Animals and the Afterlife (46 page)

When Koko’s cherished companion Michael succumbed to cardiovascular disease last year, the grieving 230 lb great ape clung to her dead friend’s blanket and signed: “sorry, cry.” Michael and Koko shared a unique bond. Their use of words to impart wit, empathy, ingenuity, and a vast range of human emotions has been the theme of Dr. Penny Patterson’s Project Koko since 1972.

Dr. Patterson teaches lowland gorillas American Sign Language. Koko uses over 1,000 words. As a three-year-old, she eagerly signed “you, me, cookie” or “hurry, drink.” By age six, she challenged authority with child-like gusto, referring to others as “you nut.” At ten, she vocalized basic sentences with an Auditory Language keyboard connected to a voice synthesizer.

Along with the rest of the country, Koko watched TV footage of [the World Trade Center destruction] and detected apprehension among her humans. Every time she heard a siren or low-flying plane, she grew anxious and signed “trouble.” … Koko and her new friend Ndume will soon occupy a more native environment in west Maui, Hawaii, where construction is underway for a gorilla preserve.

UNLIKELY IN LOVE

Perhaps unaware that felines generally ambush mice, seven-year-old female cat Auan lovingly licked the face of Jeena, a three-year-old male mouse. The unusual couple, who reside at a farmer’s house in a province near Bangkok, became media sweethearts after their guardian released photos of The Kiss. Auan became Jeena’s ally and angel after finding him three years ago—even shielding mouse from dog on a few occasions.

Meanwhile, in Fonfria de Alba, Spain, a disheartened mama dog adopted four piglets to offset the loss of a litter that died shortly after birth. “Linda” enthusiastically nursed the tiny piglets as if they were her own children.

RATS TO THE RESCUE?

Rats have a bad rap. Notorious for inhabiting sewers, cellars and trash cans, these vagabonds of the animal kingdom are seldom acknowledged for their loyalty and courage. Then there is Gerd, the companion rat of Birgit Steich’s son in Stuttgart, Germany. When armed burglars invaded the Steich’s home, the wee warrior waged a sneak attack from his bookcase stronghold, sinking all four feet and teeth into the face of one crook. Gerd then darted up the pant leg of the second man to land upon a tender portion of the thief’s anatomy. “The would-be burglars turned out to be suspects in a series of robberies and murders, but thanks to Gerd the hero rat, the Steich family were not among their victims,” Dorothy Hoffman writes in
Heroic Rats.

Fido, the Gumbley’s eight-month-old companion rat, saved his family from fire inside their Devon, England home. At 2
A.M
., the odor of smoke from an electric heater roused the sleeping rat. Fido fled his unlocked cage, but rather than scamper to safety the righteous rodent climbed a steep stairway to scratch out an SOS to his sleeping family. Fido’s urgent scratching awoke Megan, age nine, who alerted her family to the blazing carpet and furniture below. Thanks to Fido, everyone evacuated safely.

WISE DEER

A no-kill policy prevails within the bounds of Algonquin Park, a large animal reserve in Ontario, Canada. Every November, at the onset of deer hunting season, local deer migrate in significant numbers to the more secure confines of Algonquin Park. Wise deer.

IF ANIMALS COULD TALK

From
When Elephants Weep: The Emotional lives of Animals
by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy: “Our glorious uniqueness, many philosophers have claimed, lies in our ability to speak to one another. It thus came as a shock to learn that a simple African gray parrot not only ‘parroted’ human speech, but spoke, communicated—the words used meant something. When animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg turned to leave her parrot, Alex, in a veterinarian’s office for lung surgery, Alex called out, ‘Come here. I love you. I’m sorry. I want to go back.’ He thought he had done something bad and was being abandoned as punishment. Imagine what would happen if an animal addressed us on its imminent murder. If, in a slaughterhouse, a pig cried out: ‘Please don’t kill me.’ If, as a hunter looked into the eyes of a deer, it suddenly broke into speech: ‘I want to live, please don’t shoot, my children need me.’ Would the hunter pull the trigger? Or if a cat in a laboratory were to cry out: ‘Please, no more torture,’ would the scientist be able to continue? Such speech did not stop concentration camp inmates from being murdered during the Holocaust; there, humans, it was said, were lice and rats.”

KINSHIP CIRCLE MISSION STATEMENT:

Kinship Circle Letters For Animals, Articles & Literature is a 501c Nonprofit organization that hosts an international mail list and Website with the primary mission to generate letter campaigns to legislators, businesses and media that provoke social, political, and ethical reforms for all nonhuman animals. The Kinship Circle Website is an information clearinghouse with fact sheets, articles, photos, apparel, and sample letters to expose animal cruelty and promote compassionate choices. When animals are viewed as “things for human use,” and thus denied the primary protections humans enjoy, they are victims of speciesism, a discriminatory benchmark similar to race, religion, gender, sexual preference or age. Kinship Circle encourages those with a voice to bear witness, speak out, demand change, and act on behalf of the speechless who suffer in food, fashion, research, entertainment and other industries.

