Subject: WSJ: research on animal consciousness, thinking, & emotion

From the *Wall Street Journal*:

"What Your Pet is Thinking"
by Sharon Begley, Wall Street Journal Science Reporter

From the day they brought her home, the D'Avellas' black-and-white mutt
loathed ringing phones. At the first trill, Jay Dee would bolt from the
room and howl until someone picked up. But within a few weeks, the
D'Avellas began missing calls: When the phone rang, their friends later
told them, someone would pick up and then the line would go dead.

One evening, Aida D'Avella solved the mystery. Sitting in the family
room of her Newark, N.J., home, Ms. D'Avella got up as the phone rang,
but the dog beat her to it. Jay Dee ran straight to the ringing phone,
lifted the receiver off the hook in her jaws, replaced it and returned
contentedly to her spot on the rug.

Just about every pet lover has a story about the astonishing
intelligence of his cat, dog, bird, ferret or chinchilla. Ethologists,
the scientists who study animal behavior, have amassed thousands of
studies showing that animals can count, understand cause and effect,
form abstractions, solve problems, use tools and even deceive.

But lately scientists have gone a step further: Researchers around the
world are providing tantalizing evidence that animals not only learn and
remember but that they may also have consciousness -- in other words,
they may be capable of thinking about their thoughts and knowing that
they know.

In the past few years, top journals have been publishing reports on
self-
awareness in dolphins and wild chimps whose different nut-cracking
"technologies" constitute unique cultures. Others argue that rats have a
sense of fun, mice show empathy for cage-mates and scrub jays are
capable of "mental time travel" that enables them to remember where they
stashed worms and seeds.

While researchers have yet to attain the field's holy grail -- proving
that animals are self-aware -- the findings already have broad
implications. For the 69 million U.S. households that own a pet, such
knowledge might lead owners to question their animal companions'
awareness of what they're fed, how they're housed and how often the
kitty litter is changed. All of that would be a boon for the pet
industry, which generates $38 billion in annual revenue, according to
the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, selling everything
from food and grooming services to pet exercise gear, hotels and
psychics.

Drug companies are already addressing animals' feelings. Some 15 million
dogs have taken Pfizer Inc.'s animal pain-reliever Remadyl. The
company's Anipryl targets "cognitive dysfunction syndrome" in dogs. (In
a dog, symptoms include failing to recognize people or respond to its
name and getting lost in the house.) Experts expect a steady stream of
drugs aimed at pets' minds instead of bodies.

The research is also coloring thinking about everything from science
labs to farms and food-production facilities. Having demolished concrete
cages in favor of naturalistic enclosures, many zoos are also offering
animals "environmental enrichment" designed to exercise their minds, and
housing them in social groups where they can express their emotions. The
nonprofit Great Ape Project, Seattle, is campaigning on behalf of the
primates for "life, liberty and protection against torture." And this
year a member of the Spanish parliament introduced a resolution to
protect great apes from "maltreatment, slavery, torture, death and
extinction." Federal animal-welfare acts have long required researchers
who use primates to take into account their "psychological well-being,"
but researchers say more institutions that use lab dogs, rabbits and
other small animals are voluntarily adopting the rules. "Without
question, these discoveries [on animal awareness] are having an effect,"
says Wayne
And if chimps and monkeys have hints of consciousness, do less-brainy
animals have it, too? Does that mean people shouldn't hunt them,
imprison them or eat them? Opponents of experimenting on animals say
creatures as low on the evolutionary ladder as rats and mice are capable
of suffering, even if they can't engage in self-reflection.

Some researchers say humans may be a bit too eager to attribute high-
level mental functioning to animals, and end up inferring mental states
that don't exist. Bonnie Beaver, professor of veterinary medicine at
Texas A&M University and former president of the American Veterinary
Medicine Association, says that when dogs act distressed in a boarding
kennel, they're showing unfamiliarity with the surroundings, not
resentment that their owner is vacationing in Bali. And if a dog looks
guilty over leaving a mess on the rug, it is being submissive, she says,
not showing a more complex emotion. "Most times," she says, "owners are
reading things that are not there."

