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Penguin Fantasy!
On the 9th Day, God made a Dog
Cosmo Talks: Animals are capable of emotional suffering by Betty Jean Craig
“It’s raining,” said Cosmo. She was right. The skies were dark, and rain was pounding the deck.
Cosmo is an 11-year-old African grey parrot who keeps me abreast of what’s happening around our house. She was perched atop her roost cage in our sunroom. I was reading.
Suddenly a tree limb hit the roof. THUD. “What’s that?” Cosmo asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. How could I explain to her the effect of storm winds on tree limbs?
My two dogs, Mary and Kaylee, started barking in the bedroom. So Cosmo descended from her perch, commenting “Doggies bark,” and hurried across the hall to see what was up.
“Hi,” Cosmo said to the dogs.
So cute, I thought. Cosmo thinks she’s important.
Then I realized how patronizing I was being. From Cosmo’s perspective, the house is hers as much as mine. The dogs are her friends as much as mine. She speaks with me in English not to be cute but to communicate. From her perspective, I’m part of her life, but I’m not in charge of her life.
Cosmo doesn’t know I’m supporting her. Or that I purchased her for my amusement. Or that she, like other domestically-raised parrots, was bred to be a pet for people who like talking birds.
I’m reminded of a lesson I got from one of my favorite books: “Ishmael,” by Daniel Quinn. The novel is narrated by a philosophically inclined student of a philosophically inclined gorilla named Ishmael. In the course of their dialogue, the student figures out that we civilized humans act as though the planet belongs to us. For more than 2,000 years, we have viewed all of nature as ours — to possess, exploit, use, consume, enjoy and, sometimes but not often enough, protect.
We’ve viewed ourselves as Earth’s only intelligent creatures, the only creatures with consciousness and the ability to suffer emotionally. So we humans dominated Earth’s other inhabitants. We thought that was our right, our destiny.
Enter YouTube in 2005. YouTube will forever change our ideas about nature, I’m convinced. Look at these videos of animals behaving like us. Or rather, as I’d prefer to describe them, videos of us animals — human and non-human — all behaving like each other.
One video, titled “Amazing Squirrel Fights Off Crows,” shows a very agitated squirrel trying to keep three crows from eating the remains of a fellow squirrel just killed by a car. Outnumbered by the hungry crows, the squirrel resorts to lying on top of her dead friend’s body to protect it.
Incidentally, when Cosmo watched that video with me, she focused on the crows. “That’s birdy,” she said. I had focused on the squirrels.
Another video, titled “bird mourning over friend,” shows a pigeon nervously staying right by the side of a dead pigeon lying in the street. The pigeon circles the body of his fallen friend again and again.
A third video, titled “60min clip4 elephant funeral,” shows several elephants frantically attempting to revive a dead infant, poking the baby elephant with their trunks and trying to get him back up. Once they realize their baby is dead, they file solemnly past the body in an apparent funeral procession.
When we watch such videos of animals interacting with each other we understand their behavior because of its similarity to ours. We hardly think about our differences.
I’ll bet that few YouTube watchers — adults and children — were surprised by the neuroscientists’ recent proclamation that human brains, other mammal brains, bird brains and even octopus brains show the physiological capacity for what we humans have called conscious behavior. To some extent, we’re all conscious and therefore all capable of emotional suffering.
Now that we know that mammals and birds, like us humans, mourn the death of their friends and family, develop emotional attachments to each other and, in ways we don’t yet understand, communicate with each other, shouldn’t we humans expand the community in which we do unto others as we would have others do unto us?
While I was writing this column, Cosmo climbed halfway up on the cage behind me, leaned over till she almost reached my chair and said, “Hi.”
I looked at her, said, “Hi,” and returned to writing.
Then she climbed down and hid behind the cage, so that I could see only her head, and said, “Hi.”
I answered, “Hi.”
Then she scurried under my computer desk, looked up at me from the floor, and said, “Hi.”
I finally realized that Cosmo wanted to play. I’m going to play with her now, because she plays with me when I want to play.
(Now watch “Two Dogs Dining.”)
