National Geographic article “Animal Minds” (March 2008 cover story)

I was at Ho Foods the other day with Sean when I saw the March 08 issue of National Geographic. The cover caught my eye, a cute as all hell, black and white Border Collie. Turns out the cover story, Animal Minds, is about how smart animals are.

As if I didn’t know! I have always thought that animals were amazing creatures; smart, complex and generally just pretty awesome. When I was younger (ok, maybe I still feel this way now) I used to wish that I could talk with animals, find out what they’re thinking, learn their likes and dislikes, etc etc.

I also loved the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. You know the ones; the gentle animals (mice, mainly, and otters and badgers) that live at Redwall Abbey and have to fight against mean animals (like rats or foxes). Watership Down is also another one of those personified animals novels that I loved. It’s about a bunch of rabbits that escape from their warren to go find a better life somewhere else (it’s actually pretty disturbing the shit they have to go through).

There are countless other books that deal with animals behaving like humans–consider The Bernstein Bears, The Cat in the Hat, Aesop’s Fables is full of talking animals, etc etc. We all grew up with these stories, but somewhere the message didn’t completely get through. Somewhere we all left it at that they were stories and that’s it. Animals are really just that: animals. I mean, that’s the word we use to describe something that is inhuman or primitive, right?

In my opinion, some people don’t give animals enough credit. This National Geographic story is too long in coming. It never ceases to amaze me when I hear people describe animals as unintelligent. (And then, of course, I always assume that they are the unintelligent ones. :p) Sure, animals can’t talk like we do (aside from birds), and people assume that since animals can’t talk that they aren’t intelligent (they really just don’t have the linguistic apparatus to make the noises we can.. but that is not the point ). Because they can’t tell us how they feel, because we think they can’t reason, simply because they don’t communicate the same ways that we do, we automatically relegate them to some lesser category.

Now, I’m not trying to say that animals and humans are equal. What I am saying is that in the grand scheme of things, all animals deserve our respect and our awe. I think that each and every animal in this world is special and unique and deserves to be treated with respect. What I am saying is, let them live their lives, and we will live ours, and hopefully a symbiosis can emerge in which people no longer exploit animals as lesser beings.

I’m not going to go all AR and ranty on y’all here. My main point of writing today was to share the article, which is a very good read and possibly quite humbling to some of you. I also suggest that in addition to reading the article you check out the photo and video galleries that accompany the article.

So anyway, read the article and share it with any and everyone who professes to be an animal lover. And if you want to read more on animal intelligence, there’s lots on the web, just google it! Also, I found this site, http://www.animalintelligence.org/, which contains news stories about smart animals. Right now the second story is just a (cute) video of a kitten playing in a bathtub–a bathtub full of water, that is! So cute! Dammit I love animals!

(And lemme just say this before I quit–I’m completely jealous of the NatGeo photographer, him being able to work with all of those animals–what a lucky bastard!)