As many know, yesterday was the fourteenth anniversary of when those two planes struck the towers of the World Trade Centre. Thus it seemed beautifully appropriate to recognise the life of the last living 9/11 rescue dog by republishing the article just published on Mother Nature News.
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Last living 9/11 rescue dog rewarded with epic day
Bretagne traveled to NYC to be honored for her weeks of service at Ground Zero.
By: Laura Moss, September 11, 2015.
At 16, Bretagne is a senior dog, but that hasn’t slowed her down. She now volunteers at schools. (Photo: BarkPost)
About 100 search-and-rescue dogs scoured the twisted steel beams and crumbled concrete of the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and today, Bretagne (pronounced “Brittany”) is the last known living 9/11 search-and-rescue dog. And she just had the best day ever.
To honor Bretagne for her service and celebrate her 16th birthday, BarkPost teamed up with the dog-friendly 1 Hotel Central Park to give the golden retriever a “Dog’s Best Day” that included a full day of treats and activities in New York City.
When Bretagne arrived in New York with her owner and handler Denise Corliss, she was greeted by a personalized billboard in Times Square.
Photo: BarkPost
Then she was off to play in the water at Hudson River Park, where she was presented with the doggie version of the Key to the City.
Former search-and-rescue teammates attended Bretagne’s sweet-16 party later that day, where she received a variety of toys and treats — and her very own birthday cake.
Photo: BarkPost
Corliss was also presented with a $1,000 donation for Texas Task Force 1, Bretagne’s search-and-rescue team, which is the most active one in the country.
In addition to her recovery work at Ground Zero, Bretagne and Corliss also worked in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and today, the senior dog serves her community by volunteering at school programs that teach children to read.
Corliss adopted Bretagne as an 8-week-old puppy in 1999, and after undergoing rigorous training, the two joined Texas Task Force 1. Their first deployment was to Ground Zero, where a search for survivors quickly turned into a search for human remains.
Bretagne with a firefighter and her owner and handler, Denise Corliss during her “Dog’s Best Day.” (Photo: BarkPost)
For two weeks, the golden retriever tirelessly worked 12-hour shifts at the former site of the World Trade Center, and one day, Bretagne walked away from Corliss, ignoring commands to come back. The 2-year-old dog made her way to a firefighter sitting on the ground, laid next to him and put her head in his lap.
“When we deploy to some of the disasters, what I didn’t anticipate is the role that they take on as a therapy dog,” Corliss told BarkPost. “It provides an opportunity for people to have support from the dog and comfort from the dog in a real difficult environment.”
Watch Bretagne enjoy her best day in the video below.
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Don’t these wonderful, fabulous animals just make your heart ache!
Jean and I salute Bretagne and all the other Search & Rescue dogs both here in America and all around the world.
The wonderful way that animals have evolved to survive life on the go.
It is very easy to look at our wonderful domesticated dogs and forget that genetically they are still very much hunting dogs. Of all the dogs that we have had Dhalia seemed the most closely connected with those instincts, and she is still missed more than a year after she died. So much so that I’m going to republish part of the post that commemorated her life just after she died. Here it is:
Dhalia, as with so many other dogs, offered lasting lessons. April 8th, 2014
Inevitably, as Jean and I went around our ‘stuff’ yesterday after burying Dhalia in the morning, there were moments of quiet contemplation and gentle discussion. Interludes over a hot drink where we reflected on the special dog that she was.
Much has already been written in this place but there can’t be too many reminders for us quirky humans of how valuable are the qualities of trust and love given to us by our dogs.
We need reminding how dogs are so intuitive and can reach out to a stranger without a moment of hesitation. As Jean described when recalling how she first came across Dhalia.
Dhalia – domesticated but still the wild dog shows through.
