Animal Conciousness

[TEC]

I was walking the perimeter of a field with my border collie. One unseen bird chirped in an unusual way that caught not only my attention, but my dog's. She headed into the tall grass and trees, and I called her back before she got too far separated. At that moment, I concluded that the bird had communicated something to Josie that she understood. She doesn't pay any attention to birds -- such animals as squirrels, deer and water fowl, yes, but not generic birds.

 

Recently I heard birds chirping in a chaotic manner. It was late evening, normally a quiet time in my back yard which is adjacent to several wild unimproved acres of Ponderosa Pine. At first light in the AM, it is normal for birds to sing in a melodic manner, but disorganized chirping in the evening was odd. I looked up to see the silhouette of a large owl swoop to land in a tree near my position. The owl was closely followed by numerous sparrow-like birds flying in a irregular manner. Everything was shadowy figures against the fading light in the sky. After resting, with the birds noisily hounding around it for a few minutes, Mr. Owl flew-on to another tree out of my sight. I estimated that half the small birds continued to follow the owl in a harassing manner, although a good many appeared to return the opposite direction to their perches. At the time my belief was that the birds were not happy about the presence of the owl, and were attempting to drive it away, and/or give-away its presence, making hunting almost impossible.

 

Do animals have consciousness, emotion, individual personality, and mental processes? Apparently mainstream science is only now starting to accept that animals have inner lives. This short Aeon article, based on Sandpipers, is a good review of the issues, and for me an enjoyable read :

 

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/nature-and-cosmos/the-science-of-animal-consciousness/

 

-- TEC

[juliepoudrier]

I think there's a lot about animals we don't know. As far as the birds harassing the owl, that's typical bird behavior--you can see smaller birds harassing larger predator type birds all the time. In the air, or flying above the predator bird, they are relatively safe from it. Whether the smaller birds communicate their intent among themselves or simply react instinctively is open to question. I know I can hear crows and know from the timbre of their cawing if they're chasing a hawk away, and yet I have watched smaller birds chase hawks and not heard a similar vocalization from them.

 

As for science, I think it's taken humans a very long time to get past (if we have gotten past) the egocentric aspects of sientific research to even start to try to understand the inner lives of animals. (I can say this as a scientist myself.) We have preconceived notions of what it means to be human vs. animal (that concept alone sets us apart and places bias, even though intellectually we know we are animals). As people let go of the idea that we are special or a species above, we may actually be able to learn more about the consciousness, deliberateness, etc. of other animals.

 

J.

[geonni banner]

I once lived in an apartment in Point Richmond, CA. with French-doors letting onto a patio overlooking the San Francisco bay. Around the patio was a wall made of cinder-blocks upon which I used to spread a little wild bird seed for the variety of songbirds the adjacent garden attracted. One of these birds was a scrub-jay. I never knew if the bird in question was a male or female. They all look alike to me.

 

One morning I was eating my breakfast, and the scrub-jay alighted before my French-doors and began to peck at one of the panes in a marked manner. He/she was also hollering his/her head off.

 

Thinking that some other enterprising bird had already made off with the sunflower seeds that the jay favored, I went out with a handful of parrot-mix (which the jay was always delighted with) and found a well-stocked wall top. I put the parrot mix along the wall and said to the jay, “There, are you satisfied, you spoilt brat?” and went indoors.

 

I was resuming my interrupted breakfast when the jay returned and renewed its assault on my ears and window. I briefly considered getting my 22lb Maine Coon Cat to saunter out and send this rude creature packing, but I began to wonder what the crazy bird was on about. So I went outside. The jay hopped about my feet, yelling frantically, so I said, “Ok, What!?”

 

Immediately the jay sprang up to the top of the garden gate and shrieked a few times, hopping back and forth along the top of the gate. Then it flew off into the garden, where I could now hear another jay “having a cow.”

 

The first jay returned to the top of the gate and stood there looking at me and squalling repeatedly.

 

I began to think of various Lassie episodes I had seen. I cocked my head and said, “What is it Lassie? Did Timmy fall in the well?” Again the bird flew into the garden and back, whereupon I went into the garden and followed the jay to the other side. The bird landed on the ground beside four baby jays. The other adult jay was flying around in circles diving back and forth over the babies – and with good reason. My roommate’s two female cats were circling around the nestlings with lashing tails and hungry looks.

 

The garden-hose sent them packing, but what to do about the chicks? They had no feathers except the very beginning of pin-feathers, and although I know it’s usually best to let babies alone, I felt that something must be done.

I called my Doberman Pinscher, Blaise and put her in a down-stay by the babies. This was to keep the cats from returning. Meanwhile I began peering about, looking for the jay’s nest. It took awhile, but I finally located it. I got a ladder, put it up the side of the tree and ascended, after first securing the babies in the tail of my t-shirt.

 

The first jay, the one that had “summoned” me, seemed fine with all this, but the other jay did its level best to scratch my eyes out and render me deaf. I ignored it as much as possible.

 

When I reached the nest, the problem was obvious. “My” jays clearly had not expected to have such a large family. The nest was barely big enough for two, let alone four.

 

Back down the ladder I went, and into the house followed by one screeching and one silent jay. I found a suitable bowl-shaped basket (about 7” across and 3” deep) and took it back outside. Grabbing a handful of long twist-ties and some nice, dry grass-clippings from the garden shed, I deposited first the clippings and then the babies within the basket and climbed back up the ladder.

 

Using the twist-ties, I wired the new nest in the place of (well, on top of, actually) the old nest and removed myself to the bottom of the ladder which I carried a few feet away and waited to see what would happen.