The previous article was reprinted with permission from Brenda Shoss. In addition to directing Kinship Circle, Ms. Shoss is also a journalist who currently writes a monthly column for
The Healthy Planet.
She is a contributing writer for
VegNews, AnimalsVoice Online, Family Safet y and Health Magazine,
and many other publications and Websites. Please visit the Kinship Circle Website:
www.KinshipCircle.org

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons.

They were not created for humans any more than black people were created for whites or women for men.

—A
LICE
W
ALKER

Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, etc., when playing together, like our own children.

—C
HARLES
D
ARWIN

D
O ANIMALS HAVE EMOTIONS
?
Of course they do
is the resounding response of those who share their lives with companion animals. While some scientists poke and prod lab animals, looking for evidence of emotion (how about
fear?
), those of us who have them in our homes already know the answers. Those who say otherwise have never seen it or felt it, or perhaps they’re running away from it out of their own guilt or fear. Fear that humans will somehow become less important if it is discovered that we’re not the only ones who
feel.
It is a common human trait to belittle others in an attempt to make ourselves appear more important. Perhaps it’s time we understand that the true path to greatness is not in putting others down, but in bringing them up; not in focusing upon their weaknesses, but in acknowledging their strengths.

Animals express themselves with myriad modes of communication. They are able to sense things that we cannot. Humans tend to think of our own verbal language as a superior method of communication, when in reality, it has its limits. In fact, even human communication experts tell us that nonverbal communication is much more powerful and significant than we realize. They are referring to body language. In reality, it goes beyond that.

Animals have a number of highly developed senses that humans cannot even relate to, including complexities of smell and hearing that go way beyond our own abilities. Animals are able to hear sounds that humans cannot hear. Rats, for example, communicate with many unique sounds (related to various experiences and emotions) that we cannot even detect with the naked ear, but that can be picked up when using an electronic device designed to enable us to hear these sounds. One such sound has been equated to laughter, clearly implying that animals feel and express emotions, a fact that those of us who share our lives with animals have known all along.

“Do they know their names?” people often ask, upon meeting my rat family for the first time.

“Of
course
they do,” I respond, “and they come when I call them.” I then call to a specific rat, who promptly comes running toward us just like an enthusiastic little dog. All of the rats in our family have very unique personalities (as do we all), even when they come from the
same
litter and have
identical
upbringings. Some are more outgoing and friendly; some are more athletic and playful; others are more serious and contemplative. This indicates that these are very individual souls who are not merely products of their environment, instincts, or genes.

Shortly before our beloved rat April died, I repeatedly observed as our other rat, Katey,
literally
hugged April, much as a human would hug another human to say, “I love you; I’m really going to miss you.” This wasn’t a random behavior. It was something Katey only did with rats she really loved. I had previously observed her doing the same with another rat, Cindy, whom she clearly admired and adored.

I have frequently witnessed similar gestures of love and admiration among other animals. For example, some of the rats at the Rat Refuge become inseparable, like best buddies, doing everything together and clearly preferring each other’s company over other rats. I’ve even observed what would best be described as “romances” between pairs of rats who bond for life. Very often these are rats who arrive with different companions (similar to “arranged marriages,” I suppose), but when given the freedom of an actual community, as I’ve tried to create with the Rat Refuge, they
choose
their partners much as we choose ours. Two of the current residents of the Refuge, Kelly and Donovan, are known as the “lovebirds” and have even set up their own “love nest,” separate from the others. Donovan originally arrived with a different rat companion, but as soon as he met Kelly, it was “love at first sight.”

One might argue that these pairings are based upon an instinct to reproduce. However, besides the fact that these rats are spayed/ neutered and no longer hormonally driven in that way, many of these pairings of buddies occur among rats of the same gender who simply enjoy each other’s company.

I have also observed behavior that would best be described as jealousy, anger, and myriad complex expressions of emotion that simply cannot be dismissed as instinct or anthropomorphism. One might argue that I’m merely projecting my own interpretations onto the behavior of the rats; however, the person making such an argument would likely be one who has either never observed rats at all, or who has only observed them under the completely artificial conditions of a small cage or aquarium.

Just as a human being wouldn’t be able to blossom fully if they spent their entire life in a small jail cell, so it goes for animals. I believe that one of the reasons I’m able to observe such complex and multifaceted personalities in the rats in my home is because they are living freely in an environment where they have space to truly blossom as individuals and make their
own
life decisions. And they are treated with respect rather than domination.

D
R
. C
HRISTIAAN
B
ARNARD
(1922–2001
)
, best known for performing the world’s first human heart transplant in 1967, had the following to say about his observations of a chimpanzee:

I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures.

I’ve witnessed countless acts of compassion and concern among the residents of the Rat Refuge. For example, whenever one of the rats in a bonded pair dies, the remaining rat goes into an obvious state of grief. Without exception, our little resident caretaker, Allison, immediately takes over, snuggling with and doting over the grieving rat around the clock. She doesn’t leave their side until they have clearly healed their grief. Then, when another death occurs and another grieving rat is left behind, Allison once again steps in. I have observed this time and again. I have seen these same gestures of compassion directed toward
humans
as well.