Chimpanzees and the Gangland Strategy

A recent article in the journal Nature looked at the question of whether groups of chimpanzees, who have been known to gang-up and kill each other, do this as a result of some adaptive strategies that cause them to “gain fitness benefits by increasing their access to resources” or is it the result of some “non-adaptive result of human impacts”. I was more struck by the fact that they gang-up in the first place. I know they live in tight knit family groups, but forming gangs for, as it turns out, personal gain – well, that hits a bit close to home, don’t you think?

Human beings take great comfort in being included in a group. It is, I suspect deep-seated in our nature, perhaps related to kinship groups and some instinctive genetic survival strategy. When we consider the number of ways we group ourselves, it is rather astonishing. We divide ourselves by race, by nationality, by state or province, and by city. We join churches, gangs, lodges, and associations. We love our own team and hate another, we judge people by their appearance alone, and we somehow decide that God favors our side against another. We divide ourselves to such an extent that we must pass laws to prevent us from discriminating against those who are not like us. We even show hatred toward other groups to the point of war and, in extreme cases, extermination. Think “ethnic cleansing”.

In most cases, we consider our group to be superior to all other groups, so it is not surprising that humans, as a species, can also act as a group. There are humans, and then there are living things that are not human – the animals.

According Merriam-Webster, a tribe is a large family or a group of people who have the same job or interest. We all belong to multiple tribes. For me there is, of course, my main tribe – my family. After family, there is this important tribe:          

And then there are all of these:

       

                                                     

Some tribes are not so good. When I was growing up, it was the Mafia Families that were rumored to spend the winters in our Florida cities. Then it was the street gangs that still plague us today. And next, maybe that is what we see emerging in the terrorists of the Middle East. If you refuse to join their gang, they will blow you up or cut your head off. Wow – not even chimpanzees do that to their enemies!

All Dogs Go to Heaven

My son, Ian, with Chelsea & Bexley

For those of us who love animals, our feelings for a dog that lives inside the house and shares our daily life is special. The connection is powerful. Now that our kids are grown, our dog Chelsea is like an only child. When she is not dragging things out of the garbage can or waking us up in the middle of the night barking at the deer that wander into our yard, she brings us endless comfort and enjoyment. We groaned when she caught a frog in our kitchen, scattering the contents of her food bowl in the process and chuckle every evening when she begins to follow me around the house, giving me the stink-eye until I take her leash off the peg by the door. And we will cry buckets of tears when, in the not too distant future, her life comes to an end. Author Roger Caras said, “Dogs are not our whole lives, but they make our lives whole”.

A recent article on the BBC.com asked Are Dolphins Cleverer than Dogs? Ask most people, according to the article, which of the two species is the most intelligent and the answer would most likely be Dolphins - with their sociability, communication skills, playfulness and ability to understand the complex commands of trainers. They are widely considered to be the second most intelligent of all animals after humans.

But, not so fast my friends. People who study canine behavior are concluding that there is far more going on in the mind of a dog than we previously thought. A dog can use pointing as well as eye-direction cues to locate objects in the distance. Even our nearest animal cousins the chimpanzees don’t look at something when we point to it.

We humans have a habit of judging intelligence by how animal responses compare to ours, but we are almost exclusively a visual species while dogs also live in a world of smells. Their understanding of objects in the world partly involves chemical trails that linger for hours or days. Dolphins are not only visual, but they also have an extra sense that allows them to see through some materials by penetrating them with sonar sound waves. Once subjective, human-centric value judgments are stripped out of the concept of intelligence, the article continues, it makes about as much sense to ask which animal is cleverer as it does to ask whether a hammer or a screwdriver is the better tool. The answer is – it depends on the task at hand.

For me, there is just something about having a dog in the room. I can feel her presence as I write this even though, as I glance her way, she is sound asleep. When I get up in the night, she is there in the dark. I can’t see her but I know she is watchful. When I get home from work she is at least as happy to see me as my wife – maybe more.

A couple of my Facebook friends recently mourned the death of beloved dogs, and I felt their pain. Earlier this year, my wife and I had to have one of our dogs euthanized because of incurable and painful arthritis. Bexley was a big, lovable, shaggy dog. Our friends at the kennel where we boarded Bexley from time to time called her “a clown in a dog’s suit”. I still miss her terribly. Living with her memory makes me appreciate Will Rogers’ comment that if there are no dogs in heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.

