Animals Part One

I've always been more than a little in to animals. When I was a kid, I got Ranger Rick magazine and National Geographic for Kids, and I loved them. I had horse and puppy calendars, and animal pictures practically wall papered my room.

I'm still really interested in animals and I can't stop thinking about some of the things I've learned about them recently - mostly communication.

My Dad watches 60 Minutes every week, and I've watched a few episodes lately. The show did a segment called The Secret Language of Elephants that really stood out for me. An American scientist has been studying a herd of wild elephants in Central Africa for about twenty years and she is slowly piecing together research about how they communicate, what their sounds mean. This herd had a new addition, a baby elephant, that wound up dying. The other elephants seemed very traumatized, and this is where it gets so amazing to me, they spent three to four days mourning the death of the baby. They would walk by the elephant, like a human funeral procession, and touch or smell the baby. Then, they would 'vocalize', as the researcher called it. The show actually had footage of this, and it was really touching.

Some scientists don't think animals have feelings, that what they do is solely instinctual. I think our family dog Maggie would have something to say about this. She feels that she should be in constant contact with a human and this causes her to almost have a nervous breakdown every day. Your hand can literally be touching her, and if it's not moving, she either whines or jockeys her head underneath your hand and forces you to remember that she's right there. I'll spread the word when The Secret Language of Maggie is featured on 60 Minutes.