project, a 3D film titled Mysteries of the Unseen World, which slows down, speeds up, and magnifies the astonishing wonders of nature." Must see.

More From the Annals of Animal Intelligence

.... [Head keeper Jerry] Stones finally managed to catch Fu Manchu in the act. First, the young ape climbed down some air-vent louvers into a dry moat. Then, taking hold of the bottom of the furnace door, he used brute force to pull it back just far enough to slide a wire into the gap, slip a latch and pop the door open. The next day, Stones noticed something shiny sticking out of Fu's mouth. It was the wire lock pick, bent to fit between his lip and gum and stowed there between escapes.

Apparently, Orangutans are the escape artists of the animal world. This particular incident happened back in 1968, but scientists at the time weren't paying attention, as they were busy with their apes struggling with language and performing tasks in their labs.

However, Eugene Lynden, author of several books on animal intelligence, found it more than interesting. Lynden's 1999 article on animal intelligence is remarkable for the way that it's astutely anecdotal. Lynden had realized what "now seems obvious: if animals can think, they will probably do their best thinking when it serves their purposes, not when some scientist asks them to", and he then began to speak to a broad range of people who work intimately with animals: zookeepers, veterinarians, trainers, and yes, researchers. He says,

Get a bunch of keepers together and they will start telling stories about how their charges try to outsmart, beguile or otherwise astonish humans. They tell stories about animals that hoodwink or manipulate their keepers, stories about wheeling and dealing, stories of understanding and trust across the vast gulf that separates different species. And, if the keepers have had a few drinks, they will tell stories about escape.

Each of these narratives reveals another facet of what I have become convinced is a new window on animal intelligence: the kind of mental feats they perform when dealing with captivity and the dominant species on the planet--humanity.

Though it's an old article, it's only recently available online. It remains worth reading for the astonishing and amusing stories of animal wit—and lack, thereof. Among other things, what becomes clear is how complex, non-linear, and multifaced is anything we might call intelligence. Certainly animals have it, but with lacunae in areas one might not expect.

Dispatches from India 1: First Impressions

(Usha Alexander's periodic musings on her life in India. She moved there in mid-2013.)

        Jamun sold in Old Delhi

So here I am living in Gurgaon for the last four months. We arrived in the hottest days of the year and to summer’s sweet deluge of fruits—mangos, lychees, jamun, watermelon—which we enjoyed daily. Within three days of arrival, we found a furnished rental with adequate water and power backup, and we lucked upon the services of an excellent cook and a cleaning woman, both recent migrants from West Bengal. We soon identified some take-out places, a barber, dairy outlet, and other services in the small bazaar two streets over. And we found a gleaming mall with a modern gym, theater, grocery stores, bookstores, and electronics, just a 15-minute walk from our door, across lots filled with cows, stray dogs, mansions, and shanties.

       Our local bazaar

In our earliest weeks, we spent a lot of time reconnecting with old friends and family in the area. We had to relearn how to get around Gurgaon, which has reconfigured itself in the grand makeover this so-called Millennium City has undergone during the seven years since our previous stay here. Most of these changes have been very useful, from our perspective: the completion of the Delhi Metro line serving Gurgaon; the impending completion of Gurgaon’s own Rapid Metro; improved roads (apart from those still under reconstruction); and the easy availability of familiar international products, like fresh basil and avocados in the grocery store, and hummus and falafel takeaway. So in many respects, our landing has been soft and picking up new rhythms of life has been easy.

       Our street

The most difficult part was the fair amount of officialdom and red tape to untangle, which Namit took on single-handedly. I was useless in these tasks, being both unable to drive and unsure with my Hindi, let alone entirely ignorant about how these things work in India. So armed with his parents’ insider advice, Namit made his way around to the various agencies and businesses to set things up, including health insurance, phone and internet service, cooking gas permit, electrical billing, ID cards, police verification, tax filing, bank accounts, and other essential mundanities. None of these things are to be had as straightforwardly as in the States: one must produce official documents, various proofs of identity and residency, forms in triplicate procured from one office and stamped by the clerks in another, multiple properly framed and sized headshots, and the names of dead ancestors. All this for a cylinder of propane for the kitchen.

