There is a kind of hauntedness in wild animals today: a spectre related to envi-ronmental change.
Through reading about whales in todays climate, it has truly opened up my eyes to how badly humans have not only affected the environment, but animals and their future. If anything we should use the terrible death of whales as a way to reflect on environmental pollution and damaged caused by humans as a whole and how we can make a difference as individuals.
Nature, as they say, would run itscourse. That was a phrase we trusted. We passed it back and forth, hand to hand,between each other.
I think it is true that we say things such as this to justify what is happening to the animals without having to take any direct accountability as a species. It is our way of ignoring the real problem which is what we have done to destroy the ocean and what we could do to fix it.
Misplaced or misprocessed in an ecosystem did organic matter, too, rise to the levelof a pollutant? Why had whales suddenly started eating all the wrong things?
I think this is very interesting. The whales have had to result to eating foods that are unnatural and not healthy for them simply because of the lack of food that is not polluted. This shows how humans are negatively affecting the whales in every way.
o the death of a whale proves meaningful to a vibrant hostof dependent creatures, even as it may look senseless from the shore
It is important that these whales die in the sea because their bodies can be food for deep-sea animals for hundreds of years, supplying the ecosystem. I agree with the author that is a beautiful and natural process that is so sad it is being disrupted by humans.
We struggle to understand the sprawl of our impact, but there it is, withinone cavernous stomach: pollution, climate, animal welfare, wildness, commerce
This is a powerful passage because it shows how the whales have been trying to show us the affects of our pollution through their bodies for the longest time now and we never listened. It has now gotten to a point where bringing back the whale population to what it once was seems hopeless because of everything they show us we have done.
The firstborncalf, most of all, is born seeded with iotas of human industry because it is subjectto the mother’s lifetime load;
This is so upsetting to hear. Because of the harm that the toxins we put in the earth have done to the mother whales systems, her children now barley stand a chance of survival. I found it terrible that the author states that most of the killer whales dying haven't even been born yet. It truly shows the damage we have done to the spices.
Because whales are so well insulated by their thick layer of blubber, theyattract fat-soluble toxicants, absorbing molecular heavy metals and inorganic com-pounds that comprise pesticides, fertilisers, and other pollutants that have come topowder the modern sea
It is at this point not surprising that it is our fault why whales are struggling to survive. We have carelessly polluted their habitat in a way that they have not been biologically made to survive.
Why do the whales do it? There seemed no rhyme or reason in the conditions thatpreceded significant numbers of whales casting themselves onto land in the south-west.
I have never thought about why whales would do this. I always assumed that they washed up ashore and couldn't get their way back in the water. It never occurred to me that the whales would purposefully cast themselves onto the land, and if so I wonder why that is? Theres no way to know since we can't read the whales mind or know what it is thinking.
The lesson here, the way I grasped it, is that what instinctively feels like compas-sion towards one creature can prove poisonous in the orbit of small and smallerorganisms left lying out on the beach, after we leave.
I don't understand why it is necessary to kill the whale in this way, because like the author states, the drugs would poison other animals who try to feed off of the whale, which would disrupt the ecosystem. Is the only reason they want to kill the whale in the first place because they don't want it taking up space on the beach? Why try to speed up a natural process or even try to help the whale?
How the dogsimagined the whale—predator, prey, or distant relation — was anyone’s guess, butthey seemed keen to get a closer look.
I like how the author worded this because it shows how different an animals reaction to this dying whale differs from our. While all the people on the beach were treating the whale like an attraction, the dogs seemed to show more empathy toward the animal, showing the emotion and understanding that animals can have, that some humans can't.
thrust for liberation and build a global movement to smash forever these aquaticgulags from the face of the Earth.14
This ending is very powerful. It is our responsibility to advocate for these animals who clearly tried to fight against their fate, but were seen as violent, for what would be clearly considered self-defense if they were tired in a court of law. We need to be able to put ourselves in their shoes and think about how we would feel if we were in their situation.
This is a history of violent resistance to such abuses
The animals clearly tried to resist this abuse, showing that they were completely aware of what was going on and could feel all of the pain they were being put through.