It was a Sunday around the middle of the month of September in the year 2005. My friend, Gwen, and I had set off for La Manga, a small fishing village three miles from San Carlos, Mexico. As the trip would take us through areas of desolate desert and the day was forecast to be a sizzler, we left early. The purpose of the journey was to feed a pack of dogs that were living on the outskirts of La Manga. These wild dogs were gradually getting used to our presence and with the aid of a humane trap we had previously caught two of them, a small puppy and her mother. Those two dogs were at my home and were gradually becoming tame so that good homes could be found for them.
Half-way to our destination, we saw two dogs running by the side of the road. It wasn’t unusual to see strays searching for road-kill. I stopped the car and prepared food and water for them. One dog took off almost immediately but the other just stood perfectly still looking intently at me. She was rail-thin and full of mange. Her ears and chest were scabbed with blood, and I could see that previously she had had pups. Tentatively, I pushed the food towards her. She took a bite and sat on her haunches; her eyes never leaving mine. Then she lifted a paw and reached out to me. Immediately, I burst into tears and scooped her into my arms. I carried her back to the car where she lay quietly in my lap whilst we went on to do our feeding. She was bloody and very smelly. However, I didn’t care.
Dhalia was always a gentle dog. One that would mix with any of the other dogs. A dog that loved people, of all types and ages.
Love and Trust – Grandson Morten hugging Dhalia, September 2013.
The reason that my post from last year came to mind was as a result of a recent article on The Conversation blogsite. It was called Motion dazzle: spotting the patterns that help animals outsmart predators on the run and seemed ideal to share with all you good people who support this place.
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Motion dazzle: spotting the patterns that help animals outsmart predators on the run
Zebra are seen running at the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania Nov. 14, 2013. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Eric Dietrich/Released)
Many animals use the colours and patterns on their bodies to help them blend into the background and avoid the attention of predators. But this strategy, crypsis, is far from perfect. As soon as the animal moves, the camouflage is broken, and it is much easier for a predator to see and catch it. So how do animals protect themselves when they’re on the move?
Researchers are exploring whether high-contrast patterns during motion, such as stripes and zigzags, may be distorting the predator’s perception of where the animal is going. But, as little is known about such “motion dazzle”, we have built an online game to help shed light on it.
Lessons from war
The idea is that it may be more effective for animals to focus on preventing capture, rather then preventing detection or recognition, is actually more than 100 years old. It was naturalist Abbott Thayer who suggested that high-contrast patterns may distort the perceived speed or direction of a moving object, making it harder to track and capture.
Such motion dazzle patterns were actually used in World War I and II, where some ships were painted with black and white geometric patterns in an attempt to reduce the number of successful torpedo attacks from submarines. However, due to many other factors affecting wartime naval losses, it is unclear whether motion dazzle patterns actually had the desired effect.
HMS Argus displaying a coat of dazzle camouflage in 1918. wikimedia
What about the natural world? Zebras have bold stripes, and scientists have debated the function of their patterns since Darwin’s time. A recent modelling study suggested that when zebras move, their stripes create contradictory signals about their direction of movement that is likely to confuse predators. There are potentially two visual illusions responsible for this, which could form the basis of motion dazzle effects: the wagon wheel effect and the barber pole illusion.
The wagon wheel effect is named after Western movies, where the wheels on wagons often appear to be moving backwards. This is because the visual system takes “snapshots” over time and links them to create a continuous scene, in the same manner as recording film. If a wheel spoke moves forward rapidly between sampling events, it will appear to have moved backwards as it will be misidentified as the following spoke.
The barber pole illusion (also known as the aperture effect) occurs because the moving stripes provide ambiguous information about the true direction of movement. These illusory effects produced by stripes could therefore lead to difficulties in judging the speed and movement of a moving target. However, the zebra study was entirely theoretical and didn’t test whether striped patterns actually affected the judgements of real observers.
Dazzle Bug
Surprisingly, the first experimental tests of the effectiveness of motion dazzle patterns weren’t carried out until recently. Some studies have shown that strikingly patterned targets can be more difficult to catch than targets with other patterns in studies using humans as “predators” playing touch screen computer games. However, other studies have found no clear advantage for motion dazzle patterns So although patterns can affect our perception of movement, it’s still not clear which are most effective at doing so.
