Jun 03, 04
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^ my mom was teh care taker at the school, so she was the one cleaning up after the girl. she asked the teachers what was going on, because its a health risk not only for herself but other students if someone is very "ill" repeatedly in a bathroom.
the teachers informed her that she was a vegan and it was dietary issues. my mother is not nosey, so she didnt push the issue farther. this is all i know. happy? or should i go find the girl and ask her? go back to my earlier coments to knigel, i am not saying its a bad thing, he asked me for a point, he even accepted it, and rebuttled with something else. 
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Jun 03, 04
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"There are only animal, but no vegetarian sources of Vitamin B12, which is why herbivores (i.e. rabbits) meet their Vitamin B12 requirements by eating plants that are infested with insects, or by eating their
own feces, while in ruminants (sheep, cows), the microbes fermenting and digesting plant material in the rumen (the first stomach) incorporate cobalt into Vit B12, which is subsequently absorbed and utilized. (see also Acu-Cell Nutrition "Nickel & Cobalt"). Vitamin B12 liver stores in adults may last for several years before becoming depleted as a result of switching to a strict vegan or vegetarian diet, however Vitamin B12 deficiency in vegetarian children is much more serious since symptoms do not always become obvious or acute until some damage has resulted. So while it is recommended to supplement extra amounts of Vitamin B12 with vegetarian adults, it is mandatory with vegetarian children! Because of improved sanitation, this ismuch more important in Western societies, since in lesser developed parts of the world, insect or feces-contaminated fruits or vegetables have generally been sources of Vitamin B12 for those growing up in a predominantly vegetarian environment or culture." Dr.Ronald Roth http://www.acu-cell.com/veg.html maybe the kid didn;t have enough B12 or something? anyway, thats an interesting website to read. The author isn;t condoning or condeming vegan/vegetarian lifestyles, but goes on to talk about the pros and cons of eating meat. tis a good read. read about b12 here: http://health.allrefer.com/alternati...ml#topquestion "Diets of most adult Americans provide recommended intakes of vitamin B12, but deficiency may still occur as a result of an inability to absorb B12 from food. It can also occur in individuals with dietary patterns that exclude animal or fortified foods (9). As a general rule, most individuals who develop a vitamin B12 deficiency have an underlying stomach or intestinal disorder that limits the absorption of vitamin B12 (10). " "Severe symptoms of B12 deficiency, most often featuring poor neurological development, can show up quickly in children and breast-fed infants of women who follow a strict vegetarian diet (26). " my theory is that the poor girl didn;t have enough B12 or other supplements etc.... am i completly insane or does this make sense to anyone else? (i could be insane... most who know me will attest to that)
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Jun 03, 04
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Quote:
Actually that would be quite incorrect. Here! meet the secret ingredient of the Veggies... ...Nutritional Yeast! http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/b12.htm#reliable Even if I was a meet eater I'd use it. Little bit more info: http://www.vnv.org.au/Nutrition/B12&Veganism.htm http://www.vetplex.com/glossary.htm http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/002403.htm http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/aha/aha_vitamb12_crs.htm http://www.veganhealth.org/everyvegan/
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Jun 03, 04
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Look let me make something abundantly clear, being vegetarian should never be associated with being a revolutionary or being open minded. It is a dietary choice. If someone is going to proliferate the type of ignorance we are supposed to be fighting by thinking that, you are fucking yourself. I don't go around promoting beef and poultry, shoving it in people's faces. I don't castigate people for not eating steak sandwiches, and I would never diss someone for being a fucking brocolli head, or living off radishes and eating wheatgrass or tofu. I like alot of vegan cuisine, but the illogicality of expecting everyone to adapt your particular idea of what being healthy is, is just preposterous. I've seen some of you herbivors, and if you wanna argue health, y'all need to eat some kind of supplement cause some of you are so skinny you look like you just beat an etheopean in a marathon. The fact is your diet has nothing to do with being revolutionary or being on point and I'll be damned if I allow someone to push their agenda on me. You know, I don't eat pork, not because I'm a muslim, I just don't really like it, but I'll really go fuck a bird up. And fish is good when that shit is fresh. It's like my ***** Vast Air said.."If you don't like the smell of burning meat, well then get the fuck off the planet." You know I don't critisize people for eating moss, so don't open your fucking mouth about my food man. I like beef and brocolli motherfucker, mind your goddamn business.
PS Sure, humanity has to realize that we are all one energy, a universal mind, and every human being, animal and creature is a part of it. And yes a shift to a unified conciousness is not only neccessary to ensure the survival of our species/planet, but it is already being forced upon this society in the name of "globalization" "global governance" "world order" "collective security" or "covergance". But in the end of the day, most people lock the door in on themselves, in their own little prison, just like cattle. True spiritual exploration is the only hope for mankind to rise above the animal.