Not too long ago, scientists scoffed at the idea that animals could have
consciousness. Philosophers haggle endlessly about the meaning of the
word, of course. But they generally agree that it isn't enough to solve
problems, learn or remember -- a semiconductor can do that -- but to be
aware of the contents of one's own mind. When it comes to animals, the
question "was thought of as impossible to answer with objective
observations," says Clive Wynne, an associate professor of psychology at
the University of Florida, Gainesville. Now he sees an increase in such
studies aimed at discovering what's going on inside animals' heads.

At the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Robert
Hampton, who has made some of the field's most significant findings,
studies whether rhesus monkeys know if they know something. In one
series of experiments, he gave the monkeys memory tests over a period of
weeks. After seeing four images on a monitor, the monkeys would be asked
to choose which one they had seen before. But before taking the test,
the monkeys had a choice of pressing one of two icons whose meaning they
already knew. One meant, "Yup, I'm ready to take the test." The other
meant, "No test for me, thanks." They had an incentive to take it only
if they remembered the target image: Failing the test brought them no
reward, passing it got them a handful of peanuts, and declining to take
the test got them monkey-chow pellets, which they don't like as much as
peanuts but are better than nothing.

When the monkeys chose to take the test, they passed more than 80% of
the time, apparently declining to take the test when their memory was
poor. When they weren't given a choice and Prof. Hampton gave them the
test anyway, they chose the correct image much less often. That suggests
they knew the contents of their memory and assessed it before deciding
whether to take the test -- a sign of self-reflective consciousness.
"The monkeys know whether they remember something," says Prof. Hampton,
who reported his latest monkey findings in May in the journal
Behavioural Processes.

A key ingredient of consciousness is having a sense of self, a feeling
that there's a "you" inside your brain. One sign of that is being able
to imagine yourself in a different time and place. Some scientists have
said that's why chimps in a forest pick up a stone so that they can
crack a nut that they left far away, and why New Caledonian crows make
hook-shaped devices to fish for bugs.

But maybe, skeptics say, chimps and crows learned that a rock, or hook,
equals lunch and just act reflexively. To try to rule this out,
scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in
Leipzig, Germany, taught orangutans and bonobos, considered the great
apes closest to humans, how to use tools to snare grapes that were
otherwise out of reach. Then they gave the animals a chance to take the
right tools into a "waiting room," where they were kept for times
ranging from five minutes to overnight, before being led back to the
room with the grapes. The clever move, of course, was to grab a tool
before going to the waiting room.

All 10 animals managed this at least sometimes, the researchers reported
in May in the journal Science. Because the animals had to plan so far
ahead, the scientists argue, the experiment showed an ability to
anticipate needs. "It's hard to argue that these animals do not have
consciousness," says primatologist Frans de Waal at Yerkes.

Dissenters argue that any behavior that meets a basic need such as
hunger shouldn't be ascribed to anything as lofty as consciousness. More
and more, however, scientists are observing what they call altruistic
behavior that has no evident purpose. Prof. de Waal once watched as a
bonobo picked up a starling. The bonobo carried it outside its enclosure
and set the bird on its feet. When it didn't fly away, the ape took it
to higher ground, carefully unfolded its wings and tossed it into the
air. Still having no luck, she stood guard over it and protected it from
a young bonobo that was nearby.

Since such behavior doesn't help the bonobo to survive, it's unlikely to
be genetically programmed, says Marc Bekoff, emeritus professor of
ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
If a person acted this way, "we would say this reflects planning,
thought and caring," he adds. "When you see behaviors that are too
flexible and variable to be preprogrammed, you have to consider whether
they are the result of true consciousness."

In June, scientists reported new insights about compassion in African
elephants. These animals often seem curious about the bodies of dead
elephants, but no one knew whether they felt compassion for the dying or
dead. A matriarch in the Samburu Reserve in northern Kenya, which
researchers had named Eleanor, collapsed in October 2003. Grace,
matriarch of a different family, walked over and used her tusks to lift
Eleanor onto her feet, according to Iain Douglas-Hamilton of Save the
Animals, Nairobi, and colleagues at the University of Oxford and the
University of California, Berkeley, reporting in the journal Applied
Animal Behaviour Science.