Can you see the spider? Crypsis can be pretty effective – as long as you don’t move. J Kelley, Author provided
We are addressing the question of which patterns are best for avoiding predators during movement using Dazzle Bug – an online game that asks players to imagine themselves as a predator, trying to catch a moving bug as fast as possible. Each bug has a different body pattern as well as a random pattern of movement. Bugs with easy to catch patterns will disappear, whereas those that are particularly tricky to catch will survive ––just like in nature. Over time, the patterns on the bugs’ body will evolve so that they become harder to catch with each successive generation.
This citizen science project will allow us to see what patterns are most effective at evading capture. We can then use these results to look at what visual effects these patterns have, and to see whether these patterns match up with those found on real animals in the wild.
Our findings will offer insight into the role of stripes, which are common in many species. While these patterns may have evolved to confuse the visual perception of a predator, they may also be a result of other selection pressures, such as attracting a mate or regulating body temperature. If striped patterns survive and evolve in the game, this would provide strong evidence that these patterns do act to confuse human predators, perhaps by producing the illusions described above. As motion perception seems to be highly conserved across a wide range of populations, these illusions may occur for many other predators too.
If we find that patterns other than stripes – such as speckles, splotches or zigzags – are most effective in preventing capture, this then leads to new and interesting questions about how these patterns may act to confuse or mislead. Whatever the outcome, Dazzle Bug will provide insight into how bodily patterns may have evolved to help animals to survive life on the go.
Yesterday was the moment when Queen Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning UK monarch. As the BBC reported (in part) yesterday:
Queen Elizabeth II becomes longest-reigning UK monarch
The Queen has thanked well-wishers at home and overseas for their “touching messages of kindness” as she becomes Britain’s longest-reigning monarch.
Speaking in the Scottish Borders, the 89-year-old monarch said the title was “not one to which I have ever aspired”.
At 17:30 BST she had reigned for 23,226 days, 16 hours and approximately 30 minutes – surpassing the reign of her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria.
David Cameron said the service the Queen had given was “truly humbling”.
Dressed in turquoise with her trusty black handbag at her side, the Queen spoke briefly to the gathered crowds earlier.
“Inevitably a long life can pass by many milestones – my own is no exception – but I thank you all and the many others at home and overseas for your touching messages of great kindness,” she said.
Newly released official photographs show the Queen with her official red box, containing the day’s policy papers, cabinet documents, Foreign Office papers and other letters.
Here’s a video that is worth viewing:
So that was the ‘good’ news.
Now here is the ‘ugly’ news; the latest essay by George Monbiot republished here with Mr. Monbiot’s kind permission.
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Britain’s Mafia State
8th September 2015
Where does legitimate business end and organised crime begin?
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 9th September 2015
Be reasonable in response to the unreasonable: this is what voters in the Labour election are told. Accommodate, moderate, triangulate, for the alternative is to isolate yourself from reality. You might be inclined to agree. If so, please take a look at the reality to which you must submit.
To an extent unknown since before the First World War, economic relations in this country are becoming set in stone. It’s not just that the very rich no longer fall while the very poor no longer rise. It’s that the system itself is protected from risk. Through bail-outs, quantitative easing and delays in interest rate rises, speculative investment has been so well cushioned that, as Larry Elliott puts it, financial markets are “one of the last bastions of socialism left on earth.”
Public services, infrastructure, the very fabric of the nation: these too are being converted into risk-free investments. Social cleansing is transforming inner London into an exclusive economic zone for property speculation. From a dozen directions, government policy converges on this objective. The benefits cap and the bedroom tax drive the poor out of their homes. The forced sale of high-value council houses creates a new asset pool. An uncapped and scarcely regulated private rental market turns these assets into gold. The freeze on council tax banding since 1991, the lifting of the inheritance tax threshold and £14 billion a year in breaks for private landlords all help to guarantee stupendous returns.