Veggies at our farmer's market

The adjustment might have been more difficult, though. Happily, we have no children, which means, among other things, we aren’t agonizing about their health with each sip of water and every mosquito bite, nor are we selecting schools and private tutors to ensure the right college admissions, as we see other middle-class parents doing. This alone collapses our risks and costs immeasurably and increases our freedom. Just as much, we are fortunate to not have to seek conventional employment—provided we live modestly—which means we avoid the grind of daily commutes, workaday insults, and the weariness of mounting the career ladder. The upwardly mobile, family-oriented lifestyle emerging in India seems even more of a rat-race than it is in the US, and a good part of our secret to gladness in being here is that we are not pursuing it.

On Eating Animals

The latest issue of the Humanist magazine (July-Aug '13) has a slightly modified version of my essay from last year.

Clearly, most people don’t even know about the horror and pain we inflict on billions of birds and mammals in our meat factories. But there’s no good excuse for this, is there? It’s more likely that we don’t want to know—can’t afford to know for our own sake—so we turn a blind eye and trust the artifice of bucolic imagery on meat packaging. Some see parallels here with the German people’s willful denial of the concentration camps that once operated around them, or call those who consume factory-farmed meat little Eichmanns. “For the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka,” wrote Isaac Bashevis Singer (who also used to say he turned vegetarian “for health reasons—the health of the chicken”).

Predictably enough, many others are offended by such comparisons. They say that comparing the industrialized abuse of animals with the industrialized abuse of humans trivializes the latter. There are indeed limits to such comparisons, though our current enterprise may be worse in at least one respect: it has no foreseeable end. We seem committed to raising billions of sentient beings year after year only to kill them after a short life of intense suffering. Furthermore, rather than take offense at polemical comparisons—as if others are obliged to be more judicious in their speech than we are in our silent deeds—why not reflect on our apathy instead? Criticizing vegetarians and vegans for being self-righteous—or being moral opportunists in having found a new way of affirming their decency to themselves—certainly doesn’t absolve us from the need to face up to our role in perpetuating this cycle of violence and degradation.

More here. Also listen to a Philosophy Bites interview with Jeff McMahan on why most humans today can and should be vegetarians.

Of Bonobos and Men

Primatologist Frans de Waal has a new book, The Bonobo and the Atheist. Below is an excerpt from an early review in the New Republic (click photo for the Amazon listing; the Publisher's Weekly blurb is here).

Those familiar with de Waal’s previous books ... will recognize many of the same arguments resurfacing here, including the idea that human morality has biological origins. “Fairness and justice are … best looked at as ancient capacities. They derive from the need to preserve harmony in the face of resource competition.” De Waal uses the bonobo—a peaceful, sex-loving primate who may be as closely related to us, or more closely related, than the more Machiavellian chimpanzee—to attack the prevailing notion of human nature as selfish and violent, and that we are constantly battling to suppress our terrible “animal nature.” “Everything science has learned in the past few decades argues against this pessimistic view that morality is a thin veneer over a nasty human nature.”

What’s new here is that de Waal wades directly into the atheism-versus-religion debate, which he claims is often mistakenly cast as a science-versus-religion debate. He argues that a biologically evolved “bottom-up” morality obviates the need for the “top-down” morality imposed by religion. And yet, he sees science (and himself) as aligned with secular humanism, which is not necessarily anti-religion. He would like to see the influence of religion fade, but acknowledges that a moral code is not all religion provides: “The question is not so much whether religion is true or false, but how it shapes our lives, and what might possibly take its place.”

More here. Read more about the book and an excellent interview with de Waal here. Also see a review on NPR.

My Life as a Turkey

On this Thanksgiving Day, consider watching this extraordinary and beautifully filmed Nature documentary in which naturalist Joe Hutto raises 16 wild turkeys from incubation to adulthood, an experience that changed his life. As their turkey mother, Hutto spent over a year in a Florida forest with these birds, each developing a complex and unique relationship with him. He shows us their stages of development, their innate knowledge of the environment, their curiosity and survival instincts. He exults at their distinct personalities, social and emotional lives, individuality and playfulness, and their different appetites for physical affection.

