"Beauty of The Beasts."

[Shon Maxx]

Hi all,

I picked this book up at Barnes and Noble (my favorite place in the world) and started reading it (I left it at work so I can't remember who wrote it). The author talks about various accounts where animals have gone outside their normal habits to help/save either other animals or humans. Greats stories so far.

-A stray dog dashed into the street to push a toddler out of the way of an incoming car.
-A dog drowns saving 3 tourists who wandered too far into the ocean.
-A hippo saves a bird from 2 crocodiles.
-A dog gets shot several times saving its owner from a burgler...and keeps attacking!
-A gorilla at the zoo feeds a stray kitten pieces of bread until someone finds it.

What gets me is, the author also mentions several animals pyschologists who say the actions above are nothing more than instinct in the animal or something called 'kin protection.'

Okay, so a human bolts into the street and saves a child, and is called a hero. However, a dog does the same thing, but it's instinct. By the way, the author doesn't think it's instinct; she's just describing the devil's advocates.

What does everyone else think? Do you think animals have the ability to act with compassion or is it just instinct?



Thanks and take care,

Jay

[Trent Lawless]

I'm not sure what to think of stories like those. On one level I'd like to believe that animals can do these kinds of things out of a moral sense or whatever the animal equivalent would be. But the skeptic in me often wins out and says that there's a big tendency in humans to anthropomorphize animals and attribute human qualities to them that their brains just aren't complex enough to possess.

So my honest answer would have to be that no, I don't think animals have this kind of altruistic sense of heroism or whatever you want to call it, but I don't claim to know much if anything about it. I'd have to read more from both sides of the divide. I love my dogs, don't get me wrong, and they do have some things in common with humans. I don't know that heroism is one of them, though.

Interesting topic.