And for those who wish simply to sit on their assets, the government can help here too, by ensuring that there are no penalties for leaving buildings empty. As a result, great tracts of housing are removed from occupation. Agricultural land has proved an even better punt for City money: with the help of capital gains, inheritance and income tax exemptions, as well as farm subsidies, its price has quadrupled in 12 years.
Property in this country is a haven for the proceeds of international crime. The head of the National Crime Agency, Donald Toon, notes that “the London property market has been skewed by laundered money. Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester their assets here in the UK.”
It’s hardly surprising, given the degree of oversight. Private Eye has produced a map of British land owned by companies registered in offshore tax havens. The holdings amount to 1.2 million acres, including much of our prime real estate. Among those it names as beneficiaries are a cast of Russian oligarchs, oil sheikhs, British aristocrats and newspaper proprietors. These are the people for whom government policy works, and the less regulated the system that enriches them, the happier they are.
The speculative property market is just one current in the great flow of cash that sluices through Britain while scarcely touching the sides. The financial sector exploits an astonishing political privilege: the City of London is the only jurisdiction in the UK not fully subject to the authority of parliament. In fact, the relationship seems to work the other way. Behind the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons sits the Remembrancer, whose job is to ensure that the interests of the City of London are recognised by the elected members. (A campaign to rescind this privilege – Don’t Forget the Remembrancer – will be launched very soon). The City has one foot in the water: it is a semi-offshore state, a bit like the UK’s Crown dependencies and overseas territories, tax havens legitimised by the Privy Council. Britain’s financial secrecy undermines the tax base while providing a conduit into the legal economy for gangsters, kleptocrats and drug barons.
Even the more orthodox financial institutions deploy a long succession of scandalous practices: pension mis-selling, endowment mortgage fraud, the payment protection insurance con, Libor rigging. A former minister in the last government, Lord Green, ran HSBC while it engaged in money laundering for drugs gangs, systematic tax evasion and the provision of services to Saudi and Bangladeshi banks linked to the financing of terrorists. Sometimes the UK looks to me like an ever-so-civilised mafia state.
At next month’s Conservative party conference, corporate executives will pay £2,500 to sit with a minister. Doubtless, because we are assured that there is no link between funding and policy, they will spend the day discussing the weather and the films they have seen. If we noticed such arrangements overseas, we might be inclined to regard them as corruption. But that can’t be the case here, not least because the invitation explains that “fees associated with business day & dinner are considered a commercial transaction and therefore do not constitute a political donation.”
The government also insists that there is no link between political donations and seats in the House of Lords. But a study by researchers at Oxford University found that the probability of so many major donors arriving there by chance is 1.36 x 10-38: roughly “equivalent to entering the National Lottery and winning the jackpot 5 times in a row”. Why does the Lords remain unreformed? Because it permits plutocratic power to override democracy. Both rich and poor are kept in their place.
Governed either by or on behalf of the people who fleece us, we cannot be surprised to discover that all public services are being re-engineered for the benefit of private capital. Nor should we be surprised when governments help to negotiate, without public consent, treaties such as TTIP and CETA (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement), which undermine the sovereignty of both parliament and the law. Aesop’s observation that “we hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office” remains true in spirit, though hanging has been replaced by community payback.
Wherever you sniff in British public life, something stinks: I could fill this newspaper with examples. But, while every pore oozes corruption, our task, we are told, is merely to trim the nails of the body politic.
To fail to confront this system is to collaborate with it. Who on the left would wish to stand on the sidelines as this carve-up continues? Who would vote for anything but sweeping change?
Ma’am’s best friend: The Queen has owned corgis for more than 60 years. Picture seen in the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper.
Taking the two stories together, all that comes to mind is that we could do much better if the United Kingdom, and other countries, were governed by dogs!
I have long been an admirer of The Guardian newspaper way back before I became a US resident. Thus an article that appeared on the website of The Guardian US newspaper seemed perfect for a mention in this place. It was an article entitled Cadaver dogs: attending camp with the canines trained to smell death and written by Liz Lucking. Here’s a tiny extract from the article:
A dog’s sense of smell is estimated to be somewhere between 100 and 1,000 times greater than a human’s, depending on the breed. But despite their formidable noses, these dogs still need assistance, direction and training to reach their full potential.