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Jun 03, 04
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There are many who do go around and shove meat in everyone faces, from industry to “friends”(meat is very socially predominant) , yet it lacks the actual well founded arguments behind it. People come up and try to get me to eat meat but I attempt to use logic and reason to outdebate their motives. When meat eaters shove meat in the faces of others they come across as ignorant and uneducated. Activist veggies usually have very strong reason and well founded argument when they do it. Simplifying it to diet is very fallacious and weak, it’s not what is eaten, it’s if it’s causing unneeded harm. You can eat whatever you want but if it’s putting WANTS before NEEDS leading to suffering and pain then I am going to speak up about it. I think there is something wrong with eating meat, do you think there is something wrong with eating veggies? If you do just let me know but trying to make a very bad connection between to two is absolutely illogical. If A = B doesn’t mean B = A.
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Jun 03, 04
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On the spiritual note:
The debate on animal consciousness is quite diverse; there are many theories and studies with a lot unproven. In the spiritual sense you take a big leap of faith when eating meat. On one hand you can eat it and maybe it is spiritually void with no karma attached, yet on the other you’ve committed an incredible injustice against your fellow brethren. One of these seems to outweigh the other in potential adverse effects in my opinion.
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Jun 03, 04
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Also most people should be taking supplements, meat eaters or veggies. Many Veggies take supplements because they do a lot of research on health and realize it’s a good idea. It’s not like meat has nutrients that can’t be gained from several other sources. Have you ever specifically studied what actual nutrients are in meat that is needed? Have you ever weighed them up with what is bad and unhealthy in meat? Personally I like being able to get my nutrients and not have the majority of side effects. Why would I use a shoddy filler?
Honeslty speaking: If someone were to weigh up the pros and cons of meat's nutrition value what one would you think would have a higher number? What if you were to compare it with Veggies pro and cons? Last edited by Knigel; Jun 03, 04 at 03:41 PM.
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Jun 04, 04
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no one is criticizing you for not eating meat. WE ALL AGREE THAT IS YOUR CHOICE. i think us meat eaters are just annoyed that while we do not criticize your diet, you criticize ours. yes, we are all sinners who are going to the dietary hells from whence we came. yes, you and all your veggie friends are better people than the rest of us. have fun in heaven. YOU WIN. WE LOSE. now please, shut up. :)
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Jun 13, 04
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_intelligence
To raise the question "Are animals intelligent?" Snip-> The phrase Animal intelligence may introduce a discussion about whether it is meaningful to speak of animals as "intelligent" at all, or whether animal behaviour should instead be thought of as a series of unthinking mechanical responses to stimuli that originate in the animal's internal or external environments, with only humans being capable of conscious thought and flexible responding. This debate is now largely obsolete. On the one hand, it has been superseded by a more empirically-driven discussion about whether the research programme of animal cognition, which assumes that animals have cognitive processes similar to those of humans, is or is not successful. On the other hand, it has been made obsolete by any of a number of more modern approaches to human intelligence. The radical behaviourists would see no place for cognition in the explanation even of human behaviour, while the study of artificial intelligence shows that much of what were once thought to be uniquely human mental capacities can be mimicked by an essentially mechanical system. Nonetheless, the question is unlikely to go away completely. The reasons for its persistence are philosophical and ethical as well as (perhaps more than) scientific. The philosophical question is the issue of the animal mind, which is related to the general question of other minds and how to define and quantify consciousness. The ethical significance of this research stems from the widespread belief that causing pain and suffering is morally wrong. If it were concluded that animals were conscious persons like human individuals, would we be able to slaughter them for food? And if so what makes cannibalism immoral?<-Snip To ask about the relative intelligence of different animal species Snip-> People have always viewed some animals as more intelligent than others: in European cultures, dogs, horses, Great Apes and (more recently) dolphins and parrots are seen as intelligent in ways that other animals are not. A common image is the scala naturae, the ladder of nature on which animals of different species occupy successively higher rungs, with humans of course at the top. Comparative psychologists have sought in vain for ways of providing an objective underpinning for these essentially subjective and anthropocentric judgements. Part of the difficulty is the lack of agreement about what we mean by intelligence even in humans (it obviously makes a big difference whether language is considered as essential for intelligence, for example). But in any case, different animals (including humans) seem to have different kinds of cognitive processes, which are better understood in terms of the ways in which they are cognitively adapted to their different ecological niches, than by positing any kind of hierarchy. The only question that can be asked coherently is how far different species are intelligent in the same ways as humans are, i.e. are their cognitive processes similar to ours. Not surprisingly, our closest biological relatives, the great apes, tend to do best on such an assessment. It is less clear that the species traditionally held to be intelligent do unusually well against this standard,, though among the birds, corvids and parrots typically are found to outperform other groups, and among the carnivores, dogs generally show better performance than cats. Despite ambitious claims, evidence of unusually high human-like intelligence among cetaceans is patchy, partly because the cost and difficulty of carrying out research with marine mammals mean that experiments frequently suffer from small sample sizes and inadequate controls and replication.