As a farm kid I quickly learned that insects, birds, and animals were often as quirky and intelligent as some of our neighbors. If we could only understand their languages. Horses “neigh,” cows “moo,” geese “honk,” chickens “cluck,” pigs “squeal,” sheep “baahh,” bees “buzz,” and rabbits sort of “snicker.” Horses, cows, and pigs particularly have interesting personalities. As the youngest in the family, it was my job to go out to the pasture and convince the cows it was time for the evening milk. We had about 20 cows but only one was truly Lizzie Borden evil. I had to keep the location of trees in mind as I played round-up, because she would sometimes charge and drive me up a tree. If she succeeded, she seemed satisfied. Why? Maybe she was a feminist who hadn’t wanted to be dehorned. Maybe she wanted the bull to be more tender...

I have kept files on insects, birds, animals, and other life for many years. We still have not researched the intelligence of animals enough to begin to understand them. Some of them really know how to work us for their benefit. On real cold winter days in Alaska, ravens will perch on the top of parking lot and street lights and cover the light-sensitive device so the light will go on—and the bulb warms the fixture so they can enjoy the warmth. That ain’t “dumb.” German police have trained three vultures—aptly named Colombo, Miss Marple, and Sherlock—to find corpses. They say they are easier to train than cadaver dogs used in many countries. After all, vultures are full-time gourmet dead meat eaters. Why not use their skills?
Biologists say we actually have discovered only about ten percent of the animal and bug species on the earth. A couple of months ago, scientists in Sri Lanka discovered a huge, rather terrifying tarantula spider that eats snakes, birds, and mice. It has a leg span of eight inches and has a daffodil-yellow and gray belly. They found this one in a doctor’s office. And you should also know it is very quick and very venomous.

This “Drone” Doesn’t Fire Hellfire Missiles But Is More Deadly

Harvard researchers have determined that the pretty, glittery dragonfly may be the leading killer in the world, eating about 95 percent of its targets. New York Times reporter Natalie Angier described that effectiveness in her article “Nature’s Drone, Pretty And Deadly.” Male African lions roar and strut around like they’re really doing something to help their females hunt for food for the pride. Maybe if they stretched a muscle, the lionesses would kill more than 25 percent of the prey they chase. Natalie adds, “Great white sharks have 300 slashing teeth... and still nearly half their hunts fail.”

The dragonfly is a terrific, voracious predator because behind that pretty face and winged body rests a master circuit of 16 neurons connecting its brain to its flight control center. This allows a dragonfly, like one of our terrorist-hunting drones, to track a moving target and adjust its path as the trajectories of the hunter and hunted merge. Dragonflies capture their targets in mid-air, mash them into “digestible” globs, and have lunch on the fly. And I mean flies. A Harvard researchers once fed a dragonfly fly after fly. It ate 30 in a row and was still hungry. Natalie sums up the dragonfly’s ability: “The nervous system of a dragonfly displays an almost human capacity for selective attention, able to focus on a single prey as it flies amid a cloud of similarly fluttering insects [Think of a WW II ace fighter pilot in a dogfight!], just as a guest at a party can attend to a friend’s words while ignoring the background chatter.”

Why Do Elephants Entwine Trunks?

In a previous column I wrote about Asian elephant herds that took on the Indian rice farmers for a large share of the rice crop in the floodplains and islands of large rivers—and often won. Sometimes the farmers won by poisoning the rice wine the elephants learned to love when they were raiding villages. Nothing like a seven-ton elephant with a buzz on. The farmers even tapped into power lines and ran high-voltage electric lines in their fields and electrocuted a few elephants—until they caught on.

Then the farmers tried nonlethal electric fences. The elephants uprooted small trees and tossed them over the fence lines and broke the posts. The farmers gave up on fences after seeing elephants use their tusks to hold down the wires as their “teammates” ran over the wires. The elephants had learned that tusks do not conduct electricity. Indian elephants also have religion on their side. Elephants are representatives of the Hindu god Ganesha. Ganesha is an elephant-headed god who removes obstacles in the paths of believers and is also considered a bringer of good luck.

Stanford University animal behavioral scientists spent six years studying the matriarchal organization of African elephants. While females remain close to the “family” for much of their lives, males are generally “James Bond” types, wandering off into the boonies by themselves, looking for other males that have formed loose groups. Elephants have not been seen performing homosexual acts by researchers, but since there is strong male bonding taking place, one could assume that there are gay elephants as there are in 1,500 other species. Scientists in Namibia observed a group of a dozen males made up of young, adult, and senior bulls they called the “Boys Club.” The senior bulls were the leaders, enforcing a strict hierarchal line, even when the young bulls with their excessive hormones got a little rowdy.

Elephant Trunk And Trumpeting Talk

There are elephant listening projects going on for decades in African and Asian jungles and savannas. Whenever a “trumpet” is sounded, somebody turns on a “record” button to study it. Katy Payne of the Elephant Listening Project has been recording and studying elephant “language” for decades. The more she studies, the more complex is the context of the social cues within the language.