Hutto gets very immersed in their lives, begins to understand their communication, and learns to "talk turkey". He identifies over 30 distinct turkey vocalizations for other animals like rattlesnakes and hawks. He explains how "within each of those calls are inflections that have very different meanings". His bond with one bird in particular, and the way it ends, is especially remarkable and unexpected. En route, Hutto also reveals his own shifting state of mind and what he has learned from this experience about his own life. It might well become hard to see turkeys as "dumb birds" after this documentary, which, incidentally, won the 2012 Emmy for Outstanding Nature Programming.

Consider the Lobster

I just read Consider the Lobster, the famous 2004 essay by David Foster Wallace, for the first time. I liked it enough and recommend it to one and all. "Originally published in the August 2004 issue of Gourmet magazine, this review of the 2003 Maine Lobster Festival generated some controversy among the readers of the culinary magazine. The essay is concerned with the ethics of boiling a creature alive in order to enhance the consumer's pleasure, including a discussion of lobster sensory neurons." [Wiki]

In any event, at the Festival, standing by the bubbling tanks outside the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, watching the fresh-caught lobsters pile over one another, wave their hobbled claws impotently, huddle in the rear corners, or scrabble frantically back from the glass as you approach, it is difficult not to sense that they’re unhappy, or frightened, even if it’s some rudimentary version of these feelings …and, again, why does rudimentariness even enter into it? Why is a primitive, inarticulate form of suffering less urgent or uncomfortable for the person who’s helping to inflict it by paying for the food it results in? I’m not trying to give you a PETA-like screed here—at least I don’t think so. I’m trying, rather, to work out and articulate some of the troubling questions that arise amid all the laughter and saltation and community pride of the Maine Lobster Festival. The truth is that if you, the Festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF can begin to take on aspects of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest.

Does that comparison seem a bit much? If so, exactly why? Or what about this one: Is it not possible that future generations will regard our own present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero’s entertainments or Aztec sacrifices? My own immediate reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme—and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I have not succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.

The Pearl of Africa

(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments.)

A few years ago, Usha and I spent twelve days in Uganda. We visited two national parks to see chimpanzees and other animals, the Ssese Islands of Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile, the town of Jinja, and Kampala. As far as possible, we used the average citizen's mode of transportation and made no advance hotel reservations—choices that I think foster a greater engagement with the locals. As I often do when I travel, I shot some idiosyncratic video footage mostly as an aid to memory, akin to keeping a journal. Watching it again recently, I thought: why not make an amateur documentary? That's just what I did and here is the result (20 mins; also check out some pictures).

Why "Pearl of Africa"? Apparently, Winston Churchill, visiting Uganda at age 33, was so impressed by its mountains, valleys, greenery, lakes, wildlife, and friendly natives that he called it the "pearl of Africa", and the name stuck. I have a rather low opinion of Churchill but I find nothing to quibble about in this case. I too loved my time in Uganda.

Robert Sapolsky: Are Humans Just Another Primate?

A thought-provoking lecture by Robert Sapolsky, professor of neurobiology and primatology at Stanford, in which he tries to discern, to the best of our knowledge, what it is that separates us from other animals. He narrates lots of fascinating experimental results from recent decades. This lecture, archived on Fora.tv, is one of several in a series called Being Human: Connecting to Our Ancient Ancestors.

Animal Rights: Mapping the Debate

Carlo Salzani presents a brilliant overview of the current philosophical debate on animal rights by focusing on three authors of recent books. For what it's worth, I lean towards the viewpoints of Milligan and Garner, and not Francione's.

The heterogeneous galaxies of studies revolving around the issue of animal ethics agree on one point: nonhuman animals endure unacceptable levels of suffering due to human exploitation, and this suffering ought to be eliminated. For the rest, philosophers and activists working in this field agree to disagree: they disagree on the moral status of nonhuman animals, on the major goals of pro-animal activism, on the actions to be taken to ameliorate animals’ conditions, on the strategies to adopt, and on the results achieved by the various movements to date. The diversity of theoretical positions and practical approaches, and the growing number of works addressing the problem, have generated an intense internal debate. Two books published in 2010, Gary Francione and Robert Garner’s The Animal Rights Debate and Tony Milligan’s Beyond Animal Rights, help giving a sense of what is presently going on in philosophical circles and mapping the theoretical territory of the animal ethics discourse.