The Penn Vet Working Dog Center does exactly that. Founded in 2007 and part of the University of Pennsylvania, the training centre and research program is dedicated to helping advance the success of working dogs.
I then went across to the Penn Vet Working Dog Centre website that was full of interesting information, including details of their Internships, Externships & Fellowships. So if that strikes a chord with a reader then that’s great.
That Guardian article also mentioned the American Rescue Dog Association and their website is full of fabulous information, as this extract from their welcome page endorses:
The American Rescue Dog Association® (ARDA®) is comprised of highly skilled volunteer search and rescue units across the United States that operate in conjunction with local law enforcement or other applicable emergency services agencies to assist in the location of missing persons. ARDA units provide specially trained dogs to locate missing persons in wilderness, disaster, human remains and water search and rescue/recovery missions. Each member unit is required to adhere to the Association’s rigid standards and undergo a rigorous two-day field evaluation every three years to ensure these standards are being maintained.
Units are available 24-hours a day to respond to requests for services from applicable local, state or federal responsible agencies.
Our search and rescue canine teams deploy in many circumstances, at several levels, at no cost to Federal and Local departments. ARDA resources operate solely as volunteers, and rely on donations for our continued operations.
Finally, searching YouTube for ARDA produced the following.
Another day: Another example of what our fabulous dogs provide to humans.
A very interesting report that recently appeared on Mother Nature Network (MNN).
We live in Josephine County here in Southern Oregon. Our next door neighbours to the East are Jackson County. Josephine and Jackson Counties share one very noble attribute: each is only one of just nine GMO-free counties in the entire United States of America. Plus, as evidenced at our local Grants Pass Farmers’ Market every Saturday, the growing of organic fruit and vegetables is widespread in our county. We feel very happy to have ended up in this part of America.
All of which makes a logical introduction to a report that appeared on MNN on September, 1st. It is republished below.
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For safer, cheaper pest control, just add ants
Ants offer a surprisingly effective alternative to synthetic pesticides on crops ranging from cashews to sugar cane, according to a new review of more than 70 scientific studies.
By: Russell McLendon, September 1, 2015, 9:30 a.m.
Weaver ants can not only protect tree crops from pests, but may also benefit the quality of produce. (Photo: Rushen/Flickr)
Sometimes ants are pests, marching through our kitchens on an industrious quest for crumbs. But when faced with more serious pests — namely those that destroy crops on which people’s livelihoods depend — we can also use ants to our advantage.
Published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, a new research review suggests ants can control agricultural pests as efficiently as synthetic pesticides, with the bonus of being more cost-effective and generally safer. And since many pesticides pose a danger to helpful wildlife like birds, bees and spiders — not to mention humans — ants might be a key ally in feeding the planet’s booming human population.
The review covers more than 70 scientific studies on dozens of pest species that plague nine crop varieties in Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia. Because ants are organized as “superorganisms” — meaning the colony itself is like an organism, with individual ants acting as “cells” that can move around independently — they are uniquely capable of hunting down pests and then overwhelming them.
“Ants are great hunters and they work cooperatively,” says author Joachim Offenberg, a biologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, in a press release about the research. “When an ant finds its prey, it uses pheromones to summon help from other ants in the nest. By working together, they can subdue even large pests.”
Most studies in the review focused on weaver ants, a tropical genus of tree-dwelling ants that weave ball-shaped nests using leaves and larval silk. Since they live in the canopy of their host trees, near the fruit and flowers that need protection, weaver ants have a natural tendency to control pest populations in orchards.
A colony of weaver ants in India works on converting leaves into a nest. (Photo: Raghu Mohan/Flickr)
In one three-year study, Australian cashew growers recorded yields 49 percent higher in trees guarded by weaver ants versus trees treated with synthetic chemicals. But higher yields were only part of the prize: The farmers also got higher-quality cashews from the trees with ants, resulting in a 71 percent higher net income.
