Some people prefer to read only specific kinds of books related to certain kinds of human and animal interactions. Perhaps only heady academic tomes. Or fiction, or only those involving dogs or cats and humans interacting with each other in specific ways. My tastes tend to be more eclectic. If I come across something that has an animal and a human in it, I’ll at least make an attempt to read it regardless of the genre. Because of this, when I first heard of Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating I knew I had to read it. Admittedly
Read more →In mid-August I was part of a group of journalists and bloggers invited to visit the Hills Pet Food facilities in Topeka and Emporia, Kansas. Unless some of the other members of the group have access to a wondrously effective Fountain of Youth, I was most likely the oldest person in the group as well as one of the two veterinarians in it. This plus my background in animal behavior and the bond comprise the lens through which I viewed and continue to view the experience. Get any group of ardent dog- and cat-lovers together and the subject of
Read more →When late summer in the northern hemisphere rolls around, do you find you feel restless and even out of sorts for no reason? Does your cat seem edgier and your dog more watchful and whiney? In the old days, if you mentioned this to a human medical or behavioral professional, he or she probably would have recommended that you spend some time at the seaside. Several weeks later you would return refreshed and all was well. Ah, those were the days! Today, some professionals will dismiss your comments as the result of an overactive imagination, while others will subject you
Read more →In a very small nutshell, back-engineering is the process of taking an object apart in order to learn how it was designed to do what it does. Increasingly scientists are taking this approach to substances and processes that occur in nature with the idea that the thousands of years of evolutionary tweaking that created them might yield better results than the human-engineered substitutes developed to accomplish the same or similar tasks. There’s a certain irony in this process because it often seems to occur after human attempts to reinvent nature’s various wheels sans this awareness fail for one reason
Read more →There’s an old saying in New England (and many other parts of the country and the world) that if you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute. In some ways, the same is true of behavior. If the behavior of another doesn’t appeal to us, chances are it will change shortly. Equally interesting is that if one sticks around long enough, chances are that what experts once touted will fall from grace and what they disparaged will gain a following. I was thinking about this one morning last month after I came across an excerpt from Anna Quinlan’s
Read more →YouTube has become a goldmine of data for those who study animal and human behavior. Even someone like me whose access to it is highly limited because of a dial-up connection can explore its offerings on occasion. Such was the case when I babysat one of my grandkids and could take advantage of her parents’ fiber-optic connection. Armed with that, I then could access a video clip my son had sent me about an incident involving a captive wild animal, a child, and the child’s parents. Because I’d noticed variations on this same theme when I visited the Boston
Read more →The title of this commentary serves as a good reminder that when speaking of behavior, context is everything. For example, this title on a commentary about mouse communication would carry a far different connotation than if it appeared on one about human-companion animal communication. If you think mice joyfully squeaking to other mice communicates the same message as humans joyfully squeaking to dogs and cats, this commentary is for you. I’m a big fan of animal communication and probably took more joy than most in the discovery that several animal species laugh and that mice sing. These behaviors fascinate
Read more →Over the years a lot has been written about how to integrate animals into a new household. But as our lifestyles and relationships with our companion animals become more complex, new elements keep getting added to the mix. As that occurs, the likelihood of there being some one-size-fits-all recipe for handling such situations gets smaller—and it wasn’t that great to begin with. It doesn’t surprise me that some animals have more problems making these transitions any more than it surprises me that some people do. Regardless of age or species, establishing and protecting the physical and mental territory remains
Read more →Wow! How’s that for a morose title for a dead-of-winter commentary? I could blame it on a fascinating article by Paul Tullis in the November-December 2011 Scientific American Mind entitled “The Death of Pre-School.” But all that article did was cause me to organize my thoughts regarding similar changes in young animal education/training that I’ve been pondering for years. Ironically as the amount of research into the positive physical, mental, and emotional benefits of play for young children and animals of all species has increased, there’s been increased pressure to impose structured training on kids and domestic animals at a younger
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The Gift of Self
If you consider yourself an avid animal-lover and your animals part of your family, at this time of year you probably receive catalogs devoted to all kinds of toys for pets. Either that or you automatically zero in on the pet section of catalogues or on-line sites that offer more general selection. And if you’re like me and have gone through this ritual for years as well as have heard tales about doing so from others, you know that toys that look like the perfect pet gift to us may may not impress the intended recipient. Sometimes expensive toys
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