Tag Archives: attitude

Can animals show love?

16 Replies

Ask any pet owner and they will tell you unequivocally, yes! Ask many behavioural scientists and they will say absolutely not! Who is right? The short answer? Both!

How can that be? Easy: perception. Now anyone who reads my blog a lot knows that I am a big believer in perception. How we perceive something is based on our background. When I was sick many years ago my dog curled up on my bed. She never left me. She would occasionally nip out for a potty break or to grab something to eat but she was always beside me while I healed. Why? In my world she was showing concern.

When I would train young animals, dogs in our family, I would always start out with food. It is a great motivator. But eventually I moved away from that and would only give praises. My animals were well trained. I never doubted that if I called for them to come, they would and there would be no food at the end. I even had one dog that ran loose on our walks but if she saw a person she would immediately run back to me and walk at my side. Once the person was out of sight and I gave her a nod she’d take off again. I never once doubted her. Was it love?

I’m not a scientist, I’m just a woman that loves words and I loved my animals. I believe they loved me. Perhaps we are anthropomorphizing by using the word ‘love’ but that’s all we have. We may not be able to express what the animals are actually feeling in their terms, all we can do is use ours.

The scientists are probably right it isn’t love. It’s more. Watch a documentary of elephants sometime. I did. In one, a very young elephant had gotten stuck in a mud hole. The mother acted in a manner to which we would refer to as being frantic. Think of a human mother with a child stuck down a manhole. The Park Rangers we’re eventually able to get the little one out and reunited with its mother. Again the reaction is one that you would equate to a human situation. I’m not lying. I was in tears.

Whales have been released from nets and there are videos of them racing to freedom and then returning to stop in front of the group that rescued them. Gratitude? There are examples of this all over the world. There are videos of it. The only way I can explain it is through emotion. How very human of me.

Entitled

16 Replies

Do you feel entitled?

” . . .believing oneself to be inherently deserving

of privileges or special treatment.”

There are so many things that we have that we take for granted but do we deserve them? Short answer yes and no. There are things written in law that if we attain ‘ this’ we are entitled to ‘that’. That’s a good thing for a community, a society. But there are those who believe that they are entitled to more simply because they are alive. And that is both sad and annoying.

There will always be those who believe they deserve more than anyone else. There will always be those who don’t take what they deserve simply because they don’t want to be greedy. I think most of us are in between those two. But what are we entitled to?

It would be easy to say fresh air and clean water but even those come with a cost. There are people in this world that don’t have access to either. Don’t they deserve as much as we do? They do, but in this day and age we have to work to attain fresh air and clean water and then maintain them. And sometimes we don’t work hard enough. Or we do and others sabotage our efforts for reasons of ignorance and greed.

By virtue of my birth I am lucky enough to live in a country that believes I am entitled to assistance because I have a disability. I appreciate that, every day. Unfortunately there are those who think they too should be ‘entitled’ because . . . because . . . they’re lazy and greedy! There are so many abuses of the system that it is in danger of collapsing. I don’t think it ever will but it is strained. And there are those who deserve the help and are finding it difficult to get.

There are more than 7 billion people in the world and each one is an individual. I have beliefs and customs that are mine and I have no right to enforce them on another. Nor do they have the right to enforce their beliefs on me. Even if we disagree. I am a big Star Trek fan and one of the most sacred tenets in the series is ‘The Prime Directive’. I think we should all take note of it:

The Prime Directive is a guiding principle

prohibiting one group from interfering with the internal development of others.

This conceptual law prohibits using superior technology

to impose their own values or ideals on others.

 

I think we need to listen.