We witness from the animals’ perspective the tyrannical trainers, creepy dealersin exotic species, arrogant zookeepers and sinister hunters, who slaughtered theparents of young elephants and apes in front of their young before they capturedthem.
I think telling these stories of history from the animals perspective is important because it gives them justice for what they had to go through. Reminds me of earlier in the reading. and if animals can be tried for crime, why couldn't these people be sentenced for what they did to these animals.
The baboon communities violently resisted this risibleenterprise, chasing the captors through the wilderness all the way to the train station.Some of the baboons even followed the train for more than a hundred miles and atdistant stations launched raids on the cars in an attempt to free the captives.
I think this example shows that animals do possess emotions such as anger and retaliation. The baboons wanted to get even with the captures for what they did to their community and followed them for a very long time showing their determination.
hey could not understand abuse,they had no conception of suffering, they could not feel pain.
I like how they use the word "convenient" to describe these ideas that humans had about animals. It shows that even though the philosophers had no way of knowing if these theories were true, they just said it to make humans feel better about the terrible mistreatment of animals that occured.
Topsy received no trial.
At least in medieval times the animals were allowed a trial, even if they don't have any real way of defending themselves. However executing an animal in such a cruel way for simply not wanting to be tortured is so terrible. A wild animal such as an elephant should not be considered a liability for being forced to be experimented on.
They were publicly tortured and executed. Their bodies wereburned on a pyre, their ashes buried in a mass grave
Killing animals for food is one thing because they are being used for resources, but killing them and then burning their bodies is wrong. If they are going to kill the turkeys anyway why not use them for food so they are not being killled for no reason?
In 1565, a man was indicted for engaging in sexual relations with a mulein the French city of Montpelier. The mule was also charged. Both stood trialtogether.
How could this be the fault of the animal? The mule could not have been a consenting partner because it does not understand that concept, or really have any way to say it's side of the story, I find that charging animals for crimes as if they are human is wrong because they cannot express theur side of the story in the way that we can.
When guilty verdicts were issued and a death sentence imposed, a professional exe-cutioner was commissioned for the lethal task. Animals were subjected to the sameghastly forms of torture and execution as were condemned humans.
This is interesting that when animals are considered to be on the same level as humans, they can face the same punishments such as death sentences for crimes they "committed". I think the absurdity of this shows how animals and humans are not the same because animals don't understand what crime is or what they did wrong.
thousands of animals were summonedto court and put on trial for a variety of offenses, ranging from trespassing, thiev-ery and vandalism to rape, assault and murder.
Animals don't have the same morals that we do and therefore shouldn't be apart of trials. The concept of law is something that they can not comprehend.
the badger carried between the world above and the world below the words thatinterpreted each side to the other.
I think this represents everything that he is trying to teach us with this experiment. The author is trying to interpret for us in our terms what it is like to be a badgers, almost like a communicator from their world to ours.
We’re bombarded with change. Everything demands a response.We have to pay unaccustomed attention. And this, I presume, is why people saythat they sleep better after a bit of fresh air
I think this is true as humans we are overloaded with senses all the time, and any time we are able to get a change in environment, such as going out in nature it helps us reset and see the smaller things.
There’s little point in being able to climb neuronally down the evolutionary tree
This is a good point which is that it is impossible for us to unlearn things that we as humans have developed through evolution such as language and complex thought.
What does the individual badger‘hear’ as a result of the changing pressures on its tympanum that we choose to calla sound?
Its interesting how he put the word hear in quotes because it shows that we have no way of knowing if badgers perceive sound the way that we do and process it in the way that we can. What we think of as hearing may not be the same process for animals. Even though we can scientifically know the hearing levels of a badger, we can't ever really know what hearing is like for them
But after a few weeks on mybelly in the wood, I despaired. I had an unchangeably visual world. I painted it inshapes and colours, and then added in smell and hearing as extras.
This shows how it is impossible for us to change the fact that we are a mainly visual species, and the other senses aren't primarily used as much such as scent and hearing like it is for badgers. We can't possibly change our biology to fit that of a badger and experience senses in the way that it does. I think this is the biggest reason his experiment didn't work.
