Cambridge: Animals as Conscious as Humans

I'm about a month late to the show; summer is the season of the slowest transmission of academic information for reasons that are probably obvious, but:

"...the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates."

Link.

What else is there really to say but, "It's about damn time"?  This is less of a scientific breakthrough and more of a political one: the stuff brought up in this conference has been basic knowledge for quite a long time.  That's a good thing: it means that it's actually going to get around to public knowledge rather than get holed up in some journal somewhere that no layman will ever hear of let alone read - especially since Stephen Hawking attended the signing, and it was also featured on 60 Minutes.

So, it's a little early now, but what can we expect to get from this?  First of all, probably a slower rate of advancement in neuroscience and medicine in general.  This sounds like a bad thing, and it may be, but it will be as a result of more stringent regulations on animal testing.

Then again, it may also more strongly suggest that animal testing is more valid, meaning you will get the same level of advancement for fewer tests.  Wherever you go there are always people saying that you can't go off of just a few animal trials because animals aren't the same as humans.  This is obviously still true, but when it comes to psych and some areas of neurosci that don't explicitly involve the neocortex, we may start being able to get more for less.

Most importantly, we'll get public acknowledgment of the worth of animals as individuals.  It's unfortunate how many people you can come across today who don't believe animals really have thoughts and feelings; these tend to be people who either were never close at all to their pets or didn't have pets at all, in my experience, which is a growing percentage of the population with continued urbanization.

As I noted before, this conference is geared primarily as a social and philosophical change rather than a scientific one, so this, I think, is where we'll start to see the most change.  It will come slowly, and perhaps I'm jumping the gun just a little here, but I would hazard that the global and inevitably successful anti-anthrocentrist movement has already begun.  As it progresses, we'll see not only changes in the way people see animals, but the way we see the natural world at large: suddenly our non-human neighbors become far more important, and conservation becomes an issue.  Environmental decline could slow as a result.  Social things too, of course: with the acknowledgment of animal consciousness, animal intelligence is only a couple steps away, and with that the rights of zoophiles.

All this from one conference?  No.  But it's a start.  I like to be optimistic, because in my experience if you publicly assume that something is going to happen, people around you believe so as well and change their behaviour accordingly, so as far as I'm concerned this is just a big step towards all of these big transformations of society and academia.  Spread the word; save the world.

I don't know when my next post will be, but the moral of the story is that if you have some news or something otherwise fascinating for me to write about, I will drop everything to do so.  Good work, "lovingpegasister".

Man vs. Wild?

I just finished watching a program that contained a refuge for ex-domesticated 'wild' animals.  Three people were in an enclosure feeding the inhabitants.  The narrator was going on about how quickly these animals can move and how the individuals needed to be constantly aware of where each animal was and be prepared to react.

The enclosure was home to four bobcat kittens.  They were about the size of your housecat and with the temperament of your typical semi-domestic apprehensive kitty.

This annoyed me, hopefully for obvious reasons.  As far as I know, there has never even been a bobcat attack on a human being in the wild.  Even in captivity I've never heard of a bobcat trying to eat a person, and sure as hell never a kitten.  But here are these so-called professionals tip-toeing around these babies as though they were afraid of waking up fully grown lions.

The same people go on to say that the most tragic thing about the refuge is that all the animals were once kept as pets.  I can agree with this to some extent, but to me, it's equally tragic that you, dear hostess, seem so fond of drawing such stark lines: if it's wild, it must be wild, and it's therefore so much more dangerous than anything manmade.

That's when the real problem arises.  We have such a divide from nature, and these folks see themselves as naturalists when all they are actually doing is pushing our species further and further away from considering itself a part of the natural world, and therefore devaluing what we see as the natural world - or in this case, perpetuating fear of it.  No one considers that puppy and kitty are descendants of wolves and wildcats that were adopted thousands of years ago by loons like me.

The tragedy expressed should be that there are people in the world who think it's perfectly OK to keep a leopard in their basement, or a hippo in their backyard.  Unlike our nomadic ancestors, we do not always have the luxury of space and ready-made habitat for our wild animal companions.  According to this show host, I imagine, this marks an impossibility, but clearly it is not: some of us do in fact have large tracts of property where certain animals that require a lot of land can be kept.  Some of us have the inclination to devote great amounts of time and money to those animals.