The two books certainly do not (and do not claim to) cover the entire territory, nor attempt to summarize the entire debate; rather, the three authors offer three distinct — and discordant — positions which, though all advocating a revolution in the human treatment of animals, are as distant as the stars in a constellation. Francione and Garner argue that the debate between abolition and regulation of the human use of animal is at the center of modern animal advocacy, and propose two solid and consistent set of arguments: Francione is in favor of the abolition of the human use of animals, while Garner defends a protectionist approach, according to which at least some uses of animals may be justifiable. Milligan, on the other hand, does not propose a thesis or a consistent “package,” but rather attempts a different approach which explores different issues in different ways without relying on fixed and one-dimensional baselines.

More here.

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

A congregation of scientists in Cambridge, UK, recently issued a formal declaration that lots of non-human animals, including mammals, birds, and likely even octopuses are conscious beings. What do they mean by consciousness, you ask? It's a state of awareness of one's body and one's environment, anywhere from basic perceptual awareness to the reflective self-awareness of humans. This declaration will surely strike many of us as ancient news and a long overdue recognition, even as it may annoy the stubborn skeptics among us. 

Below is an abstract about the conference followed by the full declaration. I found the lectures delivered on the occasion quite interesting. I haven't heard them all but I can recommend Irene Pepperberg's "Human-like Consciousness in Non-Humans: Evidence from Grey Parrots" (watch two short videos on these birds: one, two). I also liked Diane Reiss's "Mirror Self-recognition: A Case for Cognitive Convergence in Humans and Other Animals". And if you want to consider the octopus, as DFW enjoined, watch David B. Edelman's "Through the Eyes of an Octopus".

The First Annual Francis Crick Memorial Conference, focusing on "Consciousness in Humans and Non-Human Animals", aims to provide a purely data-driven perspective on the neural correlates of consciousness. The most advanced quantitative techniques for measuring and monitoring consciousness will be presented, with the topics of focus ranging from exploring the properties of neurons deep in the brainstem, to assessing global cerebral function in comatose patients. Model organisms investigated will span the species spectrum from flies to rodents, humans to birds, elephants to dolphins, and will be approached from the viewpoint of three branches of biology: anatomy, physiology, and behavior. Until animals have their own storytellers, humans will always have the most glorious part of the story, and with this proverbial concept in mind, the symposium will address the notion that humans do not alone possess the neurological faculties that constitute consciousness as it is presently understood.

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness*

On this day of July 7, 2012, a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge to reassess the neurobiological substrates of conscious experience and related behaviors in human and non-human animals. While comparative research on this topic is naturally hampered by the inability of non-human animals, and often humans, to clearly and readily communicate about their internal states, the following observations can be stated unequivocally:

Thinking in Pictures

Linguistic philosophers have long held that thinking requires words; anyone without language, including animals, is incapable of concepts or thoughts—and by extension, of planning ahead and recalling the past. Mary Midgley disagrees. In Animals and Why They Matter, she wrote:

I think it is clear that linguistic philosophers have often overstated the case for the dependence of intelligence [and understanding] on language in a way which their arguments do not justify and indeed do not require. Thus, for instance, Max Black, having said that man is the only animal to use symbols, goes on to add that he is 'the only animal that can truly understand and misunderstand. Similarly Stuart Hampshire writes, 'It would be senseless to attribute to an animal a memory that distinguished the order of events in the past, and it would be senseless to attribute to it an expectation of an order of events in the future. It does not have the concepts of order, or any concepts at all.' Plainly neither Black nor Hampshire is controverting—or is even interested in—the very large literature of careful discussion by zoologists and psychologists about the different kinds of understanding and conceptual grasp which different sorts of animals actually display. This work would not impress them. Their point is one of definition. They are not prepared to count as concept or as understanding anything which does not involve speech.