The bracken formed big, emphatic, monolithic blocks – the olfactory equivalentof a grand but grey and uniform housing development.
It is interesting to see the difference in how we process things by looking at them, such as seeing a house, but the badgers identify it by smell. This is why it is difficult for humans to describe the smell of an object, because we don't have complex sense of scent like badgers do.
Thechoice of earthworms as the staple is a good one
I like this wording because it implies that the badgers have adapted to eating earthworms overtime because it is what they could find the easiest. Since humans have the access to many other foods, earthworms are not something that we naturally can eat, which is why he was struggling to actually stick to the badgers diet
It wasn’t so. The cortisol took about four days to fall fully into line, but after a meretwo I was willing it to obedience.
Being nocturnal is unnatural to humans because we need sunlight for vitamin D and other things that help our bodies. I wonder what the psychological effects of doing this would be since not being out enough during the day can cause mental illness.
Buteven so, this world was objectively more interesting than my own. A lot morehappens at six inches and below than at six feet and above.
I find it fascinating that he thinks this way because almost every other human would disagree that our lives are a lot more interesting and complex than animals. Is he drawn to it because of how different it is compared to our lives?
Badgers have a thick outer coat ofcoarse hair lying over a softer inner layer
I wouldn't consider the fur to be the badgers clothing though. I agree that to be the most similar to the animal he should be naked because the concept of covering up is uniquely human, no other animal is worries about exposure like we are. Even though the badgers have fur, it is for the environment and they have developed it over time.
. All I could do was to say: ‘Well, if inputs totallingx do that, what would inputs totalling 1000x do?
Is it possible for us to understand the sense of scent that badgers have? We would have no way of comprehending these scents, such as a landscape since we can't smell these things ourselves.
That’s what the ‘tap,tap, tap’ of the white stick does: it bounces off obstacles and back to the brain,which crudely assembles the information into a picture of the world ahead
I think it is very interesting how he is comparing blind people to bats, it shows that humans are able to evolve senses to adapt to their environment. Does this mean he will be able to adapt senses that badgers have that we dont?
From there it was a small enough step not tomind being eaten, and not to mind being in, or getting towards, the state in whichone is eaten.
He he implying that animals don't mind being eaten? Is this apart of their nature to not fear death like humans do? Since he is slowly becoming more like a badger, is he not longer afraid or even aware of death?
preferred myideas of badgers and the wild to real badgers and real wilderness.
He is admitting that he is miserable during this experiment preferring human houses and food compared to badgers, so why is he doing this experiment? Why would he purposefully put himself in this situation?
ven though carcases that are further gone havethe added garnish of maggots, which you’d have thought badgers would think ofas children think of chocolate drops sprinkled on pudding.
I like how he makes these comparisons between badgers and humans, it makes me understand the badgers a little bit more. The food that they eat sounds very unappetizing but when compared to a food that we see as tasty it makes it more comprehendible.
It would be odd beyond belief if natural selection had conferred on us alonethe emotional corollaries of the ways our worlds are.
This is an interesting comparison, because he is saying since animals express pleasure/displeasure as we do, shouldn't they also feel all other emotions too? I don't think this is necessarily true in that having a reaction to something does not mean that they can have complex emotions in the way that humans do.
True, big setts are convenient for psychopaths with pit bulls, but psychopaths areless efficient predators than wolves, and they don’t like to stray too far from roads
Its interesting how he refers to people that want to feed a badger to their dog as psychopaths. He seems to have such a deep connection to badgers that he himself sees their predators as his own.
His view is quite literally closer to that of a badger than mine. Ferns brushhis face as they brush a badger’s; his nose is nearer the leaf mould of which he, Iand all badgers will eventually be a part, and which is the staple of earthworms.
