Animal Souls

Our prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday was “soul/sole.” Linda said to use one, use both, use ’em any way you like and to Enjoy!

I’m reminded of that kid in high school English class who said, “Animals don’t have souls.”  I have no idea how it came up. Maybe animal souls were in a poem. But it still makes me angry. How the hell does he know?

I thought about this soul issue back then in high school. Being all into science at the time, I developed a theory that the power of the soul corresponds to the conscious awareness of the individual. Or maybe that was in college when I took the psychology of consciousness. Anyway, how do we measure conscious awareness? We can only judge by human standards, unless we can somehow step outside those standards – open up to the possibility that beings who’ve lived in a very different environment, like dolphins and whales, would likely have a very different way of perceiving, or being aware of their own consciousness.

Elephants grieve for their dead. They stand watch for days or longer. I believe elephants have big old souls.  There’s this video of an elephant saluting or waving (human/cultural perspectives) after one of the herd’s young was saved by some humans. I’m going to look for the video. Be right back! The video title is:

“Wild Elephant salutes the men who rescued their baby elephant from a ditch”

There are actually at least two salutes at the end of the video. It’s unmistakable. An expression of gratitude. The humans pushed dirt into the ditch for the baby to stand on and climb out. They’re trying to be careful. Notice the communication between species at the end. At the very least watch the last 2 minutes.

 

 

Quite a reunion! Makes me want to hoot and cheer and maybe get a little teary eyed. But then, I get teary eyed easily sometimes.

So does this mean elephants have souls? What difference does it make? But I believe that if humans have souls, elephants do, too. And dolphins, cats, and dogs. Anyone who doesn’t think dogs have souls can stay away from me to put it nicely.  I bet if we spent a lot of time with elephants, we’d all believe in their souls. I mostly know about dogs. When you look in a dog’s eyes and see them smile, and they sleep on your bed with you, you know they have souls. Crazy souls some of them. But maybe bigger souls than some people. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Except that it’s a good thing my soulmate loves dogs. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be my soulmate. And it’s a good thing for him I love dogs because this crazy soul hound is my step-daughter.

And then there’s trees….  But that’s another post.

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To learn more about Stream of Consciousness Saturday or join in the fun, visit Linda Hill at:

https://lindaghill.com/2019/03/15/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-16-19/

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing (typos can be fixed), and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. I will post the prompt here on my blog every Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The,’” or will simply be a single word to get you started.

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours. Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read all of them! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later or go to the previous week by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.

8. Have fun!

 

Animal Communication: Language Beyond Words

Today’s Stream of Consciousness prompt is, “language.”

The first thing I thought of was that animals have language though some snobs say they don’t. I didn’t mean to write snobs. But I wrote it right out of my stream of consciousness. (I don’t usually call names.) But I do love and respect animals.

In college, I wrote a research paper on the intelligence of dolphins and whales. There was plenty of research, even back then in the 1970’s, that suggested that dolphins and whales communicate in complex ways. This was based on their behavior. If you pay attention, you will see, hear, and sense things that you don’t notice when you don’t pay attention.  The songs of humpback whales are complex and change over time. Who’s to say that this is not language? Just because we don’t understand, just because it sounds different from human languages, doesn’t mean it’s not language.

Many animals have a keen sense and use of body language. They are more aware of it than we are as humans. My dogs have observed my body language very carefully. That’s probably the dominant way dogs communicate, but how do I know? They are probably way more complex than we realize. Who’s to say that a wolf’s howl is just a song? And song’s are language anyway.

In Jean Auel’s book series that started with The Clan of the Cave Bear, the human-like tribes thought the Neanderthal-like tribes were animals because they did not speak. But we learned from the main character, Ayla (who I named my daughter after because I fell in love with these books), that this was not true. They did have a very complex language based on subtle body movements. Ayla knew this because the people of the Clan adopted her (even though she was one of the others) and she learned their language. Even though some of the Clan people thought she was slow and stupid because she did not have the “memories,” she learned healing from the woman who adopted her.

So, language is relative. Language is complicated and beautiful. Like The Five Love Languages which I’m mentioning in my May newsletter. There is the language of love that we communicate with our eyes, the windows to our souls, with no words at all. Perhaps a language without words (as we know them) has the potential to be even more powerful than simple words. Considering that, it’s pretty amazing that we communicate as well as we do, here on WordPress and other blog spots. I’ve made some good and meaningful connections with this language of words. So I’m not knocking language as we are accustomed to it. I’m just saying, there’s a whole lot more to language than just human words.

This video excerpt starts with lots of surface action which I recommend watching in full screen. The singing begins just after two minutes.

(The photos are from Pinterest.)

Linda G. Hill is our host for the Saturday Stream of Consciousness. Visit her blog to follow more streams at:

https://lindaghill.com/2017/05/12/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-1317/

Here are the SoCS rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The’,” or simply a single word to get your started.

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours.  Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.

8. Have fun!

For the Dolphins of Japan

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated.”

(Mahatma Ghandi)

When I was in college, I wrote a research paper about dolphins. I learned that dolphins are more intelligent than dogs and cats, more intelligent than cows and pigs, maybe even more intelligent than the great apes.

I don’t eat any of these animals who feed their babies with milk from their bodies, like I fed my babies.

Dolphin culture is so different from ours. They don’t have hands so, they don’t build machines.  They don’t have technology.  Certainly not as we know it.

But they do have language and songs and love.

Young dolphins in Taiji, Japan are being captured and sold into slavery for “entertainment” after watching their family members being killed.

The Japanese fishermen say it is part of their culture to capture and kill the dolphins.

What about the culture of the dolphins?

It was once a shameful part of  American culture to capture and enslave people from Africa and other countries. We know that was horribly wrong. We know better now.

It is time for humanity to value kindness and life above profit. I pray through my anger that the people of Japan will stop this violence.

For more information:

The Intelligence of Dolphins:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH68iL5SL3g

http://www.seashepherd.org/cove-guardians/what-you-can-do.html