What Are Animals Thinking? (Hint: More Than You Suspect)

Time Magazine ^ | August 25, 2014 | Jeffrey Kluger

[2ndDivisionVet]

The mind of an animal is a far richer, more complex thing than most people know — as a new TIME book reveals.

Let’s be honest, you’d probably rather die than wake up tomorrow morning and find out you’d turned into an animal. Dying, after all, is inevitable, and there’s even a certain dignity to it: Shakespeare did it, Einstein did it, Galileo and Washington and Twain all did it. And you, someone who was born a human and will live your life as a human, will end your life that way too.

But living that life as an animal — an insensate brute, incapable of reason, abstraction, perhaps even feeling? Unthinkable. Yes, yes, the animals don’t recognize the difference, and neither would you. If you’re a goat, you possess the knowledge of a goat, and that can’t be much. But there’s more to it than that.

Human beings have always had something of a bipolar relationship with the millions of other species with which we share the planet. We are fascinated by them, often dazzled by them. They can be magnificently beautiful, for one thing: the explosive color and frippery of a bird of paradise, the hallucinatory variety of the fish in a coral reef, the otherworldly markings and architecture of a giraffe. Even the plain or ugly animals — consider the naked, leathery grayness of the rhino or elephant — have a certain solidity and equipoise to them. And to see an animal at what appears to be play — the breaching dolphin, the swooping raptor — is to think that it might be fun to have a taste, a tiny taste, of their lives....

[Veto!]

You will love a Boa like you’d love a dog.

I'm so very touched with your informative post, especially this line, which brings tears to my eyes. People are so ratty to snakes. And they don't deserve it.

I live in an apartment, and the rules are "one dog or cat." Hoping my circumstances change, actually working toward changing my circumstances, please wish me luck.

[Veto!]

Lovely photo with friend Linda.:)

[Veto!]

Thanks for the info. I have a nearby shop that has lovely corn snakes…I like to visit them. One yellow corn snake pretty much carried on a body-language conversation with me one day. :) It was delightful. We gathered a crowd.

[Salamander]

I hope and pray things change for you.

I would think a landlord should be happy about a non-hairy, non-barking, non-chewing choice of pets.

I have to confess that I was quite surprised by the level of affection I have come to feel for my snakes.

Far from being “cold, instinctual beasts”, they all have different personalities and are *very* interactive and affectionate.

When my pup Halla passed away, hubby was too distraught to offer me any real comfort so I got Bob, my biggest Boa out and sat with him in the kitchen.

He started his usual wiggling and climbing until his tongue touched the tears on my face.

Then, he became very still and wrapped himself around my waist and gently squeezed me, laying his face against my cheek.

We just sat like that for a half hour or so.

I have no idea what was going on in his mind but somehow, he knew something was amiss and tried to comfort the only way he knew how.

I do know, for sure, that there’s more to them than people imagine.

:)

[Salamander]

She’s just crazy about Pinky and he, her.

As soon as I get there, she’ll take him and wander off for hours at a time, carrying him from one person to the next so he can enjoy himself.

She’s a great snake sitter.

;D