He is trying to convince us that despite not having the characteristics, he is just as much of a badger as Tom is. By picking up the badgers traits and eating the food that they do make you apart of that species, does Tom think he is a badger? I'm also not completely sure if Tom is a badger or his actual human son.
no slavering jaws or bare-groined howling to the moon, but insteada very steady, human look from those dark, ringed eye
The author wants to show wolves as being a more "human" character rather than something that people should fear.
werewolf legends and urban lore a lone wolf is usually a solitary on the prowl
I found this to be an important characteristic of were-wolves, which is that they are always depicted as being alone and have no interest in looking for a companion, which is a big difference to real wolves who travel in packs. The were-wolf sees itself as an outcast from both humans and wolves.
and if they found alarge flock of animals, they attacked the shepherd and left the animals
Why were wolves seen as such a threat specifically to humans in these stories? They are implying that a wolf hunts humans, and even says that they would leave animals? What is it about wolves that we find so intimidating?
needs its beauty to be respectedand its power placated in acts of worship if humanity is to flourish
Its interesting how they seem to worship bears and see their beauty as animals yet wolves are seen as dangerous and aggressive in stories. Bears are arguably just as dangerous as wolves, considering that one attacked a child.
His transformation is permanent, as are most of the etiological stories Ovid relates,whereas werewolves follow a lunar cycle and are restored—after differing periodsof time and a return to their clothes—to their human form.
His argument is that a main characteristic of a were-wolf is that they have the ability to turn back to human form. Without this quality they would not be considered a were-wolf, would they just be a wolf. Even though this character was once human, he was permanently turned into a wolf meaning he is not a were-wolf according to the writer.
made manifest,
I think this is a very interesting way of describing werewolves, I had never thought about this before. I interpret this as the characteristics of a werewolf that are often described in story such as powerful, assertive, dominant, etc, are traits that men in this society often desire. I wonder if this is why werewolves have become sexualized in modern day?
In popular culture today, the monstrous has acquired a new seductiveness
I find this interesting that the author brought this up. In todays society we have sexualized mythical creatures such as were wolves in a way that they were not originally intended to be. Maybe we do this to make ourselves less afraid of the creatures and rather feel a connection to them.
expounding with irrepressible enthusiasm on such things as werewolves’ rela-tions with ghosts, vampires, sorcerers, and witches
I wonder why they find such fascination in lore such as this that is supernatural and not human? He seems to want to find actual evidence that they exist rather than only researching it out of curiosity. Why does he have such strong beliefs about these topics?
overnight a wolf has ravaged their flocks but that they’d managed to spear himin the neck
Is this how they were able to turn into a were-wolf, from being scratched in the neck? This would be similar to other mythical creatures like vampires who bite peoples necks to transmit their characteristics.
“It comes out of a desire to save my soul.”
Norma is definitely correct, Elizabeth clearly sees herself as above other people because of her lifestyle choices, it's people who make the choice to eat meat (majority of the world), that she sees as the unclean ones. This makes me remember the beginning to of story where she couldn't even have dinner with her grandchildren because they were having chicken.
Surely those are the unclean ones, notanimals in general.”
I'm confused about the term "unclean" being used. Are they using it to mean "not human"?
among the eleven of them there are only three fish orders.
It is clear that people are afraid of offending Elizabeth because of her very extreme views on eating dead flesh.
Each day a fresh holocaust,yet, as far as I can see, our moral being is untouched. We do not feel tainted. Wecan do anything, it seems, and come away clean.
Because were using the animals for food, just like other species do as well for their own nutrients and survival, comparing it to a holocaust where humans brutally murder other humans for no reason is just not correct.
that we see the most devas-tating effects: in zoos, in laboratories, institutions where the flow of joy that comesfrom living not in or as a body but simply from being an embodied-being has noplace.”1
I agree that being aware that you are in captivity implies a level of consciousness that most animals possess. I relate this to the octopus reading where the octopuses in captivity in laboratories seemed very aware of the position they were in and refused to cooperate with the scientists. This level of rebellion requires not only consciousness but intelligence.
It implies that a living being that does not do what we callthinking is somehow second-clas
How does he know that animals can't think though? It would be different from how we think and they would probably not think about the same things that we do, but I would say that animals definitely have to use their brains to process things like we do, which is thinking. Maybe they are not as critical and philosophical as us, but there's also no way of knowing since they can't communicate that to us.
