Blogger’s GPS: Pets With Whom We Live

Oliver has three guests for dinner – see story below. [1]

My Swedish correspondent, bbnewsab,  has encouraged me to relate some anecdotes about some of our furry family members.

To you who have not lived in the home of cats or dogs, you must first accept the concept of anthropocentricity.  “Beyond Words, (Safina) will have a profound impact on many readers, for it elevates our relationships with animals to a higher plane. When your dog looks at you adoringly, even though he or she cannot say it, you can be assured that love is being expressed as you can when hearing any human declaration of eternal devotion. Most of us already knew that but have withheld ourselves from a full surrender to its implications.”[2]

With gene mapping from genome studies of humans, dogs, and chimpanzees, all of our genetics are remarkably similar;

Our differences are quantitative; not qualitative!

When Zhai and colleagues took their canine sequences and compared them with the human genome, the team found that sequences for things such as the transport of neurotransmitters like serotonin, cholesterol processing, and cancer have been selected for in both humans and dogs.  After all, humans and dogs have shared the same living environment for many years.

In addition to sharing genes that deal with diet and behavior, dogs and humans also share diseases, including obesity, obsessive-compulsive disorder, epilepsy, and some cancers including breast cancer, wrote Ya-ping Zhang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Kunming (map), in an email. Jane Lee [3]

[1] Dinning with Oliver:  Oliver is a seven-year-old miniature dachshund, who has lived with Jessica and Evan virtually his entire life. He is a “social eater”.  He waits until both Jessica and Evan come home in the evening,  even when one is late. He has taken to bringing guests to his table. He initiated this on his own: He has several stuffed animal friends who live in a basket. Here he has carried three friends to his dish, in order to join him for dinner.

I. From: Laura Grace Weldon: Are You An Anthropocentrist?[4]

http://therogerspost.com/2015/05/05/are-you-an-anthropocentrist/ ‎

Koko, a western lowland gorilla, has been taught American Sign Language and, according to her trainer, understands about 1,000 signs along with nearly 2,000 words of spoken English. Sometimes, when there’s not a relevant sign, Koko invents her own signs. For example, she “compounded the sign for scratch with the sign for comb to mean, “brush” (scratch-comb).”

 

Darwin as a kitten, here,  bonding with the author. Now Darwin sits on the right side of my laptop supervising my writing.

 

Oliver enjoys sitting in his beach chair at the Ocean Shore.

II.  Robert Sapolsky: Professor, Neuroscience of Stanford. A Primate’s Memoir[5]

http://therogerspost.com/2015/09/23/primate-humankind/

Sapolsky enlightened us, showing how primates, (baboons),  have distinct personalities. Their social interactions and structures are very similar to humans.

“Its all right, he’s not hurting me.” Hall & Oats [Jessica & Evan]

III.  From: Carl Safina:.  In his new book, Beyond Words, marine conservationist Carl Safina chronicles animal behavior remarkably similar to humans. [6]

http://therogerspost.com/2015/09/30/animals-human/ ‎

Read the story of “Twenty-one” (The-leader-of-the-pack) “The best wolves are brilliant leaders that pursue lifelong strategies in order to lead their families to success. According to wolf watchers, the greatest wolf Yellowstone has ever known was Twenty-one (wolf researchers use numbers rather than names for individuals). He was big and brave, once taking on six attacking wolves and routing them all. He never lost a fight, but he was also magnanimous, for he never killed a vanquished enemy. And that made him as unusual among wolves as did his size and strength. He was born in the first litter of Yellowstone pups following the reintroduction of wolves in the park. Twenty-one’s big break came at age two and a half when he left his family and joined a pack whose alpha male had been shot just two days earlier. He adopted the dead wolf’s pups and helped to feed them.

A telling characteristic of Twenty-one was the way he loved to wrestle with the little ones and pretend to lose. The wolf expert Rick McIntyre said, “He’d just fall on his back with his paws in the air. And the triumphant-looking little one would be standing over him with his tail wagging.” “The ability to pretend, shows that [the dog] understands how [his] actions are perceived by others. It indicates high intelligence.” That many humans recognize this in dogs, but have failed to see it in wolves, speaks strongly of the need for Safina’s book. For dogs are wolves that came to live with us.”[2]

Oliver wearing his Lacoste tennis shirt; entertaining family friend, Tony

If you a laboring under the misconceptions that humans are a “higher” being than animals, get over it.  Our genomes are different by a few percentages.   Humans enjoy a far superior language skill with which we can more efficiently impose our will on other species. (Yuval Harari)  [6] Some of us Sapiens believe our furry friends are also people with a moderately different set of skills. As everyone knows, dogs, e.g., have olfactory abilities many times greater than ours. They have loyalties that are legendary. Homing skills of birds exceed our understanding. Elephants can remember 1000 different elephants and people.  Elephants bury their dead and revisit their graves.

George, reliable as Big Ben, waking the author up using his internal clock.

 

George went exploring and got a nose full of bike grease [Liz & Steven]

Addendum:

We had a cat who played the piano. He loved walking up and down the keyboard, repeatedly, making music in the middle of the night.

We had a cat who learned how to jump up and hang on door knobs, twisting ad opening the door.

I had a cat who admired himself in the mirror after he had been brushed,

Charles Clanton Rogers    If you Like this, feel free to Reblog or Share

References:

[1] Oliver has friends for dinner.

[2] The Amazing Inner Lives of Animals
Tim Flannery, NYTimes, OCTOBER 8, 2015 ISSUE

[3] Jane J. Lee, National Geographic
PUBLISHED MAY 14, 2013

[4] From Laura Grace Weldon: Are You An Anthropocentrist?

http://therogerspost.com/2015/05/05/are-you-an-anthropocentrist/ ‎

[5]  Robert Sapolsky:  Professor, Neuroscience of Standford.  A Primate’s Memoir

http://therogerspost.com/2015/09/23/primate-humankind/

[6] Carl Safina:. In his new book, Beyond Words, marine conservationist Carl Safina chronicles animal behavior remarkably similar to humans.

http://therogerspost.com/2015/09/30/animals-human/ ‎

[7] Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a book by Yuval Harari first published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011, and in English in 2014.