<-Snip http://www.koko.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko http://www.koko.org/world/ Snip->Koko, a female lowland gorilla born in 1971, and Michael, a male lowland gorilla born in 1973, use sign language and understand spoken English. Koko's participation in this study began when she was one year old, and Michael's at the age of three and one-half. Their intellectual, physical, and linguistic development has been studied extensively since their infancy. Before Project Koko, very little was known about gorilla intelligence.<-Snip Snip->During the course of the study, Koko has advanced further with language than any other non-human. Koko has a working vocabulary of over 1000 signs. Koko understands approximately 2,000 words of spoken English. Koko initiates the majority of conversations with her human companions and typically constructs statements averaging three to six words. Koko has a tested IQ of between 70 and 95 on a human scale, where 100 is considered "normal." Michael, the male silverback gorilla who grew up with Koko, had a working vocabulary of over 600 signs In addition to intensive studies of vocabulary acquisition, the project has investigated spontaneous gorilla language use. This involves the study of innovative linguistic strategies, invention of new signs and compound words, simultaneous signing, self-directed signing, displacement, prevarication, reference to time and emotional states, gestural modulation, metaphorical word use, humor, definition, argument, insult, threat, fantasy play, storytelling and moral judgment. The depth and variety of gorilla language use has significantly exceeded initial expectations. Indeed, evidence has been found for the existence, in less developed form, of almost every aspect of human behavior.<-Snip http://www.koko.org/world/mourning.html http://www.koko.org/world/mourning_koko.html Snip->Koko has been extremely upset by Michael's death. She spent 24 years with Mike, and he was her companion since she was five years old. In the weeks following Mike's death, both Koko and Ndume uttered frequent, mournful cries, particularly at night. Gorillas often vocalize this type of cry when they are unwillingly separated from each other. During this time period, Koko indicated with sign language that she wanted a light left on at night when she went to bed. Both Koko and Ndume often stared into the distance without focusing, apparently seeing nothing. For months follow Mike's death, Koko would sit with her chin on her chest and her lower lip dropped down, a recognizably sad expression.<-Snip Snip->Many people know how upset Koko was over the loss of her kitten, All Ball. To describe her sorrow, she would often use the signs for "sad" and "frown." Her grief for Mike is much deeper, and she sometimes seems inconsolable. Following Mike's death, Koko has expressed her grief with the words "sorry" and "cry." For example, she held up one of Mike's blankets, looked at Penny and signed "Sorry." Three weeks after Mike's death, Penny's sister visited Koko. When she asked Koko how she was feeling, Koko replied "Cry."<-Snip http://www.koko.org/world/journal_archive.phtml Lots of Articles. http://www.koko.org/world/art.html Lots of Art. http://www.koko.org/about/facts.html Snip->Gorillas learn from their mothers and other adults what to eat, social and sexual behavior and how to rear young. They care for their babies with great affection, patience and playfulness. Energetic, mischevious youngsters are disciplined with stern vocalizations (pig-like grunts), body posturing and strong looks. Gorillas also chuckle, smile and purr. They are gentle and intelligent. Gorillas feel deeply and remember for years. Groups are not territorial and generally avoid each other, but when they do meet, sometimes threats and fighting occur, with the silverback remaining to challenge the attacker while the rest of the group flees. To intimidate his opponent, the silverback stands upright to appear larger, beats on his chest, roars, waves his arms, tears branches and charges. This is all done to frighten off, not harm, other males. Distress behavior includes diarrhea and strong, pungent body odor.<-Snip Snip-> Gorillas recognize each other by their faces and body shapes. Each gorilla has a unique nose print.<-Snip Snip-> Gorillas eat some 200 types of leaves, tubers, flowers, fruit, fungus and some insects. Favorite foods include bamboo, thistles and wild celery. Gorillas do not drink water. They obtain all the moisture they need from the vast amounts of foliage they consume. Males consume approximately 50 lbs. a day.<-Snip http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...re/3796017.stm Snip-> Researchers at Cambridge University have discovered sheep prefer smiling or relaxed human faces, over angry or stressed ones.<-Snip Snip->"Three years ago, the team found sheep could recognize 50 individual sheep faces and remember them for two years."