QUOTATIONS

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals (Winston Churchill)

My goal in life is to be as great a person as my dog thinks I am.

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man. (Mark Twain)

Man's best friend eh? How many of your friends have you had neutered?

I find that seagulls opinion of me is greatly influenced by whether or not I have bread.

He's a great watchdog - so far he's watched the garage burn down and he's watched someone nick the lawnmower.

More quotes about Animals

BOOKS

Locusts are normally solitary, but when numbers reach a threshold, they start attacking other locusts from behind (best source of protein). So you get a swarm, following 2 basic rules - flee from the locust behind you, and try to eat the locust in front of you. (Simple Rules

We like to think that being kind to animals is one of the things that makes us British. But that is a recent development. Arthur MacGregor's fascinating and erudite survey of our treatment of animals, both wild and domesticated, from the Norman conquest to the early 20th century, yields not a single instance - or not one that I have spotted - of anyone being kind to an animal simply for the animal's sake. In the past our cruelties were extreme enough to draw the attention of foreign visitors, particularly the bear-baitings in Tudor Southwark, where the usual grand finale was the whipping of a blinded bear, advertised as 'a pleasant sport' by the management. Animal Encounters

While early American laws dismissed cats and dogs as worthless objects that didn't even warrant the meager legal status of property - they could be stolen or killed without repercussions - today's pets, he says, have become family in the eyes of the law. State legislatures have passed tough anticruelty acts, imposing fines and prison time on anyone who harms a cat or a dog, and judges have begun awarding damages for mental suffering and loss of companionship to the owners of slain pets, legal claims typically reserved for the wrongful death of a spouse or child. Citizen Canine

Dogs share 99.6% of the same DNA as wolves. That makes dogs closer to wolves than we are to chimps (with which we have about 96% of our DNA in common), but it does not mean that their brains work like those of wolves. Indeed, the outgoing affability of most dogs towards humans and other dogs is in sharp contrast to the mix of fear and aggression with which wolves react to animals from other packs. "Domestication has been a long and complex process," Mr Bradshaw writes. "Every dog alive today is a product of this transition. What was once another one of the wild social canids, the grey wolf, has been altered radically, to the point that it has become its own unique animal." If anything, dogs resemble juvenile rather than fully adult canids, a sort of arrested development which accounts for the way they remain dependent on their human owners throughout their lives. Dog Sense

Chicken sexing is a very well paid job, because male chickens are worthless and need to be culled before eat. But it is impossible to train someone by telling them what to look for. And you haven't got time to "look" because bird is so fragile that if you hold it with its bum open looking for the vital distinguishing marks for more than a couple of seconds, it's vent swells up so that it looks like a male whether it is or isn't. Moonwalking With Einstein

As humans turned from hunting to herding and farming they tamed other species - pigs, goats, sheep and cattle, probably in that order. This so-called 'agricultural revolution', between 12,000 and 9,000 years ago, changed human thought, so Fagan speculates. Animal-breeding, unlike hunting, switched the mind to the future, and to planning it. Farming also introduced the concepts of ownership and wealth, and the new idea that humans exist on a higher plane than other animals. The Intimate Bond

More Book Extracts about Domestic Animals

WILD ANIMALS

Only one creature has a hobby - bowerbirds are big and strong, so can easily chase away smaller birds from favourite fruit trees, and so have time on their hands, so have developed art as a hobby. Females will choose mate with best displays. So vandalism and theft common.

Iguanas masturbate - because they're small high chance of being pushed off any female they get lucky with. So masturbate to reduce time needed to climax. Also common in most primate species (monkey in early Russian spacecraft got one hand free - they were intending to use film of cabin for educational use, but the (very bored) monkey spent whole time playing with himself) Dr Tatiana's Sex Guide To All Creation

NZ is surrounded by lands with parrots - Australia, Indonesia, S Africa and S America - so no surprise that it has parrots too. But the NZ parrots, notably the kakapo, are completely different. Most parrots are big noisy birds with bright plumage, usually living in flocks, and of course, they fly. The kakapo shows us what the world would be like if the mammals never developed, and birds ruled. Ghosts of Gondwana

Reality shows like American Idol etc. These contestants humiliated themselves on national TV because when they were growing up always singing around the house, no thoughtful family member or caring friend ever had the kindness to say, in a gentle and loving voice, "You suck". They needed Simon Cowell's but instead they were surrounded by Paula Abdul's, trying to be nice, not wanting to hurt their feelings, and thus setting them up for failure. Because the cruel fact is that the world does not reward suckage, outside of Washington DC.

Take nature. If you are a wildebeest that happens to be bad at running fast, you will fail. You might have a sincere desire to run fast, and you might believe you can run fast, because when you're hanging out at the waterhole , other wildebeests are telling you what you want to hear: Sure dog! You run pretty fast! But when the cheetah shows up and the herd takes off, you will be a wildeburger. I'll Mature When I'm Dead

It is the height of anthropomorphic absurdity to project human values and behaviors onto other species - and then to judge them by their similarity to us: "It's like dressing elephants in tutus," he writes. Nor is Mr. Peterson so enamored of the natural world that he is blind to the very disturbing things that animals can do. Along with a lot of too-familiar accounts of sexy bonobos, empathetic elephants and cooperative hyenas, he offers less often heard tales of the ugly truths that reign in the animal world. These include brutal infanticide in lions and horrific violence and cannibalism among chimpanzees. In one famous case, observed by Jane Goodall, a chimpanzee named Passion repeatedly kidnapped the babies of other mothers and, with the help of her own children, consumed them. The Moral Lives of Animals

Of the 4000 species of mammals, no more than a few dozen form pair-bonds. Standard behaviour seems to be maintain a pair bond with a female, and help her raise offspring, but be ready and available for additional copulations as opportunity arises. The Myth of Monogamy

More Book Extracts about Wild Animals

OPINIONS - FORUMS AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Are animals conscious, Dog Evolution, Regenerating Limbs, Bird behaviour ....

Animals Letters

SHORT STORIES

Bruce McAllister's 'The Girl Who Loved Animals' (1988) tells the story of Lissy Tomer, a 20-year-old woman from a broken home who accepts a contract to become surrogate mother of a mountain gorilla fetus as part of a radical plan to increase the population of the endangered species. The story is narrated from the point of view of Jo, a social worker assigned to the case after Lissy's abusive boyfriend discovers the pregnancy and beats her; Jo struggles to understand what best represents Lissy's interests in this situation.

McAllister's story draws attention to issues germane to this scholarship. By contrasting Lissy with Jo's daughter, the story connects our consideration of the place of animals in modern life to critiques of technoculture that dismiss our fascination with the virtual as a flight from responsibility. That Lissy is an abused woman also points to a connection with the justification of violent abuse, which has at various times and places discursively linked the mistreatment of women, non-whites, and the working classes to the mistreatment of animals. The very fact that Lissy can become pregnant with the fetus of another species dramatizes the increasing permeability of the boundary between human and animal as well as the challenge such permeability presents to social and political structures.