Similar results were reported in mango orchards. While mango trees with ants had roughly the same yields as those with synthetic chemicals, the ants were cheaper — and the trees they inhabited grew higher-quality fruit. That led to a 73 percent higher net income compared with pesticide-treated trees. Not all crops had such dramatic results, but studies on more than 50 pests showed that ants can protect crops including cocoa, citrus and palm oil at least as effectively as pesticides.
“Although these are rare cases where the ants were superior to chemicals, many studies show that ants are just as efficient as chemical controls,” Offenberg says. “And of course ant technology is much cheaper than chemical pest control.”
To recruit weaver ants in their orchards, farmers just collect nests from the wild, hang them in plastic bags from tree branches and feed them a sugar solution while they build new nests. Once the ants establish their colony, farmers can help them expand by connecting target trees with aerial walkways made from string or vines.
The ants are mostly self-sufficient from there, needing only some water during the dry season — provided via plastic bottles in the trees — and pruning of non-target trees that host different ant colonies to prevent fights. Farmers can also help their ants by avoiding broad-spectrum insecticide sprays, researchers say.
Ants protect mango trees about as effectively as pesticides, but at less cost, research suggests. (Photo: Shutterstock)
It’s worth noting that ants can also be detrimental to some plants, such as when they herd sap-feeding insects like aphids and leafhoppers. But if they still fend off fruit-ruining flies and beetles, their net impact may be positive nonetheless. Not only do weaver ants kill pest insects on their trees, but their presence alone is reportedly enough to scare away marauders as large as snakes and fruit bats. And research suggests their urine even contains important plant nutrients.
The use of ants for pest control isn’t new. As early as 300 B.C., Chinese farmers could buy weaver ants in markets to release in their citrus groves, a practice that has faded over time, especially after the advent of chemical pesticides. But it may be coming back, both because ants are cheaper than pesticides and because certified organic produce can fetch higher prices, due to concerns that broad-spectrum pesticides harm more than just pests. Aarhus University is studying the use of weaver ants as pest control in Benin and Tanzania, for example, where the insects could lead to increased export revenue of $120 million and $65 million, respectively.
“To kill the flies with pesticides, you have to make the mango so poisonous that it can kill the maggot,” Aarhus University biologist Mogens Gissel Nielsen told China’s Xinhua news agency in 2010. “But when it is too poisoned for the maggot to eat, it might not be good for us to eat either.”
While the research in Offenberg’s review focused largely on weaver ants, he points out they “share beneficial traits with almost 13,000 other ant species, and are unlikely to be unique in their properties as control agents.” Lots of ants nest in the ground, and while it may be a challenge to relocate them, they too have shown promise in protecting a variety of commercially important crops.
“Weaver ants need a canopy for their nests, so they are limited to plantations and forestry in the tropics,” Offenberg says. “But ground-living ants can be used in crops such as maize and sugar cane. European wood ants are renowned for controlling pests in forestry, and new projects are trying to use wood ants to control winter moths in apple orchards. Ants could even be used to fight plant pathogens because they produce antibiotics to combat diseases in their dense societies.”
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As with many of the other fine articles that appear on Mother Nature Network, this report by Russell McLendon has many links to other information sources, too many for me to set up. So if this report ‘speaks’ to you and you want to look up the background information then please go here and read it over on MNN.
So said Sir Winston Churchill. It applies equally to the price of power.
There was an essay recently written and published by Hariod Brawn over on her blog Contentedness.net that was incredibly thought-provoking and very beautiful besides. Hariod has given me permission to republish it and it follows shortly.
I have no doubt that Hariod’s essay was, in part, inspired by that terrible photograph that has been circulated and commented upon by thousands around the world.
In the words of the BBC, “The pictured boy is reported to be three-year-old Aylan, who drowned along with his five-year-old brother Galip and their mother, Rihan. Their father, Abdullah Kurdi, survived.”