<-Snip Snip->But the research also has wide reaching implications for animal welfare. Dr Kendrick said: "This does open up the possibility that they have much richer emotional lives than we would give them credit for. "If sheep, which in terms of domestic animals tend to be right down the bottom of the league table for intelligence, can do this then the likelihood is that other species can too." <-Snip http://www.mirabilis.ca/archives/000662.html http://iafrica.com/news/sa/226903.htm Elephants rescue antelope held in boma Snip->A conservation team were left baffled when 11 elephants arrived at their camp in Empangeni, Zululand to rescue a herd of antelope who were being held in a boma. Conservationist Lawrence Anthony said on Tuesday that a private game capture company had been working on the Thula Thula Exclusive Private Game Reserve capturing antelope that were to be relocated for a breeding programme. Shortly before relocation the antelope were being housed in a boma enclosure. The team were settling in for the night when a herd of 11 elephant approached the boma, he said. "The herd circled the enclosure while the capture team watched warily, thinking the herd were after lucerne being used to feed the antelope," Lawrence said. "This went on for quite a while until the herd seemed to back off from the boma perimeter fence." The herd's matriarch, named Nana, approached the enclosure gates and began tampering with the metal latches holding the gates closed. She carefully undid all the latches with her trunk, swung the gate open and stood back with her herd. "At this stage the onlookers realised this was not a mission for free food, but actually a rescue,' said Lawrence. The herd watched the antelope leave the boma and dart off before they walked off into the night. Thula Thula resident Ecologist Brendon Whittington-Jones said: "Elephant are naturally inquisitive — but this behaviour is certainly most unusual and cannot be explained in scientific terms".<-Snip http://www.chickenindustry.com/cfi/intelligence/ Snip-> “It is now clear that birds have cognitive capacities equivalent to those of mammals, even primates.”<-Snip Snip-> “Dr. Joy Mench, Professor and Director of the Center for Animal Welfare at the Univ. of Calif. at Davis explains, ‘Chickens show sophisticated social behavior….That’s what a pecking order is all about. They can recognize more than a hundred other chickens and remember them. They have more than thirty types of vocalizations.’”<-Snip Snip-> “Chickens exist in stable social groups. They can recognize each other by their facial features. They have 24 distinct cries that communicate a wealth of information to one other, including separate alarm calls depending on whether a predator is traveling by land or sea. They are good at solving problems. ‘As a trick at conferences I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people thing I’m talking about monkeys,’ Mr. Evans said. Perhaps most persuasive is the chicken’s intriguing ability to understand that an object, when taken away and hidden, nevertheless continues to exist. This is beyond the capacity of small children.”<-Snip Snip-> “Contrary to what one may hear from the industry, chickens are not mindless, simple automata but are complex behaviorally, do quite well in learning, show a rich social organization, and have a diverse repertoire of calls. Anyone who has kept barnyard chickens also recognizes their significant differences in personality.” <-Snip http://www.pigs4ever.com/news/lulu.htm Oinking for help Snip->Pot-bellied pig saves owner's life by lying in front of a car<-Snip Snip-> "She looked at my head. She made sounds like she was crying," said Altsman, who then imitated the sound -- quite indescribable -- of a crying Vietnamese potbellied pig. "You know, they cry big fat tears," she noted. But the porker pulled herself together, and headed outside through the doggy/piggy door and into the fenced-in yard. Never before had Lulu left the confines of the yard -- except for a leash walk -- but this was no ordinary day. She somehow pushed open the gate and walked into the road. There, Lulu gave new meaning to the phrase "hogging the road." Witnesses later told Altsman that Lulu waited until a car approached and then walked onto the road and laid down in front of it. Several times she returned to Altsman only to leave again and try to get help.<-Snip http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/3127814.stm http://tlc.discovery.com/news/afp/20...17.82039412395 Kangaroo Saves Man's Life Snip->A kangaroo saved a farmer's life by alerting his family that he was lying unconscious in a field, ambulance workers have said.The kangaroo began banging on the door of the family home in Morwell, eastern Victoria, during weekend storms in the area, Rural Ambulance Victoria paramedic Eddie Wright told a Melbourne radio station. The man had been checking his property for storm damage, when he was hit on the head by a falling branch. He was knocked unconscious and could have died had he not been found so quickly, Wright said."The kangaroo alerted them to where he was and went and sat down next to him and that's how they found him," he said. "The farmer's wife followed the kangaroo because he was acting out of character."The kangaroo was wild, Wright said, but had been adopted by the family around a decade ago because it was blind in one eye. The incident has prompted comparisons with the old Australian children's TV show "Skippy", about a kangaroo that solves crimes."It's not a pet as such, it's just an animal that's adopted them over the years and comes and goes as it pleases, they were lucky yesterday it was in the area," said Wright.The farmer, who has not been named, was taken to hospital in Melbourne where he was receiving treatment for serious head injuries. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/w...re/3189941.stm Scientists highlight fish 'intelligence' Snip->Fish are socially intelligent creatures who do not deserve their reputation as the dim-wits of the animal kingdom, according to a group of leading scientists.<-Snip Snip-> "Now, fish are regarded as steeped in social intelligence, pursuing Machiavellian strategies of manipulation, punishment and reconciliation, exhibiting stable cultural traditions, and co-operating to inspect predators and catch food." Recent research had shown that fish recognised individual "shoal mates", social prestige and even tracked relationships.