SeaWorld - Is it worthy of rescue?

I haven’t seen the movie Dolphin Tale but I am familiar with the Clearwater Marine Aquarium from my years working nearby at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo. According to a September 3^rd story in telegram.com, the Aquarium is building a new, 68 million dollar aquatic center in downtown Clearwater to accommodate the star of Dolphin Tale, a rescued dolphin named Winter with a prosthetic tail, and the star of the soon-to-be-released sequel, another dolphin calf named Hope.

This new aquatic facility will be remarkable because designers are saving nearly 100 million dollars by eliminating all entertainment facilities. The focus will be “rehabilitation and marine rescues, not entertainment” and, according to the article, they have videotaped celebrity endorsements to support their project.

This is in stark contrast to last month’s announcement by SeaWorld, who unveiled its plans to open a flashy, new orca environment in 2018. The naturalistic area will cover 1.5 acres and its 10 million gallon pool will be up to fifty feet deep and have an underwater current to provide exercise for the orcas. They are even taking the extraordinary steps of pledging 10 million dollars to research and establishing “an independent advisory committee” to oversee the orca program. All of this, and no celebrity endorsements. In fact, according to the LATimes.com, critics called this a desperate move, suggesting that “a bigger prison is still a prison”. As if to punctuate their predicament, SeaWorld stock is plummeting, their profits dwindling, and the State of California is considering legislation to outlaw the shows that are a staple of SeaWorld’s livelihood.

Such is the power of two movies featuring marine mammals, one an upbeat tale with a happy ending and the other a dark exposé that alleges mistreatment and worse. Even famed primatologist, Jane Goodall has been drawn into the fray. Her recent letter to the Vancouver Parks Board in opposition to the Vancouver Aquarium’s cetacean program suggests that the scientific community and society at large are having second thoughts about programs that keep “highly cognitive species like primates, elephants, and cetaceans in entertainment and research” settings.

There can be little doubt that public views are evolving and that, if zoos and aquariums are to survive, they must evolve as well. But when we talk about marine rescue and wildlife rehabilitation, SeaWorld Parks have been in the field for nearly fifty years. So to suggest that a small facility in Clearwater Florida is doing good work while SeaWorld is not seems a bit disingenuous. SeaWorld may have its questionable practices, but providing quality care for rescued wildlife shouldn’t be in the discussion. I wonder if anyone will stand up for SeaWorld. Maybe they are the ones that need to be rescued.

96 Elephants

I like to thumb through Fortune Magazine when it comes to my home every week because it makes me feel smart. I can pretend to understand articles about big business and high finance. My son studies finance at Valdosta State and he is in some financial honor society. The subscription is actually his.

Imagine my surprise when I was looking at one of the August issues and I saw something I knew a lot about – a full page photo of an elephant. It was on page 45, opposite an article on whether Tech CEO’s should take their companies public. The caption under the elephant read “Take Action Now”. I recognized this as the slogan of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s 96 Elephants Campaign, but what was it doing in a magazine about finance?

The 96 Elephants campaign is based on the appalling fact that 96 elephants are killed EVERY DAY in Africa. This works out to about 35,000 animals killed every year. At that rate, it won’t be long before they are extinct. Imagine the stir it would cause if someone found the last living woolly mammoth and had it on display at their farm. What would you pay to see it in person – to be near enough to touch it? People would be lined up for blocks. Scientists would clamor for genetic material. The government would likely seize the animal as a national treasure. Is that the fate that awaits modern-day elephants?

I hope my grandchildren don’t have to ask me what it was like to see a live elephant. Seeing them in video images won’t convey their size and majesty or transmit the smell and the chest-rattling power of their subsonic communication. Elephants are endangered not due to sport hunting or because of the bush- meat trade. They are endangered because their ivory tusks are a valuable commodity on the black market – valued by some estimates at $1,500 per pound. If you consider that a pair of tusks can easily weigh more than a hundred pounds, you can see the problem. That is a lot of money.

Elephants are endangered because of money, so I guess when you think about it, Fortune Magazine is a perfect place to advertise their plight. Perhaps someone will be inspired to write an article about the economics of elephant ivory trading on the illegal commodities market. As the population of animals continues to decline, I would think the value of their ivory will increase, which seems like simple supply and demand economics. And when elephants are finally extinct and the ivory can no longer be obtained, I wonder if the value of ivory will seem trivial compared to the value of seeing a live elephant.