An interesting article by Professor Ray Monk, an expert on Ludwig Wittgenstein's life and work, sheds new light on what the great linguistic philosopher thought of the matter himself (h/t 3QD). I was also happy to see that this article supports my own intuitions about animal minds and the ideas I expressed in an article I wrote earlier this year, The Inner Lives of Animals, and in its comments section.

“Thinking in pictures,” Sigmund Freud once wrote, “stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.” There is, in other words, something primordial, something foundational, about thinking visually. Such a view is anathema to many philosophers, a good many of whom believe that all thought is propositional, that to think is to use words. For some of the most distinguished philosophers in history, thinking and verbalising were practically the same thing. Bertrand Russell sometimes to his great frustration, was hopeless at visualising and was more or less indifferent to the visual arts. His mental life seemed almost entirely made up of words rather than images. When his friend Rupert Crawshay-Williams once gave him an intelligence test that involved matching increasingly complicated geometrical shapes, Russell did extremely well up to a certain point and then exceptionally badly after that. “What happened?” Crawshay-Williams asked. “I hadn’t got any names for the shapes,” Russell replied.

In this, as in many other respects, Ludwig Wittgenstein was Russell’s opposite. For Wittgenstein, to think, to understand, was first and foremost to picture. In conversation with his friends, he several times referred to himself as a “disciple” or “follower” of Freud and many people since have been extremely puzzled what he might have meant by this. I think Freud’s remark quoted above might provide the key here, that it might have something to do with the emphasis one finds in Freud on the primordiality of “thinking in pictures”.

American Rodeo

Anthropologically interesting (depressing?) clips from a rodeo competition I saw in Jackson, Wyoming earlier this week, where rodeo is the official state sport, patriotism and Jesus rule, and the free and the brave gather to make a sport out of dominating frightened animals.

This was my first rodeo and in terms of animal cruelty, it seemed to me much less egregious than what happens in many other rodeo events nationwide. While partly true (is it because, owing to Yellowstone NP, Jackson caters to an audience from all over the country and the world?), I realize now that my ignorance too had led me to this assessment. For instance, I was told at the event that every bucking horse is an "unbroken horse" behaving naturally when a rider gets on. That's not true. These horses buck wildly because a strap is tightened around their flanks and they try to get rid of this irritant. That's why the horse keeps bucking until the strap is released, long after it has thrown off the cowboy. Alongside, spurs are driven into its shoulders and electric prods are often used to aggravate it at the start. Not pretty. Some of the worst abuse though happens to terrified calves.

Peaceable Kingdom

HumaneMyth.org is a site dedicated to exploding the myth of "humane" farming of animals for food. It is run by animal activists who not only recognize factory farming of animals for the massive barbarism that it is (thanks to people like us), but go beyond and argue that it is not "possible to use and kill animals in a manner that can be fairly described as respectful or compassionate or humane." These activists desire a "peaceful transformation of our society that fully respects the inherent dignity and worth of animals and people alike."

Revisiting the site recently, I came across a documentary film, Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home. Below is a blurb and the trailer. Also check out the video excerpts of the bonus features on the DVD at the film website (one, two, three, four) and award ceremonies (one, two). It's just out on DVD and I've ordered my copy.

Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home explores the powerful struggle of conscience experienced by several people from traditional farming backgrounds who come to question the basic assumptions of their way of life. A riveting story of transformation and healing, the documentary portrays the farmers' sometimes amazing connections with the animals under their care, while also providing insight into the complex web of social, psychological and economic forces that have led to their inner conflict. Interwoven with the farmers' stories is the dramatic animal rescue work of a newly-trained humane police officer whose sense of justice puts her at odds with the law she is charged to uphold. With strikingly honest interviews and rare footage demonstrating the emotional lives and intense family bonds of animals most often viewed as living commodities, this groundbreaking documentary shatters stereotypical notions of farmers, farm life, and perhaps most surprisingly, farm animals themselves. Directed by Jenny Stein. Produced by James LaVeck.