<-Snip http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1746828.stm http://www.catsinthenews.com/issues/...es/020212a.htm Lion + Oryx = Oryx-ymoron Snip->Needless to say, the lion/oryx relationship was a radical departure from the instincts of both animals. Tourists and game rangers watched in disbelief as the lioness and the frail brown baby oryx walked side by side and rested together, with the intimacy of a mother and her cub.<-Snip Snip->Kenyan nature expert Vincent Kapeen has another explanation: "I think the lioness spared the calf after its mother fled because all animals have a special instinct to care for the young."<-Snip http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2796633.stm Snip->She called her cows by name and to the amusement of the soldiers, as each cow heard her voice, it lifted its head and then followed her. <-Snip http://res2.agr.gc.ca/lennoxville/ex...chepeur2_e.htm Frightened cows give less milk Snip->Bob is patient and gentle with his dairy cows. His herd is one of the most productive in the area. His neighbour, Joe, has poorer results despite similar management. People know he tends to be rough with his animals. When Bob goes on holidays, his neighbour Joe takes care of his animals. Milk production then takes a 10% drop. Strange, isn’t it? Frightened cows are expensive Studies conducted in Canada and Australia can explain this mystery. They show that if if cows are scared of a person who is present at milking, milk yield drops by as much as 5 to 10%. The stress caused by fear has an effect on lactational hormones and increases milk retention in the udder. Figure 1 shows milk yield in the presence of a gentle person, compared to milk obtained in the presence of an aversive person. These results come from a study conducted at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Research Centre in Lennoxville, Quebec, and financially supported by Dairy Farmers of Canada. During this experiment, two different people handled the cows during three consecutive days. The gentle handler would offer food, speak gently, and stroke the cow on the neck and head, if the animal accepted. The aversive handler would hit them on the head or muzzle and use a cattle prod once per day. Each cow received only 30 minutes of handling each day. After three days, the cows could discriminate between the gentle and the aversive person. They would retain twice as much milk in the udder when the aversive person was present at milking compared to when the gentle person was present.This means a 9% reduction in milk yield. Researchers also noticed that the heart rate of the animals was faster. This indicates that the cows recognized the aversive person and that his presence was stressful. Dairy producers must therefore carefully choose the employees who will take care of their dairy herd to minimize losses<-Snip http://www.catsinthenews.com/issues/...es/020410a.htm Snip->She adopted a second baby oryx in February (read Don't Play With Your Food). This time, her watchful gaze was intensified; reportedly, she wouldn't even allow other antelopes to approach her "baby", except for several minutes a day when an adult female oryx would be permitted to nurse the calf.<-Snip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig Snip-> Pigs are not as dirty as people believe them to be. They are in fact very clean animals and the only reason people picture them in mud and covered in dirt is because they do not sweat. Rolling in the mud is their way of regulating their body temperature and keeping themselves cool in warmer temperatures. <-Snip Snip-> Pigs are highly intelligent animals, and some are kept as pets. Pigs are reportedly more intelligent and more trainable than dogs and cats.<-Snip http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...science_dog_dc 'Doggie, Speak' Has New Meaning in Language Study Snip->A clever border collie that can fetch at least 200 objects by name may be living proof that dogs truly understand human language, German scientists reported on Thursday. The dog, named Rico, can fetch a newly introduced object when asked, even if he has never heard the name of the object before, the researchers say. The findings, reported in the journal Science, may not surprise many dog owners. But they are certain to re-ignite a debate over what language is and whether it is unique to humans.<-Snip Snip->Rico's abilities seem to follow a process called fast mapping, seen when young children start to learn to speak and understand language, they report. Fast-mapping allows children to form quick and rough hypotheses about the meaning of a new word the first time they hear or see it.<-Snip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giraffe Snip-> Within a few hours of being born, calves can run around and are indistinguishable from a calf that may be a week old already<-Snip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin Snip-> Dolphins are widely believed to be amongst the most intelligent of all animals, although the difficulties and expense of doing experimental work with a large marine animal, with a very different sensory apparatus from our own, mean that many of the tests required to confirm this belief have not yet been done, or have been carried out with inadequate sample sizes and methodology. See the Dolphin brain article for more details. Dolphins often leap above the water surface, sometimes performing acrobatic figures (e.g. the spinner dolphin). This and other behaviour is interpreted as playing. They are capable of diving up to 260 m deep and 15 min long, but rarely stay underwater longer than few minutes. Frequently dolphins will accompany boats, riding the bow waves. They are also famous for their willingness to occasionally approach humans and interact with them in the water. In return, in some cultures like in Ancient Greece they were treated with welcome; a ship spotting dolphins riding in their wake was considered a good omen for a smooth voyage. Dolphins are social animals, living in so called schools of up to a dozen animals. In places with high abundance of food, schools can join temporarily forming aggregations of over 1000 dolphins. The individuals communicate using a variety of klicks, whistles and other vocalizations. They also use ultrasonic sounds for echolocation. Membership in schools is not rigid, interchange is common. However, the animals can establish strong bonds between each other. This leads to them staying with injured or ill fellows for support.