The emotions created by this and other tragic photographs are disturbing, and I am no exception to having those same emotions. But as friend, Chris Snuggs, mentioned in a telephone call between us yesterday morning, what has been happening in Syria is no less terrible, perhaps even more so when one looks at the blood that is, metaphorically, on the hands of a number of western governments. The old saying of reaping what we sow comes to mind.
None of which takes away the intense beauty of Hariod’s essay: Empathetic apes.
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Empathic apes
Orangutan mother and kids. By Patrick Bouquet, Chantilly.
The year is 1955, and far from the nearest village, somewhere within the Northwestern jungle region of Thailand, a 48 year-old Englishman and ordainee to the Buddhist monkhood sits quietly in studious attention. A few feet away, a female ape sits, arms carefully wrapped around some precious possession. The monk first chanced upon her the previous day, and due to the curiosity roused in observing her melancholic countenance, has remained respectfully nearby to her. A trust has developed, the ape sensing the monk’s gentle disposition and harmlessness. He really ought to be making his way to the village for alms, yet somehow senses that he should stay. A silent, palpable communication has developed between the two, and slowly, carefully and deliberately, the ape, her sadness still etched upon her face, finally unfolds her arms and offers a first sight of what she has been protecting. The monk slowly approaches to within a pace or two, sensing the invitation, only to catch sight of her lifeless and terribly deformed baby.
Two empathic apes, ancestrally and psychologically speaking, separated by little more in this moment than a distant, lineage-splitting, speciation event. Opposable thumbs, one hers and one his, in turn chase away a monk’s tear and a delicately mottled butterfly as it alights from the baby’s forehead, though cannot do the same for their conjoined feelings. Eyes meet, evincing as they do a deepening rush of sadness. Nothing can be done – is this what she is thinking in her way? In his unknowing, the saffron-robed wanderer radiates compassion, yet knows he has nothing to do with it; an offering from wisdom, not from the self. All that need be known arrives in the fullest of measures. What use now the venerable elder’s sagacity, his knowledge of emptiness, renunciation, equanimity, the void? She inhabits the void, is the void, her bleak knowing piercing its veils. Without turning, the monk slowly retreats, still reverently holding her gaze alongside a shared understanding. A slight suggestion of a bowing head betokens what passes between them.
It is the ability to empathise which in part distinguishes the psychopathic mind from its otherwise healthy state, and the primary orbit of empathy is that of feeling, not the mere gyrations of intellect. This is why many species of sentience can empathise, and we human animals are but one of them. We may erroneously presume that an ability to reflect upon others’ situations facilitates human empathic capacity; yet the state of those others and their situations need not be known as verbally abstracted objects in the mind – little stories packaged in words. We may just as well occupy others’ frames of reference by intuited means; and vitality, morbidity, distress and joy may all be recognised across species in differing ways; one need not indulge any anthropomorphisation, for clear evidence abounds. What is intuited here, or instinctively known, is the nature of the other’s felt emotional condition; and in this way, 60 years ago, the grieving mother ape and mendicant monk shared that intense experience – a wordless world of deep, primate feeling.
Engraving of Orangutan. By Willem Piso (1611-1678). Courtesy Wellcome Trust
Was the mother ape empathic? Well, she came to appreciate the monk’s amity; she felt able to extend trust; she intuited the monk’s concern for her as well as his desire for understanding as to the reasons for, and significance of, her sadness; and finally, she recognised that the monk would feel something of that sadness in revealing its causes to him. This is all to say that she significantly placed herself within the monk’s frame of reference and innately understood that emotions can be matched in shared experience – the personal does not expire at the boundary of the body. Her empathic appreciation was sophisticated, certainly moreso than any psychopathic human ape. Now, one way to cheat the system is to mimic expressions and gestures, which results in a like proprioceptive sense. This means our feelings echo the other’s, so affecting an emotional contagion of sorts, whether volitionally induced or not. Yet neither jungle dweller did so, their empathic link being forged in mind purely intuitively, and silently.