On Eating Animals

(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments. A slightly modified version of this essay appeared in the July/Aug 2013 issue of the Humanist.)

Some years ago in a Montana slaughterhouse, a Black Angus cow awaiting execution suddenly went berserk, jumped a five-foot fence, and escaped. She ran through the streets for hours, dodging cops, animal control officers, cars, trucks, and a train. Cornered near the Missouri river, the frightened animal jumped into its icy waters and made it across, where a tranquilizer gun brought her down. Her "daring escape" stole the hearts of the locals, some of whom had even cheered her on. The story got international media coverage. Telephone polls were held, calls demanding her freedom poured into local TV stations. Sensing the public mood, the slaughterhouse manager made a show of "granting clemency" to what he dubbed “the brave cow.” Given a name, Molly, the cow was sent to a nearby farm to live out her days grazing under open skies—which warmed the cockles of many a heart.

Cattle trying to escape slaughterhouses are not uncommon. Few of their stories end happily though. Some years ago in Omaha, six cows escaped at once. Five were quickly recaptured; one kept running until Omaha police cornered her in an alley and pumped her with bullets. The cow, bellowing miserably and hobbling like a drunk for several seconds before collapsing, died on the street in a pool of blood. This brought howls of protest, some from folks who had witnessed the killing. They called the police’s handling inhumane and needlessly cruel.

It’s tempting to see these commiserating folks as animal lovers—and that's how they likely see themselves—until one remembers what they eat for dinner. A typical slaughterhouse in the United States kills over a thousand Mollys a day—lined up, shot in the head, and often cut-open and bled while still conscious, an end no less cruel and full of bellowing—all because Americans keep buying neatly-packaged slices of their corpses in supermarkets. Raised unnaturally and inhumanely, over a million protesting birds and mammals are violently killed in the U.S. every hour (that's 300 per second!). Is it then unreasonable to say that nearly all meat-eaters in America participate quite directly in a cycle of suffering and cruelty of staggering scale?

Yet the idea persists that Americans love animals, largely because of their love and concern for a class of animals called "pets" (and other "cute animals" like dolphins, polar bears, and pandas). Most Americans have had at least one pet at some point in their lives, and many see their pets as extensions of their families; they photograph their pets, swap stories about them, buy them gifts and treats, spend money on their sicknesses, support taxes to build shelters for them, and mourn their deaths. Yet, the question continues to rankle, as Elizabeth Kolbert put it:

"How is it that Americans, so solicitous of the animals they keep as pets, are so indifferent toward the ones they cook for dinner? The answer cannot lie in the beasts themselves. Pigs, after all, are quite companionable, and dogs are said to be delicious."[1]

What might explain this disjunction? From humankind's long community with farm animals, how has it come to this?

The Emotional World of Farm Animals

Here is a delightful documentary "about the thinking and feeling side of animals that are all too often just viewed as food. Jefferey Masson ... leads viewers through the personal journey he underwent while writing his latest book, The Pig Who Sang to The Moon. This journey into the sentient, emotional lives of farm animals brings Masson to animal sanctuaries around the country where caregivers and the animals themselves tell their harrowing stories of rescue and escape. Masson delves into the rich ancestry of these curious and intelligent animals and interviews top experts in animal behavior who offer scientific perspectives on these amazing creatures." (52 mins)

Humankind's Best Friend

Dogs may have been a better friend to humanity than we ever realized, according to an article by Dr. Pat Shipman in American Scientist. They may have played a crucial role in helping modern humans outcompete our Neanderthal cousins.

Many theories have been proposed for why Neanderthals couldn't seem to compete with the invaders, when modern humans arrived in Europe some 35-45,000 years ago, including climate change, the newcomers' better social organization, or their greater facility for language. But new lines of evidence are beginning to suggest another possibility: that it might have been the domesticated dog that gave H. sapiens sapiens the edge over Neanderthals (and, one must presume, Denisovans). There's now mounting evidence that modern humans were domesticating dogs by 35,000 years ago, during the same period when modern human populations began to increase and Neanderthal populations were in decline. Dogs were used for hunting and as pack animals, as they are used even into modern times by some groups. Studies reveal that dogs can significantly increase the success of a hunt and the amount of meat brought in to a community who uses them.