The Toronto Zoo - A Grand Opening Remembered

When the Metro Toronto Zoo opened its 710 acre “zoogeographic” zoo on August 15^th, 1974 it was, I believe, ahead of its time. No other zoo took the zoogeographic theme (organized around groups of animals from the same parts of the world) to the level of the Toronto Zoo. Its huge continental areas of Indomalaya, Africa, the Americas, and Eurasia had sprawling, outdoor animal exhibits and each area had an indoor pavilion that was a combination zoo, aquarium, museum, and botanical garden. It would be another ten years before other zoos began to catch up, with the opening of large indoor facilities like the Bronx Zoo’s Jungle World.

I had been working there for nearly a year when the Toronto Zoo opened, and I have long been puzzled about why I have no recollection of the opening celebration. It was the day we had all been working toward and, yet, it is as though I was never there. Then, as I looked back on my diary and notes, it hit me. I was too busy working.

In the days leading up to the grand opening, I was a senior keeper in the Americas section of the zoo. This included an indoor pavilion, a large polar bear complex with underwater viewing, and a South America paddock. The pavilion was largely underground and it held the most diverse collection of animals a senior zookeeper could be expected to care for, including mammals (beavers, otters, cacomistle), birds (band-tailed pigeons, native song birds, waterfowl), reptiles (alligators, rattlesnakes), and fishes. In the days and weeks leading up to opening, and especially on opening day itself, we were frantically preparing exhibits and receiving animals.

The fish had been in their tanks for a month or so, but most of the animals we were receiving had been quarantined and stockpiled at barns and holding facilities all over the region. On July 17^th, we received 1.1 (1 male and 1 female) cacomistles from the Claremont barn and 4.2 armadillos from the south service building. On the 19^th, it was a Mississauga rattlesnake that was donated and four alligators from Toronto’s soon-to-close Riverdale Zoo. On the 23^rd, we received two band-tailed pigeons and on the 29^th, one opossum and three young alligators from Riverdale. On July 31^st, we received a large alligator from Riverdale, a jaguarondi from Claremont, three skunks, fourteen quail of three different species from Kirkham’s barn, two fox snakes, seven box turtles, and a diamond-backed terrapin. The next day, on August 1^st, we received a huge alligator, eighteen song birds, and an otter. We were scrambling to get animals introduced to their new accommodations and to each other. And when opening day came and went, our challenges continued with one day running into the next. It was, I am told, quite an event those forty years ago – and I was there. I just wish I had seen it!

Political Animals

Once again, a government body is deciding whether its local zoo or aquarium should be permitted to keep a species of animal. Last year, it was the Toronto City Council weighing in on the issue of elephants at the Toronto Zoo. The Council, made up of people with no particular expertise in the matter, voted to get out of the elephant business and send the Zoo’s three African elephants to a sanctuary in California.

More recently, two members of the U.S. House from California have proposed a federal study on the impact of captivity on large marine animals, while the California State Assembly was unable to decide on proposed a bill to end killer-whale shows and discontinue orca captivity in the State.

Now, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation is holding public hearings on the pros and cons of having captive cetaceans (whales) at the Vancouver Aquarium. The aquarium not only wants to continue keeping whales and dolphins, it also plans to invest $100 million dollars in facility upgrades. According to media reports, more than a hundred people have signed up to speak in what will no doubt be a series of emotionally charged public forums. No less an authority than Jane Goodall has already sent a letter to the Park Board in opposition to the Aquarium’s position. It is hard to argue with the opposition. Whales in the wild roam hundreds of square miles of open ocean. How can we possibly justify keeping them in swimming pools the size of an average suburban yard?

But, if we pass laws prohibiting the keeping of whales, what will happen to those animals that are rescued and cannot survive in the wild? Are we really saying they are better off dead as some zoo & aquarium critics say? And who will be making those decisions, zoo and aquarium professionals, animal rights activists who oppose zoos and aquariums altogether, or politicians who have no expertise whatsoever? Who are the real winners and losers in these public, political debates about animals in captivity? At some point, in all the heated rhetoric, you have to wonder if it is still about the animals.