• Betty Jean Craige is professor emerita of comparative literature at the University of Georgia and the author of many books, including “Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot” (2010). Her email address is bettyjean@cosmotalks.com. Cosmo’s website address is
Cosmo Talks: Every Parrot Needs a Problem
Craige: Every parrot needs a pen problem to solve
By Betty Jean Craige
Have you ever tried to get dressed with a parrot clinging to your wrist? It’s impossible! Or almost impossible.
First, if your parrot is on your left wrist, you have to hold your blouse with your left hand and put your right arm into the right sleeve. Then you have to switch the parrot from your left wrist to your right wrist and put your left arm into the left sleeve. Then you have to button your blouse with the parrot bobbing up and down as you use both hands to maneuver the buttons into the button holes. You try to keep your parrot from grabbing a button, or your necklace, with her beak.
My parrot is Cosmo, an African grey, who loves me so much she sometimes refuses to get off my wrist.
I also do the laundry and the dishes with Cosmo hanging on, and I open jars and bottles. Occasionally Cosmo chuckles.
I don’t. At least, not out loud.
You’re probably wondering why in the world I allow myself to be ruled by a 16-ounce bird.
This is why: Cosmo has extraordinary intelligence combined with the genes of free-flying ancestors. She still has a wild spirit — as do all birds, even caged birds — but she also has a human education, sort of. She has a great sense of humor, the ability to talk, an awareness of what I’m thinking and an infectious laugh. We love each other.
I want her to have a happy life, even if she’s stuck in a house with one human, two dogs and no companions of her own kind.
To compensate for the absence of the thrills she would have gotten in Africa’s rain forests, I give her as much intellectual excitement as I can. I watch animal shows on “television” — that is, the computer — with her. She is most fond of birdy webcams. I take her “in a car” to visit schools, churches and dinner clubs. Together, we give a course for my new favorite educational institution, OLLI, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
I let Cosmo wander freely around the house. After all, it’s her home, too. I let her explore the interior of my closets, cabinets and drawers. I let her eat off my plate. I let her ride around the house on my wrist.
Sometimes I wonder whether this is normal. But at the age of 66 I don’t worry much about what’s normal — or about what other folks may think of me.
At the moment, Cosmo is stranded on top of a waste basket trying to figure out how to get down. I don’t know how she got there. She is muttering, “Cosmooooooooooo!” — in the tone of voice I use when I find her where she shouldn’t be. I think I’ll let her solve the problem.
I wonder what is going on in her little brain.
Actually it’s not so little, for a bird. Parrots have big brains relative to the size of their body. In fact, parrots and crows have a brain-to-body size ratio comparable to that of chimpanzees and gorillas.
McGill University animal behaviorist Louis Lefebvre, who finds a correlation between brain size and intelligence, has developed an “innovativeness” index to measure a bird’s “IQ.” He defines intelligence as the ability to adapt to different challenges, and he ranks crows the highest. Before coming to that conclusion, Lefebvre collected bird stories from around the world. Among them is the account of the Japanese carrion crows who place walnuts in front of tires when cars are stopped for a red light, and then recover the crushed nuts after the cars roll over them.
I would give the African grey high marks, but I’m happy to have the crow be valedictorian. I like crows and ravens.
Anyway, if Cosmo is as intelligent as she appears to be, she needs challenges to overcome and problems to solve.
She has already solved the problem of taking apart pens without breaking them.
One day Cosmo scurried into my study from her room. I picked her up, and then looked at her feet. Oh, no! Was she bleeding? “Cosmo!” I exclaimed. “What did you do?”
I carried her with me back into her room, not knowing what I’d find. But no glass, no blood. Thank goodness. Only a big, irregular stain of red ink seeping into the floor. Cosmo had dismantled the red pen that I kept at the back of the second shelf of my telephone stand.
I wonder whether I should supervise her more carefully.
• Betty Jean Craige is professor emerita of comparative literature at the University of Georgia and the author of many books, including “Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot” (2010). Her email address is bettyjean@cosmotalks.com. Cosmo’s website address is www.cosmotalks.com.
Happy Birthday to me – My Blog is Three Years Old!
Cosmo Talks: Maybe we kind of miss the wild by Betty Jean Craige
Every morning when I get up, I see my faithful little mother squirrel watching me move through the house from the deck railing where she awaits her breakfast. She knows my habits, and I know hers. We are well acquainted with each other. We like each other.