<-Snip http://www.fundwildlife.org/crows.html Snip->We have observed crows landing on phone wires and dangle upside down on them as if to see the world from a different perspective. We've watched as they merrily chase one another in the sky, performing a myriad of aerobatic maneuvers all the while. They fearlessly chase dogs and cats just for fun and won't hesitate to unmercifully tease a bird of prey in hopes of catching the hawk or vulture off guard just long enough to steal its food.<-Snip http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2178920.stm Snip-> Experiments show the humble bird is better than the chimp at toolmaking. British zoologists were astonished when a captive crow called Betty fashioned a hook out of wire to reach food. It is the first time any animal has been found to make a new tool for a specific task, say Oxford University researchers. <-Snip Snip->“It is not only cleverer than we think in this particular direction but probably, at least in relation to tools, has a higher level of understanding than chimpanzees," says Alex Kacelnik, Professor of Behavioural Ecology.<-Snip Snip-> Other birds have also shown surprising levels of ingenuity. The woodpecker finch of the Galapagos Islands uses a cactus spine to spear insects. Pigeons have been known to recognise humans and letters of alphabet. Parrots, though, appear to be at the top of the pecking order. Alex, an African grey parrot, hit the headlines in the 1980s. The bird had a vocabulary of 100 English words and was able to ask questions and make requests.<-Snip http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s700638.htm Snip-> Betty is a very famous crow; she's at Oxford University and she's proved that birds can make tools.<-Snip http://www.oxytocin.org/oxy/emotion.html Gentle handling of mammals (rats, mice) and lizards (Iguana), but not of frogs (Rana) and fish (Carassius), elevated the set-point for body temperature (i.e., produced an emotional fever) achieved only behaviorally in lizards. Heart rate, another detector of emotion in mammals, was also accelerated by gentle handling, from ca. 70 beats/min to ca. 110 beats/min in lizards. This tachycardia faded in about 10 min. The same handling did not significantly modify the frogs' heart rates. The absence of emotional tachycardia in frogs and its presence in lizards (as well as in mammals), together with the emotional fever exhibited by mammals and reptiles, but not by frogs or fish, would suggest that emotion emerged in the evolutionary lineage between amphibians and reptiles. Such a conclusion would imply that reptiles possess consciousness with its characteristic affective dimension, pleasure. The role of sensory pleasure in decision making was therefore verified in iguanas placed in a motivational conflict. To be able to reach a bait (lettuce), the iguanas had to leave a warm refuge, provided with standard food, and venture into a cold environment. The results showed that lettuce was not necessary to the iguanas and that they traded off the palatability of the bait against the disadvantage of the cold. Thus, the behavior of the iguanas was likely to be produced, as it is in humans, through the maximization of sensory pleasure. Altogether, these results may indicate that the first elements of mental experience emerged between amphibians and reptiles.<-Snip http://www.orcanetwork.org/nathist/symbols.html Snip->Rendell and Whitehead (2001) reviewed the evidence for cultural transmission in whales and dolphins from the perspectives of captive experimental studies, field studies based on evolutionary ecology and research on cultures in other animals. From the ethnographic perspective cultural transmission is deduced from spatial, temporal or social patterns of variation in behavior that are not consistent with genetic or environmental determination or individual learning.<-Snip Snip->The ability to recognize oneself in a mirror is a rare capacity in the animal kingdom. Until recently, only humans and great apes had shown convincing evidence of mirror self-recognition (MSR). Now bottlenose dolphins must be added to that short list. MSR tests have shown that dolphins use mirrors to investigate parts of their bodies that are marked (Reiss and Marino 2001). According to the authors, "These findings imply that the emergence of MSR is not a byproduct of factors specific to great apes and humans but instead may be due to more general characteristics such as a high degree of encephalization and cognitive ability. The results represent a striking case of cognitive convergence in the face of profound differences in neuroanatomical characteristics and evolutionary history." Thus, dolphins meet an essential requirement of symbolic interaction: self-identification. The experimental and ethnographic evidence indicates that orcas, the most highly encephalized delphinid, have continued this convergence to include the ability to use symbols as part of normal everyday interaction.<-Snip http://utminers.utep.edu/best/papers...ni/minding.htm Snip-> Koko the gorilla has a sign vocabulary of 500 words and does internet chats. Alex the parrot knows the names of over 100 different objects, 7 colors, and 5 shapes; he can count objects up to 6 and speaks in meaningful sentences. Michael the gorilla loved Pavarotti and refused to go outside when he was on TV. Hoku the dolphin grieved when his companion, Kiko, died. Flint the chimp died of a broken heart after the death of his mother, Flo.