Fw: A change of heart about animals

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" BEKOFF MARC " <Marc.Bekoff

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Wednesday, September 03, 2003 2:03 AM

A change of heart about animals

 

 

> here is the text for those who couldn't enter the website for the LA Times

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rifkin1sep01,1,6998927.

story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

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> September 1, 2003

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> COMMENTARY

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> A change of heart

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> They are more like us than we imagined, scientists are finding.

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> By Jeremy Rifkin

> Though much of big science has centered on breakthroughs in biotechnology,

> nanotechnology and more esoteric questions like the age of our universe, a

> quieter story has been unfolding behind the scenes in laboratories around

> the world one whose effect on human perception and our understanding of

> life is likely to be profound.

> What these researchers are finding is that many of our fellow creatures

> are more like us than we had ever imagined. They feel pain, suffer and

> experience stress, affection, excitement and even love and these findings

> are changing how we view animals.

> Strangely enough, some of the research sponsors are fast food purveyors,

> such as McDonald's, Burger King and KFC. Pressured by animal rights

> activists and by growing public support for the humane treatment of

> animals, these companies have financed research into, among other things,

> the emotional, mental and behavioral states of our fellow creatures.

> Studies on pigs' social behavior funded by McDonald's at Purdue

> University, for example, have found that they crave affection and are

> easily depressed if isolated or denied playtime with each other. The lack

> of mental and physical stimuli can result in deterioration of health.

> The European Union has taken such studies to heart and outlawed the use of

> isolating pig stalls by 2012. In Germany, the government is encouraging

> pig farmers to give each pig 20 seconds of human contact each day and to

> provide them with toys to prevent them from fighting.

> Other funding sources have fueled the growing field of study into animal

> emotions and cognitive abilities.

> Researchers were stunned recently by findings (published in the journal

> Science) on the conceptual abilities of New Caledonian crows. In

> controlled experiments, scientists at Oxford University reported that two

> birds named Betty and Abel were given a choice between using two tools,

> one a straight wire, the other a hooked wire, to snag a piece of meat from

> inside a tube. Both chose the hooked wire. Abel, the more dominant male,

> then stole Betty's hook, leaving her with only a straight wire. Betty then

> used her beak to wedge the straight wire in a crack and bent it with her

> beak to produce a hook. She then snagged the food from inside the tube.

> Researchers repeated the experiment and she fashioned a hook out of the

> wire nine of out of 10 times.

> Equally impressive is Koko, the 300-pound gorilla at the Gorilla

> Foundation in Northern California, who was taught sign language and has

> mastered more than 1,000 signs and understands several thousand English

> words. On human IQ tests, she scores between 70 and 95.

> Tool-making and the development of sophisticated language skills are just

> two of the many attributes we thought were exclusive to our species.

> Self-awareness is another.

> Some philosophers and animal behaviorists have long argued that other

> animals are not capable of self-awareness because they lack a sense of

> individualism. Not so, according to new studies. At the Washington

> National Zoo, orangutans given mirrors explore parts of their bodies they

> can't otherwise see, showing a sense of self. An orangutan named Chantek

> who lives at the Atlanta Zoo used a mirror to groom his teeth and adjust

> his sunglasses.

> Of course, when it comes to the ultimate test of what distinguishes humans

> from the other creatures, scientists have long believed that mourning for

> the dead represents the real divide. It's commonly believed that other

> animals have no sense of their mortality and are unable to comprehend the

> concept of their own death. Not necessarily so. Animals, it appears,

> experience grief. Elephants will often stand next to their dead kin for

> days, occasionally touching their bodies with their trunks.

> We also know that animals play, especially when young. Recent studies in

> the brain chemistry of rats show that when they play, their brains release

> large amounts of dopamine, a neurochemical associated with pleasure and

> excitement in human beings.

> Noting the striking similarities in brain anatomy and chemistry of humans

> and other animals, Stephen M. Siviy, a behavioral scientist at Gettysburg

> College in Pennsylvania, asks a question increasingly on the minds of

> other researchers. " If you believe in evolution by natural selection, how

> can you believe that feelings suddenly appeared, out of the blue, with

> human beings? "

> Until very recently, scientists were still advancing the idea that most

> creatures behaved by sheer instinct and that what appeared to be learned

> behavior was merely genetically wired activity. Now we know that geese

> have to teach their goslings their migration routes. In fact, we are

> finding that learning is passed on from parent to offspring far more often

> than not and that most animals engage in all kinds of learned experience

> brought on by continued experimentation.

> So what does all of this portend for the way we treat our fellow

> creatures? And for the thousands of animals subjected each year to painful

> laboratory experiments? Or the millions of domestic animals raised under

> the most inhumane conditions and destined for slaughter and human

> consumption? Should we discourage the sale and purchase of fur coats? What

> about fox hunting in the English countryside, bull fighting in Spain?

> Should wild lions be caged in zoos?

> Such questions are being raised. Harvard and 25 other U.S. law schools

> have introduced law courses on animal rights, and an increasing number of

> animal rights lawsuits are being filed. Germany recently became the first

> nation to guarantee animal rights in its constitution.

> The human journey is, at its core, about the extension of empathy to

> broader and more inclusive domains. At first, the empathy extended only to

> kin and tribe. Eventually it was extended to people of like-minded values.

> In the 19th century, the first animal humane societies were established.

> The current studies open up a new phase, allowing us to expand and deepen

> our empathy to include the broader community of creatures with whom we

> share the Earth.

>

> ------

> Jeremy Rifkin, author of " The Biotech Century " (Tarcher Putnam, 1998), is

> the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C.

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