Inky Escapes!
As anyone who has ever had a pet knows, animals certainly do exhibit emotion and intelligence; and are usually incredibly adept at getting us to do their bidding! We have all heard about Washoe or the stories on cetacean intelligence or perhaps the wonderful video of Christian reuniting with his trainers. But the natural tendency has been to brush animal emotion and intelligence off as rare or not absolutely scientifically valid. Of course, there has been no scientific way to understand what is in any animal’s mind at any one time, even for humans. And emotion is also not a value that science can measure either – you just know it when you see it. And, of course, denying animal emotion and intelligence makes it all the easier for humans to continue to exploit and exterminate many other species, either by direct action (overfishing, poaching, etc.) or by eliminating or poisoning habitat. And the biblical command to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” provided moral approval for these actions for centuries. But there is ever increasing evidence showing that animals of all kinds, from ants to crows to elephants, have incredible abilities to communicate, socialize, and problem solve, much more than humans ever give them credit for. There is a fascinating yet, in the end, troubling book, Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, by Carl Safina who sets out to simply learn about the experiences of a variety of animals and came to want to know “who” these animals are by observing them in their natural element. In doing so, he came to recognize the same broad range of emotions and social dependencies in other species that humans have. And that only makes sense, as all animals, ourselves included, are pretty much made up of the basic cellular structure. I will simply mention one of the other incredible insights in this must-read book – namely that most humans are just another domesticated animal. Most of us totally rely on others (in our case, usually other humans) to provide food and shelter, the basic elements of our existence. In this sense, I am no different than our cat – though I do get a lot less sleep than he does!
In this vein, it was fun to read about the great escape of Inky the octopus from an aquarium in New Zealand. Apparently Inky “slipped through a small gap at the top of his tank. Octopus tracks suggest he then scampered eight feet across the floor and slid down a 164-foot-long drainpipe that dropped him into Hawke’s Bay, on the east coast of North Island”. I wonder how long he had been planning his escape route? Had he already left his tank and gone on reconnaissance missions before the big night? As the article indicates, octopuses have been know to leave their tank for nighttime snacks – so why not check out your escape route. In any case, Houdini would be proud!!