グラハム ハンコック - スーパーナチュラル

  

  

Indeed, we are all earthlings upon this planet - human, monkey, dog, insect, plant or bacteria. Every life form upon this earth has been granted the opportunity of life by the divine forces that be, and equally deserves the opportunity to experience this gift.

Part 2 of Earthlings goes through the industry standards for the raising, handling and culling of animals in the food industry.

One of the lighter, nicer ways animals are used for food is through dairy cows, with milk, cheese and yoghurt being produced. Unfortunately when we get our cardboard cartons with images of smiley cows in fields, we forget the reality. Milking cows are kept chained to their stalls all day long, receiving no exercise. Pesticides and antibiotics are also used to increase their milk productivity. Eventually they collapse from exhaustion and die young.

The meat production industry is so massively multifaceted, and so odious, heinous, rapacious and disgusting that I don't want to write any further about it, but it is something you should know about if you are going to partake of meat in your diet. Again, for if you haven't yet watched, please do so here:
  

Sorry for the delay. Now I would like to bring to your attention an important documentary film, which I HIGHLY recommend you watch, and then pass on to everyone you know so they can watch it too.

The film is called Earthlings.

Here is the trailer:


The film is split into 5 parts, chronicling the day-to-day practices of some of the largest animal-dependent industries in the world.

The first part is about pets, and the hidden side of the industry that creates them.

Here is the whole film for you to watch:
  

Babies



Baby Gorillas  

For those who acknowledge it, the collective unconscious, or noosphere is something we think of as a very human characteristic, however there is documented evidence of its existence among monkeys.

The 100th monkey syndrome is a concept that has been popularised by Ken Keyes. Here is an excrept from his book, "The Hundredth Monkey"

The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.

An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.


Imo, the Japanese macaque who invented potato washing,
a trait that was easily picked up by the young but not older individuals. Image from: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v399/n6737/fig_tab/399635a0_ft.html

This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.

Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes -- the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.



THEN IT HAPPENED! By that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!

But notice: A most surprising thing observed by these scientists was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then jumped over the sea...Colonies of monkeys on other islands and the mainland troop of monkeys at Takasakiyama began washing their sweet potatoes. Thus, when a certain critical number achieves an awareness, this new awareness may be communicated from mind to mind.

This phenomenon is considered to be due to critical mass. When a limited number of people know something in a new way, it remains the conscious property of only those people. The Hundredth Monkey Syndrome hypothesises that there is a point at which if only one more person tunes in to a new awareness, a field of energy is strengthened so that new awareness is picked up by almost everyone.

More information about these findings can be read here  

In California there is a 35-year-old lowland gorilla called Koko (short for Hanabi-Ko, meaning "fireworks child" in Japanese), who has been taught at Stanford University to communicate with more than 1,000 signs based on American Sign Language, and understand approximately 2,000 words of spoken English.

Koko is not only able to use and understand the words taught to her, but has also been recorded inventing new signs to communicate novel thoughts. For example, nobody taught Koko the word for "ring", therefore to refer to it she combined the words "finger" and "bracelet", hence "finger-bracelet". Similarly, she invented "drink-fruit" (melon), "water-bird" (swan) and "animal-person" (gorilla).

Koko is one of the few non-humans known to keep pets of a different species. She has cared for several cats over the years, including a cat she named "All Ball". Koko cared for the kitten as if it were a baby gorilla. In December of that same year, All Ball escaped from Koko's cage and was hit and killed by a car. Later, upon learning that All Ball had gone, Koko communicated with her trainers using the sign language symbols for "cry" and "sad." It has been said that Koko cried for two days after the event.

Here is a video of Koko the Gorilla:



A Daily Mail article on that video can be found here. And Koko's official website can be found here

Other well-known signing apes include chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky and the orangutan, Chantek  

But it is not just the obvious big animals which display strong signs of problem solving and intelligence. For example, Octopuses clearly demonstrate high understanding and intelligence.

An octopus in a German zoo has learned to open jars of shrimps by copying staff - and is now showing off her skills to visitors. Five-month-old Frida opens the jars by pressing her body on the lid and grasping the sides with her eight tentacles. She unscrews the lid by repeatedly twisting her body.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2796607.stm  

Elephants are also known for play, mimicry, tool use, problem solving abilities and self awareness. There's a lot more information here and here for those who are interested.

Of course Elephants are not the only animals known for their high levels of intelligence.