But Eleanor was too shaky to stand. Grace tried again, this time pushing
Eleanor to walk, but Eleanor again fell. Grace appeared "very stressed,"
called loudly and often, and kept nudging and pushing Eleanor. Although
she failed, Grace stayed with the dying elephant as night fell. Eleanor
died the next day.

Grace's interest in an unrelated animal can't be explained by her
genetic disposition to help a close relative, a behavior that's been
well established. The scientists instead argue that the elephant was
showing compassion. Mr. Douglas-Hamilton has also seen elephants guard
and help unrelated elephants who have been hit by tranquilizer darts to
let researchers tag the animals. Since standing by an animal that has
been shot puts the other animals in harm's way, it's hard to argue self-
interest.

Critics say that consciousness is in the eye of besotted observers, and
animals are no more than stimulus-response machines. Florida's Prof.
Wynne, for one, is skeptical that chimps know what they know. "To know
one's own mental states does not necessarily imply conscious awareness,"
he says. "You can be unconsciously aware of what you know." Game-show
contestants, for instance, sometimes press a buzzer to answer before
they consciously know the answer -- knowing unconsciously that they
know.

Anyone whose dog has ever run to the front door, leash in its mouth,
assumes that animals form intentions. But that might also reflect dumb
learning: the dog figured out that leash equals walk. A computer could
be rigged to learn the same cause-and-effect relationship. Some
scientists also see intentionality when beavers plug holes in their dam,
bowerbirds build baroque nests, ants cultivate fungus farms and plovers
feign injury to lure predators away from their hatchlings. But many
researchers give genes, not conscious intentions, the credit for these
clever behaviors.

As for emotions, the conventional view has long been that while animals
might seem to be sad, happy, curious or angry, these weren't true
emotions: The creature didn't know that it felt any of these things.
Daniel Povinelli of the University of Louisiana, who has done pioneering
studies of whether chimps understand that people and other chimps have
mental states, wonders whether chimps are aware of their emotions: "I
don't think there is persuasive evidence of that."

The trouble is that all sorts of animals -- from those in the African
bush to those in your living room -- keep acting as if they truly do
have emotions remarkably like humans'. Last month, Ya Ya, a panda in a
Chinese zoo, accidentally crushed her newborn to death. She seemed
inconsolable -- wailing and frantically searching for the tiny body. The
keeper said that when he called her name, she just looked up at him with
tear-filled eyes before lowering her head again. The conventional view
is that these were instinctive, reflexive reactions, and that Ya Ya
didn't know she was sad. As the evidence for animal consciousness piles
up, that view becomes harder to support.
 

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11/15/06 -- Gay Sheep Hold "Cure" For Homosexuality?
KINSHIP CIRCLE ACTION CAMPAIGN
http://www.KinshipCircle.org

SOURCE OF INFORMATION:
Out of the Closet: 'Gay Sheep' Experiments Exposed
http://stopanimaltests.com/f-gaysheep.asp?int=weekly_enews

Openly Gay Tennis Legend Martina Navratilova Slams 'Gay Sheep' Experiments
at Oregon State University
http://stopanimaltests.com/f-navratilova.asp?c=weekly_enews

Peta.org.UK
http://www.peta.org.uk/feat/feat-gaysheep.asp

Oregon State University
http://oregonstate.edu/leadership/president/

=====================================================
SAMPLE LETTER
Feel free to use portions of our letter, but please add some original
thoughts. Hundreds of identical letters may lessen the impact.
=====================================================

Dr. Edward Ray, President, Oregon State University
634 Kerr Administration Building
Corvallis, OR 97331-2128
ph: 541-737-4133; fax: 541-737-3033
email: pres.office@oregonstate.edu, ed.ray@oregonstate.edu
Elizabeth Grubb, executive secretary: elizabeth.grubb@oregonstate.edu

Joseph Robertson Jr., M.D., M.B.A., President-Elect
Oregon Health and Science University
3181 S.W. Sam Jackson Park Rd.
Portland, Oregon 97239-3098
fax: 503-725-5709; email: Robertjo@ohsu.edu

Dear Dr. Ray and Dr. Robertson:

I understand Oregon State University and Oregon Health & Science University
invest public tax dollars in experiments to modify the hormones of "gay
sheep" and influence their sexual preference.