 

The first jay went immediately to the nest. It seemed satisfied with the arrangement and remained perched on the edge of the basket. The second jay had a few more choice words for me and then joined its partner.

 

The brood was raised with no more difficulty, and I thought I was done with the inept nest-building jays. But that was not the end of the story.

 

This sequence of events was repeated for the next two years.

 

Hysterical jay summons bemused breakfast-eater to rescue fallen baby jays, in two other locations. Next year it was a tree across the street, the following year it was in the yard next to the second spot. Both times the babies were surrounded by prowling felines, both years I used the same basket to re-home the fallen quartet.

 

It is interesting to note that although the “Lassie” jay’s partner never acquired its mate’s confidence in me, it at least stopped dive-bombing my head and it screeched with much less alarm when I appeared with my Doberman and my ladder.

 

I don’t know how they fared with their babies after that, because I moved to a different neighborhood. But I always wondered how they were getting on.

 

Does this sort of thing happen to other people?

[TEC]

Does this sort of thing happen to other people?

 

Nope, not me. You must have developed a bond with that Jay. She knew you could take care of the emergency, and your efforts went above and beyond to fix things for them -- hey, and more than once. That momma Jay, by all appearances, had an awareness of how to seek help and who to look to for it. -- Kind regards, TEC

[Gideon's girl]

I wish I had a link but I don't

 

There was a TV show about crows, so the research is out there. They captured a crow and a man wearing a distinctive mask harassed it then they turned it loose. The crow taught other crows to watch and alert on the masked man. Even the next generation of crows were taught to alert on him and the crows in the next crow neighborhood too. They definitely think, teach, and learn.

[mbc1963]

Cool, story, Geonni!

 

I definitely think animals have a consciousness and awareness. What amuses me is that humans imagine that we, of al animals, somehow sprung up possessing something that our ancestors back to infinity did not have. I'm sure the awareness is quite different - just as I'm sure my dog pities me my inability to smell the stories he smells as we walk - but I'm not sure ours is superior.

 

For a few years, we had a mallard who nested in the courtyard of my school, right outside my classroom. (We used to joke that she was taking advantage of our welfare state: we cleaned and refilled her pool every day, and fed her babies poulin grain twice a day until they were big enough to march out to the "real world.")

 

One year, there were twelve ducklings. I fed and counted them at 7 a.m.. Then, during my prep (around 10:00) there were only ten. I told the other staff, assuming that a hawk had swooped down and caught two of the babies. Very sad.

 

Except... the babies were in the pool area, and the mother duck was way out in the grass of the courtyard. She stayed out there, away from her brood, which she'd never done before. I thought, "Ugh. Her babies are dead out there, and she won't leave them." I got a couple plastic bags and went out, preparing to collect the bodies so the students wouldn't have to see them. But as I moved closer to Mama, I heard the distinct peeping of baby ducks. Turns out that two of the little ones had tumbled down into a storm drain. A quick call to the custodian, and the babies were scooped up into a bucket and reunited with their siblings.

 

Mary

[geonni banner]

I wish I had a link but I don't

 

There was a TV show about crows, so the research is out there. They captured a crow and a man wearing a distinctive mask harassed it then they turned it loose. The crow taught other crows to watch and alert on the masked man. Even the next generation of crows were taught to alert on him and the crows in the next crow neighborhood too. They definitely think, teach, and learn.

Here's a you tube page that has both parts of the video. The crow facial recognition part is in episode 2. The Show it's called "Super Smart Animals." It's a BBC One production.

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=super+smart+animals+episode+2&oq=super+smart+animals+episode+2&gs_l=youtube.12..0.2017.13881.0.21129.29.21.0.8.8.3.995.9738.1j2j4j3j3j4j4.21.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.9ISHJi7p30w

[alligande]

I love the stories about the birds. Having had close relationships with dogs I can not understand how people can not think animals have some type of consciousness.

[NorthfieldNick]

Most of the corvids (crows, jays, ravens) have been shown to pass down "culture" to their offspring. For a great deal of fascinating reading on ravens, especially, that is very accessible even to non-science minds, check out Mind of the Raven and Ravens in Winter by Bernd Henirich. Many of his other books also contain observations of the corvids. Be warned, though, you may find yourself seeking out more of his books- he's an absolutely fascinating naturalist and incredible writer.

 

While I believe animals have a far more conscious & cognitive understanding of the world than we give them credit for, "animal communication" with humans can often be explained by our own empathy. A person who was not an "animal person" would have shooed the noisy jay away, or ignored the duck. They probably wouldn't even have noticed a change in the duck's behaviour.

 

While part of what made domestication of certain species (like dogs) possible was humans' learning to read animal body language & behaviour, another part was animals learning to read ours. Wild animals survive by observing their surroundings, and altering their behaviours to suit. It is no stretch at all to think that wild animals observe our behaviour and how it affects them, and alter their decision-making processes to get the most benefits from our behaviours.

 

Inter-species communication in nature is also well-documented. Ravens, for example, who can not open a frozen carcass will raise a ruckus to attract a larger scavenger (wolves, bears, wolverines) to open the carcass so they can feed. Conversely, ravens will follow large predators so they can take advantage of the other animal's kills. Nearly all prey animals have a very well-developed ability to read their predators' body language. Many songbirds, especially in winter, travel in mixed flocks where they learn to "understand" each other's calls. Small mammals & birds on the American prairies who live in the vicinity of prairie dog towns learn the dogs' different calls for different predators & react accordingly.

 

Can you tell I have a degree in animal behaviour? I love this stuff, totally fascinating.

[juliepoudrier]

I'll second Ben's recommendation of Bernd Heinrich's books. Fascinating stuff.

 

J.