Pigs can play video games.
A research team at Penn State University conducted an experiment to test pig intelligence by getting them to interact with a video game via the use of a joystick in their mouth. The outline of the experiment:

“We start with a very simple task,” Croney says. “The computer screen has a series of different icons, or shapes, on one side and a single shape on the other. First, we try to get the pig to move the single shape across the screen to touch the one that matches it. Once the pig accomplishes that, we move on to more complex tasks. Pigs are known to be smart animals, and we expect them to do more than recognize symbols. Our tests are similar to many used in child cognitive psychology. They’ll give us an idea of how advanced pigs are in mental development. Food is used as a reward to motivate the pigs to play the game. When the pigs correctly move the object on the screen, a bell rings, telling the pig that it’s about to get a reward. Then a treat drops through a tube right into the pig’s cup.”

http://aginfo.psu.edu/Psa/fw97/eye.html

It doesn't give the results here but apparently the pigs were not only able to relate the movement of a joystick to that of a cursor, but to aim for the correct target if it moved about, rather than just aiming for one side of the screen. There was another experiment that involved teaching pigs to understand names of objects and commands when combined ("jump over the ball", "pick up the stick", "jump over the stick", "sit by the doll" etc).

  

Elephant Death ritual:
Elephants are the only species other than humans and Neanderthals known to have a ritual around death. They show a keen interest in the bones of their own kind (even unrelated elephants that have died long ago). They are often seen gently investigating the bones with their trunks and feet, and remaining very quiet.

Here's a video by Nat Geo showing this behaviour.


There are many accounts of people witnessing the ritual elephants have around the recently deceased. One such account goes:
An entire family of a dead matriarch, including her young calf were all gently touching her body with their trunks and tried to lift her. The elephant herd were all rumbling loudly. The calf was observed to be weeping and made sounds that sounded like a scream but then the entire herd fell incredibly silent. They then began to throw leaves and dirt over the body and broke off tree branches to cover her. They spent the next 2 days quietly standing over her body. They sometimes had to leave to get water or food, but they would always return.



There are similar stories that have come up with elephants doing the same thing to human beings. One such story recorded is about an old Kenyan tribe woman who fell asleep under a tree after losing her way home. When she woke up, there was an elephant standing over her, gently touching her. She kept very still because she was very frightened. As other elephants arrived, they began to scream loudly and buried her under branches. She was found the next morning by the local herdsmen, unharmed.



One other notable story regarding elephant respect for the dead is told by George Adamson, who recalls that when he shot a Bull elephant from a herd that kept breaking into the Government gardens of Northern Kenya, he gave the elephant’s meat to local Turkana Tribesmen and then dragged the rest of the carcass half a mile away. That night, the other elephants found the body and took the shoulder blade and leg bone and returned the bones to the exact spot the elephant was killed.

More tomorrow...  

Following that stunning video of the elephant painting, here is a short series on Animal Intelligence.

Anyone who spends time with animals knows they are a lot more intelligent, full of character, charisma and emotion than we give them credit for.

Elephants are some of the most intelligent species among the life forms on our planet. Here are some example of their intelligent behaviour.



Society
Elephant societies are matriachal, with the matriarchs in charge of making decisions that ensure the family's safety, health and survival. Tapping into her years of wisdom and experience, she decides when and where to feed, when to move along, when to fight and how. Her influence is so great that if a matriarch is shot by poachers, the herd will likely remain by their fallen leader and be shot as well.




The older adult elephants are in charge of teaching social skills and acceptable behaviours to the younger elephants. However, humans have had a devastating influence on elephant society. As humans kill off vast numbers of elephants and encroach on their habitats, elephants grow increasingly anxious, disoriented and, at times, violent. Since older, larger animals are more likely to be targets for poachers because their tusks are largest-and these are also the members of the family with the most critical role-- killing these individuals damages entire family units for years. Due to poaching, the number of older matriarchs and female caregivers has drastically fallen, and some elephant groups contain no adult females whatsoever. The number of elder bulls, who play a significant role in keeping younger males in line, has also fallen. All of this damage within elephant societies leads to incidents of "elephant rage" or attacks on humans and their property. By understanding how killing one elephant reverberates through elephant society, humans may come to realize how great an effect they have on elephants, and on other humans.



More on elephant society here

And a New York Times article on the changes in elephant societies due to human influence here


More tomorrow...