So I put out bird seed and deer corn for her and her fellow squirrels, chipmunks and birds of all kinds who dine here.
Then I go back inside to fix breakfast for Cosmo, Kaylee, Mary and me. Cosmo is an African grey parrot. Kaylee and Mary are American Eskimo dogs.
Today, after we’d eaten, Cosmo scurried over to the sliding glass door and summoned me: “Look, that’s birdy!”
Cosmo had seen three gorgeous crows land on the railing to join the squirrels for breakfast. Cosmo loves crows. She called out to them: “Caw, caw!”
Mary heard Cosmo and raced out the doggy door to make the crows flap their wings and fly onto the roof. Mary takes great pleasure in causing a flurry of feathers.
Kaylee heard Mary and barked.
Then I went into the bathroom to put on my makeup. Suddenly, I heard a commotion behind me. Cosmo was on the floor yanking the comforter, and Mary was on the bed indignantly trying to get Cosmo to release it.
I turned around, ready to stop the action. Cosmo looked up at me, dropped the comforter, and said, “Hi.”
I live in a zoo, I thought in exasperation.
But no, not really. Residents of a zoo live in confinement and interact mainly with the zookeeper. They are under the zookeeper’s control.
I live in a village whose residents happen to be of different species, some of them making their life indoors, some of them making their life outdoors. They interact with each other and don’t obey me. These animals aren’t under anybody’s control. They still have a teeny bit of wildness in them — well, more than a teeny bit in Cosmo’s case.
I like them that way. I want them all to feel free to be their true animal selves.
We humans love our animals, be they feathery, furry, hairy or scaly, be they indoor or outdoor. And we want them to love us.
What’s interesting is that humans all over the world keep animals as pets, and have done so for millennia. Paleontologists have unearthed evidence for the domestication of dogs some 15,000 years ago and the domestication of cats some 9,000 years ago.
Archaeologists have discovered pictures of dogs resembling today’s sight hounds in Egyptian tombs of 3000 BC, and a cat with a collar in an Egyptian tomb of 2400 BC, more or less. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, they’ve found depictions of caged doves and parrots.
Of course, Egypt is not the only ancient culture that kept pets. But Egyptians left good records.
I wonder whether the keeping of pets is related to our coming in out of the wild and getting civilized, when we became indoor people. Maybe we civilized humans don’t want a complete separation from the wild.
I read that 39 percent of American households include at least one dog, 33 percent at least one cat, 12 percent at least one fish, 4.6 percent at least one bird and 35 percent at least one plant.
Nearly 17 percent of us feed wild birds. Probably the same 17 percent feed wild squirrels, though maybe not intentionally. I couldn’t find statistics for squirrel feeding.
We humans have come a long way from the time we lived in the wilderness and huddled together around a fire in fear of wolves, bears and mountain lions, whose scary eyes we thought we saw gleaming in the nighttime forest. Now we’re not afraid of wolves, bears or mountain lions, for we’ve shooed them out of our cities. And for the most part we’ve put them on reservations — wildlife sanctuaries, preserves, national parks — where we can enjoy their wildness safely. We’ve made them afraid of us.
But we must miss them. So we invite their tame relatives — dogs and cats, as well as birds, bunnies, ferrets and fish — into our homes, to cuddle, to play with us, to eat our food, even to doze alongside of us when we sleep. We are comforted by their presence. We love them.
I know whereof I speak. Whenever I settle down to read or write or watch a movie, I am aware that Kaylee is somewhere nearby quietly watching over me. Cosmo is also nearby watching over me, though she’s not quiet. They keep me happy. Mary, however, is not nearby. She is usually in the bedroom watching over her dog biscuits.
• Betty Jean Craige is professor emerita of comparative literature at the University of Georgia and the author of many books, including “Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot” (2010). Her email address is bettyjean@cosmotalks.com. Cosmo’s website address is www.cosmotalks.com.
10 Most Common New Year’s Resolutions: Illustrated by Cats!
Daring Escape
Propane – a Dog Story by Dr. McGinnis
Propane by Dr Robert E. McGinnis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’m a fan of dog books – but this one was the best I’ve read in a very long time. It even surpasses that other one that’s been on the NY Times bestseller list for months and months. (I’ve read both and loved this one more!)
I recommend it – it’s terrific and inspiring.
View all my reviews