I saw this on PBS: a show about researching animal emotions, particularly gratitude.
Four chimps were in captivity at a psych lab for 13 years. For all of their lives, they lived inside, in four "rooms" surrounded by chicken wire. Their trainer, using hand-signs, told them that they would soon be moving to a new place (a giant, well-funded outdoor playground). They were shown this new habitat one evening (from behind glass), and stayed one last night in temporary cages.
With the daylight, the doors opened and with the trainers looking on, the chimps were free to emerge into the great outdoor compound. The trainers fully expected them to dash outside and begin playing.
Instead, they crept tentatively through the door, checking out the new digs. Gradually, they hooted and hollered with glee, but before enjoying the new environs with abandon, two of the chimps retreated to the glass behind them, and kissed their trainers before scampering off into the playground.
Wow. This is a reality show worth watching.
Quoteth:
"We patronize them [other animals] for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the sense we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of earth." -- Leah Krubitzer
"Except pitbulls." -- Captain
2 comments:
That reminds me of a documentary I saw about a gorilla who could sign. Her keeper came in after a miscarriage and a few days off. At first the gorilla was stand-offish--she resented the keeper's being away. Then the keeper signed "baby died" to her and the gorilla, who had lost a baby of her own, signed back "cry."
Yep, that's the same show
Post a Comment