If the dogs carried the meat, humans would have saved a lot of energy, so each kill would have provided a greater net gain in food—even after feeding the dogs. Additional food generally has marked effects on the health of a group. Better-fed females can have more babies, can provide them with more milk and can have babies at shorter intervals. Before long, using pack dogs could have caused the human population to increase.

Dogs may also have contributed more directly to human hunting success. To discover how big a difference dogs could make, Vesa Ruusila and Mauri Pesonen of the Finnish Game and Fisheries Institute investigated what may be the closest easily studied analog to a mammoth hunt: the Finnish moose hunt. Finns use large dogs such as Norwegian elkhounds or Finnish spitzes to find moose and keep them in place by barking until humans can approach and shoot them. In hunting groups of fewer than 10 people, the average carcass weight per hunter without dogs was 8.4 kilograms per day. With dogs, the yield went up to 13.1 kilograms per hunter per day—an increase of 56 percent.

Shipman reminds us, too, that domestication is a two-way street: as dogs were selected to communicate better with humans, there might have been selective pressure making humans also better able to communicate with dogs. Interestingly, humans have a unique feature among living primates, which might have aided in our domestication of canids: the whites of our eyes.

The mutation causing white sclerae is universal in humans, but it turns up occasionally in apes, too. In decades of observations at Gombe National Park in Tanzania, Jane Goodall observed two chimps, probably brothers, who had white sclerae. A third, female chimp developed white sclerae as an adult. But the trait has not spread or reappeared in that population. The advantage of the white sclerae must be related to something that ancient humans did commonly and chimps don’t do or do rarely. Although chimps hunt small prey, often cooperatively, meat makes up less than 2 percent of their diet, whereas Paleolithic humans hunted much larger game that apparently provided a significant part of their diet. Obviously, silent communication among humans would be advantageous for hunting in groups. But there is another skilled gaze-reader: the domestic dog.

A dog will follow the gaze of a videotaped human if the human first attracts the dog’s attention by speaking to it and looking at it, according to results published by Ernõ Téglás, of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and his colleagues. Indeed, dogs perform as well as human infants at following the gaze of a speaker in tests in which the speaker’s head is held still.

But why didn't Neanderthals domesticate dogs? We might wonder. Could it be that, like other extant primates, they also didn't have visible sclerae, putting them at a disadvantage with the wolves?

More here.

The Inner Lives of Animals

(Cross-posted on 3 Quarks Daily, where it has received many comments.)

It is often said that humans are the only animals to use symbols. So many other claims of human uniqueness have fallen away—thoughts, emotions, intelligence, tool use, sense of fairness—what's so special about symbols, you ask? I share your skepticism, dear reader, and in the next few paragraphs I'll tell you why.

Let's begin by clarifying what "symbol" means here. One way to do this is to contrast symbols with signs. A sign, such as a red light, a grimace, a growl, or a thunderstorm, signifies something direct and tangible, making us think or act in response to the thing signified. Issuing and responding to signs is commonplace in Animalia. A symbol, on the other hand, is "something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention". A symbol allows us to think about the thing or idea symbolized outside its immediate context, such as the word "water" for the liquid, "7" for a certain quantity, and "flag" for a community. What is symbolized doesn't even have to be real, such as God, and herein lies the power of symbols—they are the building blocks of abstract and reflective thought. Evidence of material symbols used by humans dates back at least 60-100K years, when burial objects and decorated beads start to appear in archaeological finds. Linguistic symbols were almost certainly in use long before then.

According to Susanne Langer, symbols serve "to liberate thought from the immediate stimuli of a physically present world; and that liberation marks the essential difference between human and nonhuman mentality ... Words, pictures, and memory images are symbols that may be combined and varied in a thousand ways." It is only through symbolic thought that we imagine the past or the future—mental time-travel, including episodic memory, requires the use of symbols. Indeed, language is really a system of symbolic communication, combining words (which are symbols) and syntax. If non-human animals lack symbols, what and how do they really think?