We see examples of this in the media, and it's not even hard to meet such people online: those who give their animals a lot of space, care for them, and have a very happy and healthy critter who adores them.  Smartly, these individuals do not tend to call their animals "pets" and advise others that just because they are doing it doesn't mean any joe can fork over a couple thousand dollars and stick a wolf in his living room.

Does it remain a bad thing simply because, as this hostess put it, it is "unnatural"?  As prone as I am to falling back to it, we know that this is a logical fallacy, so let's examine it more closely.  The main issue seems to be that there are a lot of people out there who are complete imbeciles and either don't know or don't care to know how to take care of a non-domesticated animal.  They are the problem.  Suppose the individual in question does know and happily applies their knowledge.  The animal is as happy and healthy as their domesticated counterparts, and likely much more so than their wild counterparts: we know that, while many animals are not naturally social, just from experience that even they do much better when they do have some mode of socialization.  Speaking with someone who raises leopards, he said to me that it is actually better to have two rather than one for just this reason.  They will also be more healthy, since they have a regular source of food, hopefully still of exercise (again, this comes down to knowing how to care for the animal), and have someone to care for them if they fall ill.

So if anything, there is an upside to these few individuals existing who have the capacity, both in terms of property and finances and in knowledge, as well as in inclination, to care for non-domestic animals: the animals are safer, better cared for, and happy.  The humans... well, we get one of the few life-lines we have to the natural world: something that says hey, wait a minute, just because it hasn't been hacked together using opposable thumbs doesn't mean it is strange and dangerous and must be avoided at all costs.  There are things we can learn from them, things we can learn about them in order to not only gain a better understanding of the animal but also of ourselves: where we come from, and where we fit in.  There is so much ignorance out there: I have even met a veterinarian that believes most mammals do not have a clitoris, because clearly God made man and gave him sexual pleasure, but not to other animals - process of sexual differentiation from clitoris to penis be damned. (Don't ask how we got to that conversation; it's not what you think.) And now I have come across someone who runs an animal refuge who thinks bobcat kittens are highly dangerous.  Let's get off of our high horse, people, and out from under our bedsheets and strive instead for a little more understanding here, shall we?

Operation Outrage: Beastiality

[title sic]

So, what's going on?  Well, it seems Anonymous has turned their innocuous gaze towards the zoophilic community.  Now, for the sake of this article, we're going to ignore the fact that Anonymous has never done anything of note in its entire existence, and employs nothing but DDOS attacks, which if you didn't know is the most ham-fisted form of messing with a website there is.  It's not even hacking.  A while back they attempted to bring down all child pornographers on the Hidden Web, which turned out to be great to eat popcorn to.  We'll also ignore that it's not even a coherent organization and by definition anyone can by Anonymous.  Finally, we'll ignore that they'll likely bounce off this topic like a fox on a trampoline.

This supposed assault on zoo porn sites was brought to my attention by another zoophile, and they, and of course most others, were very quick to say that this is a problem and we all must be even more careful than before, or at least pointing out that this probably won't be a big deal and, again, Anonymous are about as effective as... well, I already used up my simile for the day, but you know what I mean.

I had a slightly different immediate reaction: while of course I didn't like the fact that yet another high-profile group is badmouthing zoosexuals, a few things made me think more positively about this.  And the first one doesn't even require Anon to do anything: the very first line, "We recently have come to realize that bestiality is a rising problem in the world right now. It is controversial and by god, a rising act." This means, if nothing else, that people are getting out there, not just on porn sites as those have existed for ages, but on forums and places that Anon "members" actually frequent and saying, "Look, here I am." That means you get reactions like this, but also some reactions by people who might be more inclined to use logic when approached with something new.

This is reinforced by the second thing: the poster of this Pastebin document did not use the word "zoophilia" or derivatives once.  They're also only attacking those sites where there is porn, which also happen to be the sites that are home to a ton of bestialists rather than zoophiles.  The only community site they are attacking is Beastforum which, in my opinion, could probably use an attack from someone more competent than Anon.

Given this, and also given the fact that they have a lot of sites that they plan on bringin' down - a lot more than I even knew existed - suggesting that at least some of their human spider-bots might themselves have a little more experience than they let on to their bestialist-hating buddies, I think this is far from the most disturbing news for zoophiles, and may even lead to some good things.  Even better things if Anonymous magically acquires talent.

I'm still on the fence: I could be wrong and they would target this blog if they thought it had porn on it, despite all of the things it says that would agree with their anti-animal abuse message, but you know what?  Just to stir the pot, I'm going to say that, Anon's history aside, they have my support here.  Go get 'em, guys.