Jackaluck

Jackrabbit + antelope + duck:

Who could object to an evil, moonshine-chugging, begoggled scientist creating such a cute, cuddly abomination of nature?

[Collegehumor]

Crabzilla

No no no no no no no. The guy holding it is way too excited about the thing will haunt my nightmares. via Treehugger (jerks)

Monkey Thought

Laurie Santos, Professor of Psychology at Yale, talks about monkey minds:

Animal Cultures

Gwen at Sociological Images does a quick survey of yet another place where humans and non-human animals seem to have a brightline but do not: culture.

Persons of the Sea

Over at Oxford’s Practical Ethics,  Lena Groegner’s post on the dolphins as “non-human persons” issue is sober and short, but there is one bit that intrigued me:

The word has long been used to refer to non-human entities: in Christianity we find the three persons of the Holy Trinity, or in law we find the notion of “legal person” to refer to organizations like cities, colleges, or (stirring up quite a controversy recently) corporations. It’s commonly acknowledged that not all persons are human beings. But why should we consider dolphins persons, and what would change if we did?

A great point.

PS – how did I not think of the “Chicken of the Sea” pun? Newlyweds joke + uplift = so goooood

A Dog Is Not A Human Being, Right?

Old School Border Collie via Time Life/ Google

New York Magazine asks and answers the question with the article “The Rise of Dog Identity Politics,” wherein John Homans probes the life of dogs as fashion accessories, the perfect companion, how city life has changed them from working animals, the Victorian mindset of the AKC, the disagreements between rights groups and how we deal with our pets’ deaths. It’s a great article, but Homans neglects the bizarre cognitive dissonance necessary to treat a dog as both a human and non-human animal simultaneously.

The most interesting point, for me, was Homans describing how dysfunctional a lot of the human-animal relationships are precisely because we mis-perceive dogs as having more personhood than they do. He returns again and again to the same basic idea: many people love dogs because they seem like perpetual children that many owners see as the perfect friend – someone they can completely control and who will love them unconditionally. The sadness inherent in Homans’ piece is that we both treat dogs as people and utterly neglect them. I was disappointed to see Homans’ didn’t cite Donna Haraway’s most recent work When Species Meet, because she hits on this very point when talking about feral cats. In the book, Haraway advocates recognizing these species for what they are – limited persons – and against shoehorning them into the role of little people.

Pets are not people, but they are limited persons, which is a distinction that both grants the animal more respect and requires more responsibility on behalf of the owner.

Consider this: dogs, in the case of most breeds, have been bred to the point of retardation, disease, and disability. Dog breeds are entirely human creations, yet there is little sense of responsibility for the grotesque features and disabilities of many of these animals. Homans could talk about how “human” dogs seemed to their owners without addressing the cognitive dissonance necessary to justify our vast genetically engineering the species and the virulent loyalty of people to various breeds.

Or, to take another example, Homans talks about how people like dogs because they are similar to the “little dictatorships” parents have over children. Read that again. Imagine an article on parenthood about a child being described as living under a “little dictatorship.” Stories like that are often about parents like Joe Jackson’s torment of his children in an effort to get fame and wealth for himself, or the parents of youth beauty pageants, so perfectly parodied in Little Miss Sunshine. Our society recoils at people who manipulate, control, and basically abuse their children in the name of their own entertainment, but to treat a dog this way is seen as endearing and normal.

The problem, of course, comes from our society’s lack of a middle ground between a full-person, that is, an adult human, and a non-person. Dogs, cetacean, great apes, elephants, parrots, pigs, and pinnipeds all fall into the non-existent middle category of non-human persons. But because we lack a cultural and legal understanding of this category, the companion animals, dogs in particular, are forced to straddle the line between the two, ultimately ending up with more problems than benefits. The result is people buying clothes for their dog and giving it an outrageous, trendy diet while still advocating canine eugenics in the name of appearance, at the cost of health, intelligence, and quality of life for the dog.

The result is people buying intelligent, high energy, loving companions that they kennel for 8 hours a day and refuse to socialize properly. The result are animals that get dressed up in clothes and carried in designer bags and exist merely as a prop, receiving affection at the owners discretion, neglected and ignored when they lose their fashion capital.

If we see dogs as humans, we shouldn’t be practicing eugenics on them, neglecting their basic needs – like training and exercise, enjoying “little dictatorships” over them, or subjecting them to the latest trends. Homans’ article reveals that, for many dog owners, dogs allow for a dysfunctional, one-way relationship in which the totalitarian owner takes and takes from an animal that is only too happy to give, never once questioning the cruelty and neglect it suffers.

Pinniped Squee

Ridiculously cute.

via Cute Overload

To justify the above posting, here is a video about how seals, sea lions, and walruses are also much, much smarter than we previously thought.

Urban Animals Still Evolve

And Moscow’s wild dogs and beggar dogs are proving it:

[B]eggar dogs have evolved the most specialized behavior. Relying on scraps of food from commuters, the beggar dogs can not only recognize which humans are most likely to give them something to eat, but have evolved to ride the subway. Using scents, and the ability to recognize the train conductor’s names for different stops, they incorporate many stations into their territories.

Could uplift happen by virtue of environmental shift alone?

["Moscow's Stray Dogs Evolving Greater Intelligence, Including Mastery of the Subway" - Pop Sci]

The Perils of Bird Research

Dig out your Halloween gear:

Field biologists have observed that crows seem to recognise them, and a few researchers have even gone to the extreme of wearing masks when capturing birds to band (or “ring”) them, so that they could later observe the birds without upsetting them. However, it was unclear whether the birds distinguish people by their faces or by other distinctive features of dress, gait or behaviour. To find out, John Marzluff at the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues donned a rubber caveman mask and then captured and banded wild American crows.

Whenever a person wearing the same mask approached those crows later, the birds scolded them loudly. In contrast, they ignored the same person wearing a mask of former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, which had never been worn during banding. “Most of the time you walk right up to them and they don’t care at all,” says Marzluff.

Folks, getting to test whether a caveman or Dick Cheney mask is more upsetting to crows is part of avian research is conclusive proof that science is cool.

["If You Think a Crow is Giving You the Evil Eye..." - New Scientist]

Animal Prosthetics

Here are a few of stories about animal prosthetics to start your day off right:

In 2005, the chances of surviving didn’t look good for a bald eagle named Beauty, which was found wandering a landfill in Alaska with no means to feed itself. Sadly, the bald eagle had its beak shot off by a hunter. When recovered, Beauty struggled to rehabilitate, having to be force-fed food. Fortunately for the bald eagle, she was able to benefit from some compassion as opposed to the cruelty that injured her in the first place. A titanium, lifelike beak was designed for and fitted on the eagle, which was able to regain its ability to drink and feed itself. While the beak is not strong enough for the bald eagle to return to the wild and tear at prey, it at least allows Beauty to function better and regain her natural appearance while now living a safe life free of hunters.

["Animal Prosthetics: Uplifting Stories of Rehabilitation" - Webecoist via Neatorama]