encourage biophilia

What about Whale rights? What about Snail rights? What about Seal rights? What about Eel rights?...What about Moose Rights? What about Goose Rights? What about Lark Rights? What about Shark rights?...What about Goat rights?...What about Frog rights?...What about?...What about?

Moondog (Louis Hardin) H’art Songs 1978

Sniffer dog Toby takes lead role in bumblebee conservation

In the long grass near the edge of a small loch, Toby the springer spaniel is hard at work. Harness on, head down, he zigzags through the undergrowth until something stops him in his tracks. He puts his nose to the ground, tail flicking frantically. Before him, hidden in the vegetation, is a remnant of a bumblebees’ nest.

time since I posted anything on this but an interesting article at the BBC site has just caught my eye.

Bees join hunt for serial killers

This “geographic profiling” works so well in bees, the scientists say future experiments on the animals could now be fed back to improve crime-solving.

piece in today’s Independent about the therapeutic benefits of animals: Heal, boy

I must say that I am very aware of people with their animal companions, it’s a beautiful thing I think.

I love hearing the birds sing in the Spring.

Research finds birdsong trigger

Scientists found cells near the pituitary gland release a hormone in the spring in readiness for mating.

The Roslin Institute near Edinburgh and Nagoya University in Japan

to read this story today — Dog, cat honored for saving masters. Back in March I posted a link to the story concerning Toby.

When Debbie Parkhurst choked on a piece of apple at her Maryland home, her dog jumped in, landing hard on her chest and forcing the morsel to pop out of her throat. When the Keesling family of Indiana was about to be overcome by carbon monoxide, their cat clawed at wife Cathy’s hair until she woke up and called for help.

has died.

From Les Ward’s appreciation in today’s Scotsman

For him, “it was simply intolerable that humans continued to live as a species permanently dependant on the massive suffering of other creatures.”

Sprigge’s History of Philosophy

That gloomy old Sage Schopenhauer
Said “there’s much more nettle than flower”
Nothing more he reviled
Than the person who smiled
And grieved not at the Cosmic Will’s power.

The idea of the animal as a soulless, if living, mechanism, went against the grain with country people. They gave the birds names like their own — Jackdaw, Tom Tit, Robin Redbreast, Jenny Wren, Willy Wagtail. They knew that dogs had different dispositions, that pigs had cunning, cows had their own slow kind of reason. They knew, too, that men could be as devious and cruel as foxes and quite as filthy as swine. In a different way, men and women of ‘sensibility’, who believed that true humanity rested less in reason than in an open emotional response to the world, from delight in a piece of music to sympathy with the poverty of a child, had no doubt that animals felt pain and could suffer. Quadrapeds [Bewick’s History of Quadrapeds] certainly took this stance.

American Flamingo (Greater Flamingo)

Although Audubon saw flamingos in the Florida Keys, he drew none while there. This print is based on a painting he did in London in 1838, from a specimen sent from Cuba.

This doesn’t really encourage biophilia in any way much, I’m just into beautiful illustrations at the moment.

Dead: Alex the parrot, who proved over a 34-year career he was no ‘bird brain?

“It’s devastating to lose an individual you’ve worked with pretty much every day for 30 years,” Pepperberg told the Boston Globe. “Someone was working with him eight to 12 hours every day of his life.”