I just read this interesting article on NPR about how dogs do pay attention to the meaning of words.
“…the findings show something surprising: “That dogs are able to differentiate between meaningful and meaningless sound sequences.”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/11/28/367092004/how-dogs-understand-what-we-say
Hi everyone! This link came up on my facebook news feed and I thought that people might find it interesting. A college senior in New Jersey was killed by a bear while hiking. Apparently, this is the first fatal bear attack in the state since 1852! This article reminded me a lot of Treadwell’s death because the person involved willingly went into an area that is known to be filled with bears. Also, authorities immediately killed the bear that they believe is responsible for the boy’s death. Although the article states that the authorities are unsure about what caused this bear attack, it is certainly possible that the bear was provoked. According to other sources, the boy had several pictures of the bear on his camera. This means that he did not immediately take action to get away from the bear, so it is possible that the bear felt threatened by the humans. I was wondering what other people think about the decision by the authorities to immediately kill the bear?
P.S. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!
By a vote of 52 to 13 in the state assembly, and 32 to 1 in the senate, New Jersey legislators last month passed a bill to ban a particular form of cruelty to pigs in factory farms, extending the smallest of mercies to the humblest of creatures. Senate Bill 998 prohibits “the confinement, in an enclosure, of any sow during gestation in a manner that prevents the sow from turning around freely, lying down, standing up, or fully extending the limbs of the animal.” Shall a pregnant pig be granted space enough to stretch her legs and turn around? The question awaits deliberations in the governor’s office, where, as The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf writes, “a moral dilemma is unfolding.”
If Governor Chris Christie signs this bill into law, he has been warned, it won’t be taken well in Iowa. Read more…
Video recorded by Drew Hamilton of the Alaska department of Fish and Game. Having watched Grizzly Man, what are you thoughts about the interaction in this video?
This morning I came across an article on a comedy site I like to read that seemed relevant to the course, so I decided to share it here. One of the major elements of the course has been the (mis)interpretation of animal behaviors by humans, and this article addresses some of the ways we misinterpret the behaviors of our canine companions. While it’s a comedy article, it’s grounded in real scientific study and has some very relevant points about human-animal interactions. The fact that it’s presented in a comedic fashion doesn’t hurt either.
*Potentially offensive language warning, there are some obscenities used in the article although none are particularly pointed
Just thought I’d share a picture of Martha’s memorial still in Cincinnati’s Zoo. I highly doubt Martha looked nearly this happy.
With the discussion of de-extinction of the passenger pigeon, I thought this was an interesting and related video of how the reincorporation of a species can change the environment around it in such drastic ways. By reincorporating the passenger pigeon into nature, many different considerations have to be taken on how the integration of this animal into the wild will affect the environment and social construction (such as the food chain and habitat location) of nature. The passenger pigeon could force other animals out of the niches they currently hold, which could cause either a positive or negative affect on the environment (such as the incorporation of invasive species). It is a very interesting topic to consider.
The video I chose depicts a group of children at Yellowstone National Park approaching far too close to a wild bison bull with the encouragement of an adult filming the events (hereafter referred to as “Moron”), and then running for their lives when the bison – entirely predictably – charges them. This human-animal interaction illustrates the dangers of substituting voyeuristic thrill for respect for an animal.
The very first thing we hear in the video is Moron assuring the children that “he’s friendly” (B Loy). Rather than shepherding the children away from the beast that has greater strength and weight than all of them combined, Moron just stands back and films the children as they approach the bison while repeatedly exclaiming “oh my gosh” (B Loy).
As the children approach, the bison turns to face them and begins shaking its head and hind quarters about while snorting loudly: classic warning signs that it is preparing to charge. Moron even notices these “gestures,” (B Loy), although he doesn’t take any action to mitigate the considerable danger facing the children; whether this is because he didn’t realize what the gestures meant or because he was simply too empty-headed to act is unclear but given what we’ve seen of him so far, either is possible. The bison then moves to block the path it saw the children taking; because it stands its ground as the humans approach and even moves to block their path, this is clearly territorial behavior and not self-preservation instincts.