OHSU experimenter Charles Roselli doses fetal sheep with drugs to mutate sex
hormones in their brains. He dissects the brains of rams considered
"male-oriented" to uncover the hormonal system responsible for homosexual
inclination and alter it. OSU's Frederick Stormshak implants estrogen
mechanisms into "gay sheep" in a similar attempt to render them
heterosexual.

In addition to wasting tax dollars on a study that assumes homosexuality is
"curable," these multimillion-dollar experiments are profoundly unscientific
and inhumane. I am appalled Oregon State validates them as a means to
produce prenatal therapy for diverse sexual orientations.

Please end this homophobic study in which animals needlessly suffer and die.
In general, science derived from lab-manipulated animals does not result in
predictive extrapolation to humans. According to the Journal of the American
Medical Association, 52% of animal-tested drugs are recalled or relabeled
due to serious adverse effects not detected prior to approval.
Animal-to-human inaccuracy is behind the rise in ADRs (adverse drug
reactions), the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.

I urge you to phase out animal experiments. Cost-effective non-animal
systems are rapidly replacing old-fashioned animal studies. Options range
from cell and tissue cultures, structure-activity relationship models,
genetic/protein analysis...to epidemiology, videos and mathematical
modeling, virtual organs and 3-D models, clinical research, human brain
mapping technologies, autopsy/biopsy studies, advanced MRI imaging, and a
multitude of other progressive tools.

The slaughter of sheep to "reverse" homosexuality in humans squanders tax
dollars. Moreover, medical professionals have denounced the experiments. Dr.
Malgosia Cegielski, a psychologist in Portland, labels them "frivolous" and
"frightening."

"I don't see any clinical utility or human benefit with what he's doing...
The gene expression and biological differences at a cellular level between
[nonhuman] animals and humans is so huge. To draw conclusions between animal
behavior [and] humans is a joke," Dr. Cegielski says.

Thank you in advance for making the responsible decision to discontinue "gay
sheep" experiments.


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(CHINESE DOG/CAT FUR VIDEO):
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=jcruel_china_dog

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Thousands of Dogs Brutally Slaughtered

IFAW Alert: Thousands of Dogs
Brutally Slaughtered

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=445004&in_page_id=1811

http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=furfarm&Player=wm

Dear Bent

It seems almost impossible to believe.

Imagine your dog being pulled from your home by local police and then beaten to death in front of you. There’s only one way to spare your beloved pet: kill your dog yourself (and receive 63 cents from the government!). A horrific choice.

Yet thousands of dog owners in China recently faced such a decision when a county in southwestern China killed as many as 50,000 dogs in a government-ordered campaign to stop the outbreak of rabies. And now it is about to happen again in the eastern city of Jining, the southern city of Futian and many more cities across China; putting hundreds of thousands of dogs at possible risk.

Please take action now to stop the next mass dog slaughter in China.

Sadly, this is not a unique event in a country without animal welfare laws. These types of dog killing campaigns spring up in China frequently, often in reaction to rabies control failures by local governments.

The cold-blooded massacre could have been avoided if the government focused on preventing the disease through vaccination and education. But dog population control in China rests with municipal governments, most of which have no management system to regulate dog ownership and disease prevention.

Many of these dogs died slow, agonizing deaths before the eyes of their owners who are helpless to protect them. Killing dogs that have rightful owners is also a violation of the basic rights of a citizen in China, whose Constitution calls for the protection of personal property, including companion animals.

Help IFAW prevent another dog tragedy before it’s too late

IFAW has successfully convinced some municipalities in China not to carry out mass dog killing campaigns in the past. China is very sensitive to international pressure on this issue. Please send a letter today to the Chinese Ambassador in your country urging China to immediately stop the inhumane dog culls.

Please also make a contribution to IFAW so that we may continue to push for animal welfare legislation to prevent the cruel treatment of animals in China and around the world. Only animal welfare legislation at the central government level can stop such a cruel event from taking place in China again. Let’s make it happen.

