Rusty (the Mutt) and the Arrogance of Humans

 

by Pa Rock

Dog Servant

Many years ago when I worked in the field of education by day, one of the ways that I supplemented that meager income was by also working in the field of education a couple of nights a week as an "adjunct" instructor for a small community college.  The coursework that I taught for the college was varied and interesting, everything from freshman composition to American and world history, geography, government, economics, and even general psychology.  It was during one of the general psychology classes that one of my most memorable nights of teaching - and learning - occurred.

On nights when the basics of the lecture had been completed we would dedicate some time to class discussion on various related topics.  One night I led off the discussion with this question, "Can animals think?"  The class, mostly my age or older, caught fire with that one and the responses were still coming fast and furiously when it was time for the class to end.  The unanimous opinion was "Yes, of course they can think!" and the class offered up an enormous supply of fantastic animal tales.  We heard about animals, primarily dogs and cats, who solved their own problems, outsmarted their owners, performed complicated and multi-part physical operations, showed empathy, and were just generally all-around smart creatures.  Everyone had amazing pet stories to tell!

As anyone who has ever had a long-term pet knows, they quickly learn to understand what their human companions want and expect from them, and they also seem to innately know how to get what they want.

Most of us who have been around more than half a century probably remember Koko, the gorilla, who was taught American Sign Language and promptly used that skill to request a pet kitten which she cared for and loved until the feline was unfortunately run over by a careless driver behind the wheel of a car - and even then Koko used her sign language skills to grieve for her lost companion.  Koko learned more than one thousand words in American Sign Language and she was able to show an understanding of two thousand other words which she learned through listening.  It would be hard to argue that Koko the gorilla did not possess a great deal of intelligence, the ability to learn more, and the ability to share her thoughts and feelings.

Ranger Bob forwarded a brief video clip of famed primatologist, zoologist, and anthropologist Dr. Jane Goodall who has spent much of her life studying and working with chimpanzees in the African nation of Tanzania.  Dr. Goodall, who is ninety now and still educating the world on environmental and animal welfare issues, actually met and visited with Koko the gorilla on several occasions.  This clip is of Dr. Goodall's response to one question which was posed to her at the Clinton Global Initiative:

Question:  "What can we learn from the chimpanzees?"

Goodall:  "How arrogant humans have been.  When I got to Cambridge to do a PhD in 1961, I was told that I couldn't talk about chimps having personalities, minds, or emotions because those were unique to humans, and as a scientist I shouldn't have empathy with my subjects.    But fortunately I had a great teacher when I was young who taught me that all the learned professors were totally, totally wrong - and that was my dog, Rusty.  He was a mutt, he was just amazing, and, you know dogs are my favorite animals.  But we now know (and it's a very exciting time for young people wanting to study animal behavior, you know) we now know the intelligence of chimpanzees and other apes, whales, elephants, as well as pigs, rats and octopuses."

Dr. Goodall's remarks certainly lay the groundwork for the acknowledgment of the intelligence of the little monkeys who escaped their captivity from a lab testing facility in South Carolina last week.  Many of them are still free and now there is even some discussion of their potential legal rights as escaped wildlife.  (For a look into that subject please see:  "43 lab monkeys escaped in South Carolina. They have a legal claim to freedom."  by Angela Fernandez and Justin Marceau in the current online issue of Vox Magazine.)

When an "animal" shows clear signs of being smarter than the guy who lives down the road, it feels immoral to condemn it to captivity or slaughter.

Perhaps I have now exhausted this topic, or maybe it has exhausted me.   We'll just have to wait and see.