Thought on Animals

Personally, I love animals. My family has owned many pets and I grew up with animals surrounding me. Right now we have two pets, my pet turtle Kevin, and my dog Yuki. While I always thought that Yuki was able to have feelings, Kevin was less expressive. It wasn't until I saw the times article Communication did I start thinking differently. Jack Bradbury said “there are certainly modes of animal communication to which we are completely deaf, [like] the vibratory signals leafhoppers send to each other through a plant stem, the electrical signals of mormyrid and gymnotid fish, the wavelength of colored signals we cannot detect.” (6) I began to wonder about if Kevin had his own way of talking that I never noticed. Maybe Yuki as well had things to tell me that I couldn't hear. However, I think this quote from Jeffery Kluger sums my feelings, that maybe "it is possible to make too much of even the most remarkable stories of communication among nonverbal beasts" (10).

Reading Safina's prologue, what I understood is that from his experiences, he is able to see the animals not as an "it" but as a "who." As in, "who" is he, what does he do, and how does he live? Looking at animals Safina realizes that they are similar to people, they all have families, and children, and lives they need to care for. This is the same realization that the scientists and writers of Animals Minds realized, with chapters like "Friendships" and "Mourning" that show the humanity behind animals.

Safina also mentions the importance of understanding animals, as humans are animals as well. He says "everything about life occurs on a sliding scale, understanding the human animal becomes easier in context, seeing our human thread woven into the living web among strands of countless others" (4). A key step to understanding ourselves is understanding the animals and primal behaviors that we evolved from.