<-Snip Snip-> Beginning in the seventeenth century, modern science constructed a mechanistic paradigm which views animals as automata or machines. From Descartes to sociobiology and behaviorism in the present, the modern tradition cast animals in the role of brutes or machines who can neither feel nor think. Students trained in this paradigm quickly learn to avoid reference to the subjective life of animals unless they desire ridicule. Under the spell of behaviorism, scientists redescribe the love a chimpanzee might experience as "attachment formation," the anger of an elephant as "aggression exhibition," and the aptitude of a bird as a "conditioned reflex." Journals typically refuse to publish papers that allude to animal thoughts or emotions. Jane Goodall reports how extreme the mechanistic outlook can be: "The first paper I wrote for `Nature,' the scientific periodical, they actually crossed out where I put `he and she and who,' and put `it.'" <-Snip Snip-> New studies suggest that rats dream when they sleep and that the great apes have "self-awareness neurons" responsible for self-consciousness.<-Snip Snip-> Given the tools of American Sign Language and lexigram symbols, great apes are communicating to human beings and one another their needs, desires, and thoughts. Dolphins understand and follow simple commands like "Put the ball in the hoop." In a famous experiment, birds -- who also are tool makers and users -- have solved the problem of how to eat food dangling from a line by looping the string and holding it with their feet. Beavers exhibit great flexibility in building their dams and solve problems posed to them on a case-by-case basis. Various tests with mirrors and hidden objects suggest that chimpanzees and bonobos might have self-consciousness and awareness of other minds. Thousands of experiments in the field and laboratory have demonstrated that animals such as prairie dogs, squirrels, and even chickens convey not only emotion but also information in their complexly differentiated alarm cries for the presence of predators. Recent studies suggest birds, primates, and whales may use a grammar-like structure in their communication.<-Snip Snip-> Clearly, results can be interpreted in different ways, and staunch defenders of behaviorism remain unconvinced. In 1984, C. Lloyd Morgan formulated the "law of parsimony," a variation on Ockham's razor, which states that one should not appeal to a "higher" function intelligence) of organisms when a "lower" function (instinct) will adequately explain a behavior. Behaviorists used his principle in an aggressively reductionistic manner, subsuming all behaviors to crude instincts and learning mechanisms. But Morgan himself admitted animal intelligence exists and his principle establishes just the opposite. When confronted by the overwhelming evidence of animal intelligence, the lower functions do not explain the behaviors; rather, they make sense only through reference to higher level principles. In other words, the simplest explanation, the one not saddled with ad hoc qualifications, is an appeal to the flexible and thinking qualities of animal minds. Believing animals to be devoid of feeling and thought is an interesting case of projection, for all along it has been scientists who lack these characteristics, burdened by irrational prejudices and ill-equipped to understand human similarities and differences with animals. In Rattling the Cage, Wise shows that animal intelligence varies according to the degree researchers nurture it with proper social environments. It should be no surprise that Professor Herbert Terrace, who concluded chimpanzees only mimic their trainers and don't sign creatively on their own, confined them in a stultifying laboratory setting. Acknowledging only one model of intelligence and communication -- that of homo sapiens -- scientists have argued since animals don't speak or reason like we do, they don't have minds at all. In expecting animals to satisfy human criteria of language and intelligence, scientists have, after all, succumbed to the dreaded sin of anthropomorphism. But anthropomorphism need not be a scientific sin. Clearly we don't want to project onto animals characteristics they don't have. But if there are core commonalities between nonhuman and human animals, what Griffin calls "critical anthropomorphism" is our best access to understanding animals, and "objective detachment" will block insight every time. The argument of cognitive ethology is not that animal emotions and consciousness are as complex as ours, but that they exist in remarkably rich forms. Human beings are unique in the degree to which they possess intelligence; no other species, to my knowledge, has written sonnets or sonatas, solved algebraic equations, or meditated on the structure of the universe. But humans are not unique in their possession of a neocortex; of complex emotions like love, loneliness, empathy, and shame; of sophisticated languages, behaviors, and communities; and perhaps even of aesthetic and moral sensibilities. The paradigm shift from seeing animals as objects of a scientific gaze instead of subjects of their own lives has important implications. The genetic, behavioral, and emotional continuities between humans and great apes, for example, is the philosophical basis of "The Great Ape" project co-founded by Peter Singer, which aims to establish our kinship with, and secure basic rights for, our biological relatives. Similarly, scientific findings about animal intelligence are crucial to the legal rights for animals movement as described by Harvard law professor Steven Wise in Rattling the Cage. Feeling the winds of change from science, philosophy, and law, it seems that American culture itself is in the midst of a paradigm shift. As we learn to appreciate the complexity of animals and the deep continuities between their world and ours, we begin to respect them more and accord them the rights -- to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" -- they so richly deserve. Every oppressed group has fought for its liberation; now it's the animals' turn. Since they can't speak for themselves, their liberation demands our own liberation from the long-standing tradition of human biases toward other species. As we grant animals minds, we begin to free our own.<-Snip
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Jun 13, 04
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http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archiv.../osteo0303.htm