For the animals,
Fred O’Regan

P.S. Please forward this page to as many friends as possible. The more people who speak out against the outrageous and unnecessary dog culls in China, the greater the chance we have to stop it from ever happening again.

 

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STOP LIVE DOG BURNING TESTS IN CHINA

The horrific series of experiments in which dogs are being burned alive took place at the Third Military Medical University at Chongqing, China. The experiments appeared in the Chinese scientific journal: ŒZhonghua Shao Shang Za Zhi. NAVS and ADI have uncovered three experiments published since 1999 and believe the programme of research continues. The 3 experiments involved:-

37 dogs burned with napalm - The pain of napalm is so excruciating that people have died from the pain alone. The pain felt by the dogs would have been unbearable. The dogs were then kept alive with their agonizing burns for three days. 72hours of hell.

26 dogs were burned so severely that their brains swelled - In order to determine the value of scanning equipment in diagnosing brain swelling due to excess water (oedema) following burns, dogs were inflicted with third degree skin burns, over half of their bodies. Yet, scanning techniques such as MRI cause little or no suffering to people so it is difficult to understand why the information could not have been derived from studies of burns patients.

24 dogs were deliberately scalded and suffered steam inhalation injuries – 24 mongrel dogs were used in an experiment in which 40% of their total body surface area was deliberately scalded, giving them third degree burns, and they were left alive for up to two days. Some of the dogs died from shock within 36 hours.

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November 2008

China has emerged as one of the world’s most powerful economies but is still mistrusted and feared (as distinct from respected) because since emerging from behind the bamboo curtain, it’s government has done little to dispel its autocratic image and apparent disregard for human rights. Quite apart from human rights, decent people everywhere could never accept a society so depraved and bereft of common decency as to accept the skinning of live animals as acceptable behaviour.

It’s burgeoning economy has resulted from flooding the world with cheap consumer products produced by a cheap unregulated work force. A fact that is understandable, having regard to its enormous population and fantastic work ethic.

In turn, China has developed an insatiable appetite for raw product from other countries and governments keen to export to China are reluctant to criticise or offend the Chinese government.

Given this background, will your government impose economic sanctions against China or openly criticise the Chinese government or demand that it puts a stop to the Chinese cat and dog fur trade? Most unlikely. However, there will surely be individuals within governments, so incensed and horrified by the trade that they will support Our Cause.

The Chinese government is well aware of the economic power play behind the scenes. It also knows it has a long way to go earn acceptance from the free world.
And make no mistake, China absolutely craves acceptance as a world leader that is trusted and respected and there are emerging signs that it is prepared to adopt more acceptable and responsible policies to earn that acceptance.

It knows that if it behaves or permits behaviour that is abhorrent to people of the democratic world, it will not earn the trust or respect it craves. Its our duty to show China that it can take a single , but highly significant step towards overcoming the prejudice of the millions of free-thinking decent people, if it recognises animal rights and, in particular, abolishes the abhorrent trade in cat and dog fur.

Cat and dog pelts sell for about US$1 each and every year, 2,000,000 cats and dogs suffer a horrific death, skinned alive for the pelts.

For what?

1. An insignificant contribution towards the Chinese economy - a few million US$; and

2. A clear message to the world that so long as the Chinese government permits the trade, China is not fit to take its place as a leading nation and certainly not one that is entitled to any trust or respect.

The “adverse fallout” and abhorrence for the Chinese government resulting from the trade will far exceeds the paltry contribution it makes towards China’s economy. It is in China’s interest, to abolish the trade.

It’s our duty to tell the world about the trade and kick up such a stink that our message reverberates around the world.

Remember Tianamen Square. Let’s make this another Tianamen Square – this time, for the animals.

1. Make it illegal to slaughter cats, dogs and other animals by skinning them alive for their fur
2. Protect all animals against mistreatment and cruelty of any nature
3. Ban the export from China of cat and dog fur and any products containing cat or dog fur
4. Ban cat and dog fur from being used wholly or partly in the manufacture of products in China
5. Introduce severe penalties to enforce the legislation.

 

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I Kina maler de hunde som tigre.
Ikke nok med, at hunde i Kina skal finde sig i at blive spist. Kineserne maler dem også

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From the real China.

 

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