But the elephants also use complex visual movements and other signs. If two males entwine their trunks, it is a sign they like and trust each other. Elephants “trunk-wrestle” each other as humans arm-wrestle. It’s a playful test of strength. A young elephant will greet a senior by placing its trunk within the mouth of the elder. If a dominate elephant raises its head and caresses the top of another elephant, it is the action of a senior “tousling the hair” of a junior, a playful act. Elephants actually do not fight very much. Is it because herds are generally led by females? It is a matriarchal society, so a smart leader survives by wisdom, not strength. We could learn something from Dumbo.

By the way, when the chips are really down, when there is a drought and the herd has trouble finding water, a strict pecking order is maintained when they do find water. The eldest drink first and everyone else seems to know where they belong in the pecking-drinking order. Interesting. Is this survival of the smartest instead of the fittest?

One Of The Ways Animals Are Different Than Humans

If I remember history, there has never been a time in the last 200 years when war-loving humans were not killing members of other tribes and countries. And then when we ran out of evil tribes and other countries, we probably started to kill members of our own society. Animals, fish, and birds kill each other to survive in this, to use a phrase, dog-eat-dog world (Where did that expression come from?), but sometimes during natural disasters, strange “bed” fellows become best friends. I remember the lioness in Africa that adopted a goat instead of having it for lunch. She protected it with zeal. Friendly stories abound from the animal kingdom. The leopard and the cow in India that are inseparable. The elephant in Africa that pals around with a sheep. There is even a goldfish and a dog that have become fast friends, nuzzling the glass that separates them. After a terrible tsunami in Kenya, a baby hippo was mothered by a 130-year-old tortoise. They both needed a friend, so they played in a pond by the river, slept side by side, and seemed to communicate somehow. When a tiny kitten walked into the Sacred Monkey Forest in Bali, she immediately became the pet of a mature monkey. When park staff tried to rescue her, she ran back to the monkey for protection. For other “friendship” stories, click on Parade.com/animals.

We Say Too Much About Ourselves When We Mistreat And Demean Animals

The legislative explosion across the country of “Ag-Gag” bills and attempts to put “Right To Farm” amendments into state constitutions reveal more about us humans and our greed, lack of empathy, and vulture capitalism than how we should have “dominion” over the animal kingdom that feeds us. The term “factory farm” is an oxymoron. When one crams 10,000 cows, or 20,000 pigs, or 40,000 turkeys, or 80,000 chickens into huge concrete and steel buildings, that is not a farm. I know what a farm is. It’s a place where a human being has a high regard for the land and the animals that live on it.  

Jim Hightower, former ag commissioner of Texas, knows what an agricultural factory is: “Factory farms are not farms at all. They are corporate-run concentration camps for pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys and other food animals. Held in corporate confinement by soulless factory-farm profiteers in corporation suites, these creatures of nature are denied any contact with their natural world where they are locked in torturously tiny cages for the duration of their so-called ‘life’—which is nasty, brutish and short. All this merely so food giants like Tyson Foods, Smithfield, and Borden can grab fatter and quicker profits. Their abusive industrial system is so disgusting that America’s consumers would gag at the sight of it.” That’s why corporations bribe politicians to pass state “Ag-Gag” bills so that the press cannot blow piercing loud whistles about pregnant sows that can’t turn around in birthing cages, or chickens confined for life in a 6 inch by 8 inch cage. Or sick cows that are brought to the slaughter on a front-end loader. Would a real farmer do that?

Why do you think corporate market forces try to get state legislatures to pass “Right To Farm” legislation with this language: “No state law shall be enacted which abridges the right of farmers and ranchers to employ agricultural technology and modern livestock production and ranching practices, unless enacted by the state legislature.” Of course, “modern production techniques” is not defined in any law. Gee, would it have something to do with cage sizes, use of antibiotics, the grinding up of male chicks and turkeys, breeding for rapid growth instead of good taste, or how long a cow can stand on concrete? Are we approaching a time when all food will be as tasteless as a rock-hard Florida tomato?

Two Solutions: Pigeon Poop And Horse Burgers

As former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld famously said, “Stuff happens!” And it particularly happens to birds, animals, and humans. Now that beauty salons around the world are using a mixture of nightingale poop and rice bran for smooth skins at $180 a poop—oh, I mean pop—the nightingale will probably be extinct in a few years. Poop stinks. As a farm boy and father of seven, I can guarantee it. But when dried and finely ground, experts insist nightingale poop doesn’t. You betcha. Some entrepreneur should develop pigeon poop as a facial. In keeping with vulture capitalism, we should use pigeon poop as a beauty aid because we have millions of pigeons pooping over everything anyway—even on faces.

We also need to do something about a surplus of wild horses that are eating other animals out of house and home in the West. We can’t put all old horses in horse nursing homes. It’s too expensive. The only solution is to turn some of them into horse burgers. Horse meat is eaten by many cultures around the world. It might even start a good fad in this country. And can you imagine Ed the Talking Horse hawking Big Ed Burgers with fries on TV?