Which is bad.
As the children continue advancing, the bison’s warning gestures become more pronounced and it lowers its head – this bull is going to charge whatever draws its attention next. The two children who had managed to get past the bison are saved from almost certain death by a man who quickly hops onto the wooden footpath on the other side of the bison, the sudden motion causing it to charge. The main group of tourists flees away from the bison’s territory, but one child breaks from the group and runs parallel to the border; the animal singles this child out and pursues him, quickly closing the distance until the child turns and sprints away from the bison’s territory with less than a yard between him and the animal, at which point the bison, satisfied that it has made its point, abandons the chase (B Loy).
It is by sheer luck that nobody was killed in this incident; it’s hardly uncommon to hear about tourists gored or trampled by bison, almost universally killing the tourist. The worst part about this kind of thing is that it’s a 100% completely avoidable situation; even a modicum of common sense would have defused the situation before it escalated to the point that it did. It was by sheer luck that nobody was killed, and if it were to happen again fatalities would be almost guaranteed. It’s truly infuriating that nobody had that little bit of common sense not to approach Nature’s Rage-Filled Battering Ram.
Well, we’re calling the camera guy Moron for a reason.
Since I grew up on a farm that counted several heads of bison among its livestock (the bison were there before we were), I’m more familiar with the temperament and physical capabilities of bison than your average person idiot dad on vacation. This is why I find it simply infuriating seeing things like this charge happen. Not only does this sort of behavior jeopardize the safety of the tourists but it also epitomizes the marginalization of both the animal itself as it is reduced to a check box on the family’s vacation summary as well as its “wild-ness” as the people in the video treat it like it is a tourist attraction there solely for their amusement.
Bison are not animals to be trifled with; they can weigh to 2,000 pounds (read: a lot bigger than a person), run at up to 30 miles per hour (read: a lot faster than a person), jump up to six feet vertically (read: a lot higher than a person), and their heads sport two long, sharp horns sprouting from a bone plate in the skull that they can use to smash through a reinforced fence (read: a bison will ruin your day). Furthermore, bison are typically ill-tempered and remarkably unintelligent animals with highly aggressive and territorial dispositions, and will not hesitate to use the aforementioned physical abilities to run down and kill anything that threatens it or intrudes on their turf. As seen in the video, that includes tourists small children with questionable adult supervision. Long story short, despite being herbivores a bison can and will mess you up if you don’t treat it with caution and respect.
The group’s close approach to the bison also encroaches on its “wild-ness” as an animal and reduces it to a sideshow stop on Yuppie Dad’s Great Yellowstone Vacation Plan (patent pending). The father displays several behaviors that Malamud condemns, such as engaging in the voyeuristic thrill of watching the bison from a, at least in theory, superior vantage point of greater power (Malamud 221). While he (thankfully) doesn’t take it as far as the physical self-stimulation Nimier witnessed (qtd. in Malamud 220), Moron does take part in the all-too-common metaphorically masturbatory exercise of wrapping oneself in warm, fuzzy feelings of superiority while sipping on a hot mug of smugness and looking at the “inferior” animals of the wild. In the eyes of the tourists in the video, the bison was not a living, breathing creature but a tourism draw like Old Faithful (note: at no point has a geyser ever tried to violently kill somebody).
By reducing the bison to nothing more than a spectacle to provide fleeting amusement on vacation, the animal that was once revered as a sacred creature by the Plains Indians is marginalized until it is nothing more than a silhouette on the souvenir T-shirt your 15-year old son wears to let all his friends know about his awesome summer vacation. The bison has been marginalized to something that is only good to look at for a few minutes by the side of a road; the animal that once owned the Great Plains has been reduced to Yellowstone National Park’s Bison™, merely a mascot for a tract of land in Wyoming and Montana – or for a certain clearly inferior liberal arts college that shall remain nameless (looking at you, Chris). In the popular opinion, bison are simply objects for humans to look at in mild-to-moderate wonder; few people particularly care if the bison is looking back. Berger identified this imbalance in Why Look at Animals?: “animals are always the observed. The fact that they can observe us has lost all significance” (Berger 16). Humans are too wrapped up in looking at the bison from the windows of their Winnebagos to bother wondering if the bison is looking back, and what it might think of them.