She is rambling
I agree I've been struggling to understand what her point is by any of this.
er perceives, the ribbons and the junk are there not for the visual effect, becausethey look smart, but for the kinetic effect, because they make you feel different—anything to relieve the boredom
I think it's very interesting that the apes started to wear clothing, almost as if through these cruel experiments they started to develop traits that they didn't once have, of course I'm not sure if apes dress themselves in the wild or not.
Denunciation of the camps reverberates so fully with thelanguage of the stockyard and slaughterhouse that it is barely necessary for me toprepare the ground for the comparison I am about to make. The crime
Making this comparison is completely inappropriate in my opinion, and makes it clear that Elizabeths view are extreme to the point that she says something as controversial as this. I agree with Norma that I'm not a fan of her.
His mother is entitled to her convictions, he believes
There is nothing wrong with thinking this way, but it is when you push these views onto others and make harsh judgement for other people making different choices for you when it becomes an issue. I wonder what Elizabeth is going to be like in these regards.
but about a hobbyhorse of hers, animals
It is clear Elizabeth loves animals considering the fact that she is a vegetarian, she probably has a very strong connection to them. People who refuse to eat meat for this reason usually see animals as equal to us.
hose who hadcollected for the hall were now advancing in age and wished to see their trophies—
Its crazy how self-absorbed the people who collected for these exhibits really were. Clearly had no care for the wildlife or even educating the public with their exhibit but only wanting it for the accomplishment.
We shotthree bulls just to fill in the time,” the collector of Alaskan moose reported airilyfrom the field. The inventory of “personal trophies” claimed on this expedition
This idea of "personal trophies" is so sick to me. These people are literally killing these animals for no reason other than to boost their own ego. I wonder where they got the idea that it was some sort of achievement for them to brag about.
An invitation to lead or join an expedition for the museum, thus cashing in themost desirable tag in the hunting world, was indeed flattering.
The fact that people were paid such large amounts (especially for the time) for these animals is even more disturbing. So many animals were probably killed with the intention of being sold to this exhibit, but were majority were probably rejected because they were not up to standards.
Remember we are dead; this is our burialchamber.
I find this line very powerful. We as humans put so much effort into respecting the dead, yet when it comes to animals we are willing to display their bodies in such a disgusting way. Shows how we see ourselves as above every other species. I just wonder how the people making these displays would feel about their own bodies being shown like this after they died.
The bones had been boiled,the skins salted and soaked in formalin, the hoofs and horns measured and labeled,and the disassembled parts crated and shipped to the Upper West Side.
I am from New York City and remember viewing the animal dioramas at the Natural History Museum many times when I was younger. As a kid I couldn't comprehend that those animals were once alive, they looked so lifeless. It honestly makes me sad thinking back now knowing the process they had to go through after death, many of which were probably killed with the intention of being an exhibit.
This obsession with the “typical” specimen
I find it interesting how even for animals there are certain physical standards that they have to live up to to be deemed acceptable and viewable for the human public. We are putting our own societal standards for perfection onto animals who don't even know what that is.
his was also destroyed—again, mysteriously, by fire
This is very interesting that the same thing happened to him twice, seems almost unlikely that it could be a coincidence. I'm thinking maybe insurance fraud or something like that for the time? Or maybe the dangerous nature of his exhibits really were just not fit to last a long time. Still makes me wonder what really happeend.
human exhibits survived, exiting the building in varying states of disarray tothe delight of the expectant crowd:
I find this part to be very shocking and upsetting. The fact that these human beings were considered "exhibits" shows how they were not seen as people. Also they fact that the crowed was so amused by them running out of the fire in terror. This did however answer my earlier question I thought while reading which is why was the crowd so happy to see the place burn down. They clearly had very little respect for the workers at the museum because they possessed physical traits that were considered odd and not normal
even if it falls short of full-blown consciousness
Personally I think that all animals have consciousness
recogniseindividual humans
I think this is the most interesting feature of the octopus, because it means that they are paying attention to us.
blue-green blood.
Its very interesting how the color of it's blood is opposite on the color wheel from ours. Shows how they are unlike us.