Boning Up on Osteoporosis When we eat beef, pork, lamb, chicken, or other foods from animals, our bodies take in proteins that may be rich in sulfur. That's unlike the proteins in plant foods—fruits, veggies, nuts, grains, or legumes like peas or dry beans. As we digest animal proteins, the sulfur in them forms acid. A slight, temporary acid overload—called acidosis—may result. To regain our natural balance of acidity to alkalinity, or pH, in the bloodstream, our bodies must buffer the influx of acid. One possible buffer is calcium phosphate, which the body can borrow from our bones—the body's main storage depot for this essential mineral. Though calcium phosphate is an effective buffer and neutralizer, taking it from bones might increase our risk of osteoporosis. This unhealthy increase in the porosity of bones, and resultant thinning, leaves those afflicted with this disease especially vulnerable to fractures of the spine, hips, and wrists. Estimates from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) indicate that 10 million Americans, mainly women, already suffer from this disease. Another 28 million Americans are at risk. Other NIH analyses suggest that one in every two women and one in every eight men over age 50 in this country will have an osteoporosis-related fracture in their lifetime. Does Animal Protein Play a Role? The cause of osteoporosis is unknown. In exploring possible links between osteoporosis and what we eat, some researchers have developed a hypothesis and a model that point to sulfur-containing animal proteins as a culprit in the bone disease. The theory has commanded the attention of nutrition researchers, including scientists at the ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center in Davis, California. They have teamed up with university colleagues to crack some of the secrets of osteoporosis. In a novel study, they recruited women who eat both animal and plant foods—the omnivore regimen typical of most Americans—and women who only eat plant-derived foods. What better way to monitor the possible effect of sulfur-containing proteins than by comparing the bone health of vegan volunteers, who don't eat animal proteins, with that of omnivore volunteers, who do? ARS physiologist Marta D. Van Loan of the Western Human Nutrition Research Center collaborated in the investigation with Anita M. Oberbauer of the University of California, Davis, and with Lydia-Anne Stawasz, formerly at the Davis campus and now at the University of California, Irvine. Forty-eight healthy, nonsmoking women, aged 18 to 40, volunteered for the 10-month study. At three intervals during the experiment, the women submitted records of the types and amounts of foods they had eaten during the previous 3 days. The records gave the researchers an indication of the amount of protein each volunteer had eaten. The volunteers gave blood and urine specimens at each lab visit. The samples were analyzed for any of several standard indicators of bone health. These included bone formation, as indicated by the amount of a chemical called osteocalcin; and bone resorption, or the amount of calcium removed from bone and reabsorbed into the bloodstream, as measured by another biochemical, N-teleopeptide. Other measures included renal net acid excretion and urinary calcium—both indicators of how much calcium was excreted from the body. The model that other scientists developed predicts that to maintain the correct balance of calcium in the blood, or homeostasis, renal net acid excretion and urinary calcium increase as intake of sulfur-containing animal proteins increase. But preliminary results suggest that osteoporosis may in fact be more complicated than the model predicts. The Davis scientists applied a statistical procedure—multivariate regression analysis—to determine the relative impact of each of the variables, or factors, they examined. As expected, they found that the vegan volunteers ate less protein than the omnivore volunteers. Also, as predicted by the model, renal net acid excretion and urinary calcium were higher in the volunteers who ate more protein (the omnivore women) than in those who ate less (the vegan participants). Less Bone Formed But two findings were unexpected. First, bone resorption—in which calcium is taken away from bones via the bloodstream—was the same for omnivore women as for vegan women. "The current model predicts increased bone resorption for people who consume large amounts of animal protein, so it was somewhat surprising that bone resorption was the same for both groups of our volunteers," Van Loan notes. Second, bone formation was significantly less in omnivore women than in vegan women. This happened even though the omnivore women had a higher calcium intake than did the vegan volunteers. (The volunteers did not differ in their intake of other nutrients that affect bone health, such as magnesium.) Using the model as a basis, "one would not have predicted a significantly greater amount of bone formation for vegan volunteers than for omnivore volunteers," Van Loan adds. The implication for people who eat high amounts of animal protein may be important: Specifically, over time, the net effect of a lower amount of bone formation would likely be a decrease in bone density. Explains Van Loan, "If you have less bone formation, the result is the same as if you had an increase in bone resorption. So, even though bone resorption was the same in both groups of volunteers, the lower amount of bone formation in the omnivore women could lead to a decrease in their bone density." The findings, if borne out in larger studies, may lead to a modified model. What's more, the investigation may lead to other useful lines of inquiry for other studies.—By Marcia Wood, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff. This research is part of Human Nutrition, an ARS National Program (#107) described on the World Wide Web at www.nps.ars.usda.gov. Marta D. Van Loan is with the USDA-ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616; phone (530) 752-4160, fax (530) 752-5271. "Boning Up on Osteoporosis" was published in the March 2003 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.
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