Empathy subsists in knowledge; it is in part to know the mind of the other, and whilst its currency is both cognitive (knowing) and emotional (feeling) in nature, it is the latter that strengthens the connective link to altruistic and prosocial leanings, as well as ameliorating aggressive traits. Primates’ mirror-neuron systems help forge innate empathic leanings, with research suggesting that empathy evolved in part as a survival mechanism. Right now, tens of thousands of refugees are fleeing war-torn regions of Africa and the Middle East so as to seek sanctuary, and survival, in Europe. A few hours ago, a three year-old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, drowned and was washed up on the shores of the Greek island of Kos. Equally tragically, his five year-old brother met a similar fate. Whilst Europe’s politicians exhibit an ongoing empathy gap, innocent children are dying. We live, not literally, though metaphorically, in a jungle, sharing the empathic faculties of the monk and bereaved mother ape. Are we wise enough to nurture the same?
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We need leaders who understand the integrity that is required from them. We need leaders that accept and understand the responsibilities that they have embraced, indivisible from the power that society has lent to them. We need leaders that understand a different aspect of their power, the power of those unanticipated consequences from their actions.
Until we the people understand that electing leaders who do not embrace integrity then Aylan Kurdi and thousands of others in those ‘hot spots’ around the world will continue dying in vain.
Integrity equates to being truthful, to being honest. It doesn’t mean being right all the time, of course not, but integrity does mean accepting responsibility for all our actions, for feeling remorse and apologising when we make mistakes. Integrity means learning, being reliable, being a builder rather than a destroyer. It means being authentic. That authenticity is precisely and exactly what we see in our dogs.
The starting point for what we must learn from our dogs is integrity.
Even before I met Jean back in 2007 and came out from England to be with her in 2008 (with Pharaoh), I had learnt that one of the many joys in having a dog was being able to share so much of one’s life with your loving canine companion.
Thus you will not be surprised in the slightest that walking with your dog is another joyous activity. Plus the benefit of living a few more years, as the following article from Mother Nature News illustrates.
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The secret to adding 7 years to your life
Hint: Get ready to lace up your sneakers.
By: Jenn Savedge, August 31, 2015
Researchers find that just 25 minutes of walking each day can trigger the anti-aging process. (Photo: Nejc Vesel/Shutterstock)
It’s easier than you might think to add another seven years to your life. Researchers have found that adding a simple 25-minute walk to your daily routine could give you several more years of healthy living.
Researchers found that participants in their 50s and 60s who took a brisk daily walk that lasted for at least 25 minutes had half the risk of dying from a heart attack than their couch-potato peers. The study, conducted at Saarland University in Germany, evaluated the health of 69 healthy non-smokers, aged between 30 and 60, who were not regular exercisers before the study began.
Participants were asked to complete various types of daily exercise — from simple aerobics to high-intensity interval training to strength training over a six-month period. Meanwhile, researchers took blood samples that allowed them to measure the increase of telomerase activity and the decrease of senescence markers, two indicators of cellular aging found in the blood. Using these measurements, researchers found that daily aerobic exercise triggers the anti-aging process.
Researchers presented their findings at the European Society of Cardiology conference with the suggestion that people add regular exercise to their daily routine to add years to their lives. They also noted that it’s never too late to start. A 70-year-old woman who has never exercised before can still gain tremendous mental and physical health benefits by adding a brisk daily walk to her routine.
Heart disease is the number one killer of men and women in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 600,000 Americans will lose their lives to the disease this year, but exercise could slash that figure in half, bringing more years to millions of Americans.
Do you have your sneakers laced yet?
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So there you are! Just twenty-five minutes a day with your favourite person and your favourite dog or two and you will all live forever.
Carry on sharing!
Pharaoh in the back of a Piper Super Cub back in 2002. Proving that he loved taxying around the grass airfield but I drew the line at flying – for both our sakes!
P.S. When I showed Jean this post yesterday evening she remarked that I still had, and wore at times, the same green T-shirt and cap that I featured in the photograph above some 13 years ago. I guess I’m not a fashion plate!
Learning from Dogs 