By forgetting that bison are more than source material for screen-printed images on T-shirts, they marginalize the animal until they also forget the sheer strength and lethality it carries. This marginalization is the result of the reduction of the bison to a mascot or a tourist attraction, and stems from Man’s tendency to look down on animals who do not resemble himself. However, the human perception of the bison, no matter how erroneous, cannot change simple facts such as this:
Those kids are damn lucky.
Works Cited:
B Loy. “Angry bison charges small child at Yellowstone in scary video.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 5 Sep. 2012. Web. 9 Nov. 2014.
Berger, John. Why Look at Animals?. New York: Vintage International. 1977. Print.
Malamud, Randy. “Zoo Spectatorship.” The Animals Reader. Ed. Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald. New York: Oxford Press. Print.
If there is one relationship with animals I have always loved, it is that between man and falcon. The relationship is very stoic compared to some; one in which the man responsible for the falcon simply releases the bird and watches it soar around before ultimately laying waste to a small animal or bird. This is exactly what a falcon would do normally, just in this case it is brought to the hunting ground by a human being, follows some of his calls, and does not reap the full benefits of its kill.
The video I watched was exactly this relationship on screen. Several men go to a large field, one walks out with a falcon, removes its head cover and simply watches it do its thing. The camera man shows the hunter fitting himself with a orange hunting coat, an action which screams “things are getting serious.” The video is embellished by a very loud, intense choice of music. The camera angles and movements are also very dramatic, choosing to highlight scenes with lots of action and employ slow, daunting pans when there isn’t too much going on. There is this overwhelming sense of preparation for a big event, almost comically so, as we get ready to watch this beautiful bird go out and kill something. Low angles on the male hunter give him a sense of power and purpose in the shot, preparing us for this massive hunting escapade. And then, all at once, he releases the bird, and further the actions of the man are dramatized, switching between close ups on his face and wide shots of him moving around the ground and peering into the sky, watching his beautiful bird begin the hunt.
What’s funny to me about this video is that there is so much focus on the hunter, it’s easy to forget that the bird is doing literally all the hunting. Sure, there is some training that can be applied to a bird to make it do your bidding, and there are plenty of videos all over YouTube on the art of falconry (which are awesome and I recommend looking into them), but ultimately the experience that the hunter is getting from watching the bird hunt is a similar sort of voyeurism that Malamud talks about in his analysis of zoo spectatorship. To be so close to this magnificent bird while it hunts is simply to live vicariously through its actions, not to have any actual ownership of the kill. And I will admit, even though I understand that the fun comes in being so close and yet so far from death, I still enjoy the hell out of it. Watching a bird hunt is one of the most gorgeous and terrifying things I’ve ever seen. You can watch the falcon lock on to its target a little later on in the video, swooping in at a dazzling speed to overwhelm the helpless duck from above and send it sprawling to the earth. The raptor then swoops down to the site of the wounded duck and literally squeezes the life out of it with its razor sharp talons in an emphatic yet calm way. The duck’s death is cold and remorseless – just another bird broken by the hunting dominance of the peregrine falcon.
I’m being pretty bold in calling one’s observation of the hunt voyeuristic, especially given that Malamud himself is talking about more of a sick, masturbatory pleasure from watching animals do things in confined spaces. But I believe that in videos such as this in which a bird is being used for both intrinsic and instrumental purposes, there is a certain form of arousal, one that comes from witnessing a murder of some sort. We call a human killing a human murder, and we call a falcon killing a duck “awesome.” Is it so ridiculous to think that there is a vicarious pleasure to be had from watching a bird commit a crime against another bird that we could never commit against another human? I think videos like this are posted to satisfy the guilty pleasures of those who want to observe death from a comfortable distance, watching the subservient bird do the deadliest deed with no regrets. The falcon is an ice cold killer, and maybe that’s exactly what the hunter and the viewer wishes he could be for those four minutes.
© 2024 Representing Animals
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments