I Smell a Rat

One of my New Year's resolutions last year was to minimize the number of posts devoted to politics. Looking through my archive on the right, I see I first broke that resolution on Inauguration Day, January 20. In fact, the first three posts last year were about politics. It seems I just can't help it, the current political situation in this country and the rest of the world these days is simply a subject too ripe with ideas for new posts. To put it mildly.

With that in mind, you may think given the title of this post, what follows is yet another screed against the current administration, but I assure you it is not. The rat in the title is not metaphorical but quite literal. Yes dear reader, this post is about rats and their rodent cousins.

But wait, before you stop reading, that's not all, it's also about other animals and their relationship to us, that is we animals of the species Homo sapiens.  

And what brings it all together is my favorite topic to write about these days, after baseball anyway, that is to say language, with a little stuff about AI thrown in.

Let's see if I can tie it all together.

To paraphrase Bette Davis from the classic 1950 film All About Eve:

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

OK here goes.

The inspiration for this post is the German word for one of the aforementioned cousins of the species Rattus norvegicus, see if you can guess which one, and extra points if you can pronounce the word.

Eichhörnchen

The German language gets a lot of grief. Someone I know recently declared that German just sounds angry to her. Of course, that's true if the only person you've ever heard speaking it is Hitler.

If you unfortunately are of that opinion, for a real eye opener please check this out, the opening scene from one of my favorite movies of all time *(1) featuring a poem by Peter Handke. 

Or this, in my opinion hands down the most beautiful Christmas carol ever set to music. *(2)

Merry Christmas by the way!

German is also known for its ridiculously long words like this one:

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften.

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften isn't the longest German word. But you won't find words like this in a dictionary, as they are combinations of words that describe a single entity. Where English describing the same thing would separate the words, in this case "insurance companies that provide legal protection", German eliminates the spaces between the words, which when you think of it, kind of makes sense as the term insurance companies that provide legal protection, does indeed constitute a single entity. On the other hand for me at least, it's easier to read the words separated by spaces instead of this: insurancecompaniesthatprovidelegalprotection,

But even German words that you do find in a dictionary can be impressive for their length. Consider the German word for speed limit: Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung.

OK that's really two words, but the German for those two words, Geschwindigkeit (speed) and begrenzung (limit) are by themselves formidable.

Like Geschwindigkeitbegrenzung, Eichhörnchen is a compound word. "Eich" on its own means oak, as in the tree. Without the umlaut, "Hörn" means the same thing in English, and "Chen" at the end of a word indicates a diminutive. So together they mean. "little oak horn".

Figured it out yet?

When all is said and done, Eichhörnchen is a silly word for a very common thing, even German people would concur as the multitude of YouTube videos made by Germans on the subject would attest.

But German isn't the only language with a silly, hard to pronounce word for this particular animal. 

The French word for Eichhörnchen is Ècureuil, which in my book is even harder to pronounce than Eichhörnchen, as are most French words.

But perhaps there is no sillier, harder-to-pronounce word describing this cousin of the rat than the English version.

That word?

Squirrel.

If your immediate response to that last statement is "what's so hard to pronounce about squirrel?", then English must be your mother tongue, and you've been saying the word all your life.

For people learning English as a second language on the other hand, the word squirrel is a minefield filled with foreign consonant clusters, unfamiliar vowels and excessive articulations all packed within two mere syllables, sometimes only one, (like the American version that rhymes with girl), which makes the successful pronunciation of squirrel, a feat of vocal gymnastics. 

It turns out that words across the spectrum for cute, furry tree dwelling rodents with bushy tails are fairly divergent from language to language, complex when compared to words describing other animals, and are often difficult to pronounce.

Why is that?

That's what I wondered the other day when I turned to the genie inside my pocket, ChatGPT, and asked the app why this particular animal inspires such strange words in different languages. Rather then telling me to "get a life" as some of my human acquaintances would, ChatGPT, in one of its typical obsequious responses began with: "Ahh--excellent question."

I always fall for that.

Then it gave me a list of reasons, some of which made sense, while some were a little dubious when digging a little deeper, But the first was particularly enlightening:

Squirrels weren't major cultural animals, therefore their names drifted freely.

ChatGPT goes on:

Animals that are culturally important get short, stable old words:

• English: cow, pig, dog, deer
• German:  Kuh, Schwein, Hund, Reh
• French: vache, porc, chien, cerf

But squirrels?

They were never domesticated, hunted much, used for transport or mythologically central. This means their names were:

• less stable
• more susceptible to sound changes
• more likely to drift, lengthen, or become cutesy/diminutive

Languages don't "protect" them from becoming phonetic messes. 

We humans love to classify things. One of the most brilliant classification systems ever devised was the one invented by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in the eighteenth century, the modern system of classifying all living organisms.

Linneaus' system classifies organisms biologically, based on shared characteristics and evolutionary relationships. The system is divided into categories ranging from broad, Kingdom (plants, animals, fungi, etc), to general, Class (mammal, bird, reptile, etc) to specific, Species (Sugar Maple, Shitake Mushroom, Human Being, etc.), 

Until this week however, I had never thought of a system that classified organisms based upon their "cultural importance." You learn something new every day.

What dawned on me, is that the difference between these two systems of classification define our naming systems for living things: the common names which vary from culture to culture, and the scientific names which are rigorously consistent as well as universally accepted. 

So the words:

• cow, 
• pig, 
• dog,
• deer, 
• and of course squirrel, 

the English common names for a handful of mammals, speak at least as much about our  relationship with these animals as the animals themselves. Consequently the names we give them vary from language to language.

Very messy.

While their scientific counterparts:

• Bos taurus, 
• Sus scrofra domesticus, 
• Canus lupis familiaris, 
• Odocoileus virginianus. 
• and Sciurus carolinensis,  *(3)

the naming convention invented by Carl Linneaus, (always italicized, Genus first, capitalized, followed by species in lower case, followed if necessary by a subspecies) point to specific animals in relationship to other animals, with little regard to our feelings for them. 

Most important, there is a unique scientific name for each species. 

Just the facts ma'am.

Much as biologists classify living organisms. linguists classify languages using similar hierarchies of categories, including the category Family. Linguists assume that members of the same family of languages are all descended from a single prototype language. The family to which English belongs is the Indo-European Family, which as the name implies, includes most of the languages of India as well as Europe, but not all. And the prototype language that these languages are likely descendants of has the tasty acronym PIE, for Prototype Indo European, which linguists think existed around 6,000 years ago. 

Just like the leftovers from this past Thanksgiving's dinner, there are no extant remnants of this PIE, as it existed about one millennium before the invention of writing. We know it through the comparison and reconstruction of roots of common words in the extant Indo European language family. Linguists believe that PIE evolved into Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and Latin, which in turn evolved over time into the current language members of the IE family, diverging into various branches including the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Germanic, Slavic, Hellenic, and Romance languages, among others.

It turns out that the English word squirrel has ancient roots. According to the sources I found, it goes back at least to the ancient Greek word σκίουρος" (skiouros), which like Eichhörnchen, is a compound noun. Skiouros (for convenience sake I'll stick here to the Latin spelling) consists of the roots skia (tail) and ouros (shadow), describing the animal's most conspicuous feature. Then Latin borrowed  the word turning it into Scurius, the word Linnaeus used to define the genus to which the nearly 300 different species of squirrels belong.

The part of the linguistic family tree on which English sits is the Germanic branch. In reality however, about sixty percent of all English words come from French, which itself sits on the Romance branch. If you're not familiar with your British history, this is a result of the Norman Conquest of Britain which began in 1066. As the Francophone conquerors took over much of the country, so did their language and today if you're an English speaker without a trace of knowledge of French and German, you're likely to be able to recognize more words from a French text than from the same text in German. 

The German that does remain in English mostly consists of words for basic things like body parts such as Hand, Arm and Finger which are the same in both languages, although pronounced differently and capitalized as all nouns are in German. Some German body part words that come close enough to English to be understood are Fuß (pronounced foos), Schulter and Knie.

There are also German animal names you'd recognize despite the difference in spelling like Maus, Fisch, Elefant and Kamel. Probably close enough are Bär, Fuchs and Kuh, while Löwe (lion) may be a bit of a stretch, but is still related. English doesn't typically use Schwein and Hund for pig and dog respectively but their equivalent words do come up from time to time so we can probably figure out what they mean. 

But we don't use Eichhörnchen. 

While it may not be immediately apparent, the  English word Squirrel is related to that silly French word we learned a little while ago, Ècureuil, The relation is more apparent when you consider that Ècureuil itself evolved over the ages having dropped the "s" in Escurueil. Adapted into the Anglo-French language that would become the basis for Modern English, the word became Esquirel, before eventually dropping the first vowel.

It may occur to you as it did me that since the French language didn't come to Britain until the 11th century, there must have been esquirels in Britain before then, there were, so they had to have had a name for them, which they did. That name was Acweorna. You may wonder why the Brits substituted the French inspired esquirel for the Germanic acweorna. I'll have to get back to you on that one.

According to ChatGPT, the words for squirrel in the languages of Europe (this post is already too long so I'll limit this discussion to Europe), mostly come from four different origins, each with its own description of the animal. 

We've already seen "little oak horn" which is found in many of the Germanic languages, English being an exception. Incidentally, the horn part describes the ears of European squirrels, (see the photo below). 

In addition to Eichhörnchen in German:

• In Dutch it's Eekhoorn.
• In Swedish it's Ekorre.
• In Norwegian it's Ekorn.
• In Danish it's Egern

and so on...

And we've seen there's "shadow tail" which many Romance languages as well as English inherited from the Greek.

In addition to Ècureuil in French:

• In Italian it's Scoiattolo.
• In Catalan it's Esquirol.
• And of course in English it's Squirrel.

Interestingly enough, in Modern Greek, the word  σκίουρος still exists unchanged, exactly as it did in the ancient language, unusual for names of animals.

The three other major Romance languages go in different directions:

In Spanish, the word for squirrel is the relatively humble Ardilla, which comes not from Greek through Latin but from a word dating back to the pre-Roman conquest of Iberia. Portuguese follows suit with Ardiha.

Romanian goes in a completely different direction, choosing the third  major European category defining the animal which comes from the western Slavic languages. According to ChatGPT, rather than a visual description, the origin of the word with its repetition of the first two syllables is possibly a play on the chattering sound that squirrels make. However another theory has the root coming from the proto Slavic word for climb. Take your pick.

In Romanian, the word for squirrel is Veveriţă.

A Transylvanian Veveriţă
Photo by Laura Vălean

• In Czech it's Veverka.
• In Slovak it's Veverička
• In Polish it's Wiewiórka.
• In Belarussian it's Вавёрка (vaviorka)

and so on...

The fourth European category for describing squirrels comes from the Eastern Slavic languages whose words describe the white underbelly of the animal, consequently their words for squirrel are based upon the word white, белый (belki) in Russian.

The word for squirrel in Russian is Белка (belka).

• In Ukrainian it's Білка (Bilka).
• ChatGPT claimed the Belarusian word for squirrel was Белка, the same as the Russian, but other sources I found say otherwise, see above. So I corrected ChatGPT and it admitted the error of its ways. For a geeky blast of fun, if you have the app, ask it what's the Belarusian word for squirrel. If it answers "Вавёрка", you can thank me.

There are other European words for squirrel that don't neatly fit into any of these categories but I think I've already belabored the point and you get the idea.

So how do the naming conventions for squirrel differ from those of other common animals? And given its tendency to err, are the assumptions of ChatGPT correct?

To test it, I thought I'd select three very different animals with three very similar English names, the cat, the bat and as promised, the rat.

Sounds like a Dr. Seuss story, didn't he write a book called the Bat in the Hat? I think so. Or was it the Rat in the Hat?

Anyway, using ChatGPT's criteria for rating "animal cultural importance", the cat, unlike the squirrel, is an animal of tremendous cultural significance, just ask our cat Ziggy. 

Our relationship with cats began about 10,000 years ago some archeologists believe, around the dawn of agriculture. They say that humans didn't domesticate the cat, rather it domesticated itself, as the grain that humans cultivated attracted rodents, which in turn attracted cats. The cats ate the rodents who were eating the grain, forming a symbiotic relationship between cats and humans, and the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.

Cats were venerated by the Ancient Egyptians 3,000 years ago, and by crazy cat ladies today, checking off the status of "mythologically central" in ChatGPT's list of traits box marking cultural significance. Come to think of it, the only category on that list that doesn't apply to cats, is the part about being used for transportation.

Oh wait, I stand corrected: 

Therefore I propose that with the possible exception of dog, no animal has more "cultural significance" than the cat. Well maybe one other, continue reading.

And according to ChatGPT, animals with tremendous cultural significance get "short, stable names."

Let's see if that's true, using (for the reasons explained above) selected languages in the European branches of the IE tree:

Romance languages:

• French: Chat
• Italian: Gatto
• Potuguese: Gato
• Romanian: Pisică  (what the hell?)
• Spanish: Gato

Germanic Languages:

• Danish: Kat
• Dutch: Kat
• English: Cat
• German: Katze
• Swedish: Katt

Slavic Languages:

• Belorusian: кошка (Kochka)
• Bulgarian: котка (Kotka)
• Czech: Kočka (Kochka)
• Polish: Kot
• Russian: кот (Kot)

With the exception of one outlier, Romanian in this limited sample, there is a clear relationship between the common names for the species Felis cattus (and there it is in Latin), that transcends the IE language branches which is a very strong indication that the word has roots that go all the way back to PIE or even earlier.

And the fact that most cultures decided to keep the word underscores the significance of the animal to their cultures.

So far so good.

Now let's try Bat:

Romance languages:

French: Chauve-souris

Italian: Pipistrello

Potuguese: Morsego

Romanian: Liliac

Spanish: Murciélago

Germanic Languages:

Danish: Flagermus

Dutch: Vleermuis

English: Bat

German: Fledermaus

Swedish: Fladdermus

Slavic Languages:

Belorusian: Кажан,(Kažan)

Bulgarian: Прилеп, (Prilep)
Czech: Netopýr
Polish: Nietoperz
Russian: Летучая мышь, (Letuchaya mysh')

Bat names on the other hand, with the exception of the Germanic branch are all over the place, even more than squirrel names. Does this mean bats are even less "culturally important" than squirrels? 

Like squirrels, bats don't make good pets, they're not very tasty (at least from what I hear), and don't provide much in the way of transportation, unless I suppose you're a flea.

But they more than make up for all that in terms of mythological centrality.

Consider the following, ripped off another AI source:

• Bats are often associated with darkness and the underworld in various cultures.
• In Chinese mythology, bats symbolize good fortune and happiness.
• Native American tribes view bats as symbols of transformation and rebirth.
• In European folklore, bats are linked to witchcraft and the supernatural.
• Some African myths depict bats as messengers between the living and the dead.
• In Mesoamerican cultures, bats are associated with fertility and the night.

Like squirrel names, bat names are largely compound words describing physical attributes of the animal. My second favorite of these is the wonderfully descriptive, if not biologically accurate German, Fledermaus, or in English, "fluttering mouse." Die Fledermaus is also the name of a famous opera by Johann Strauss Jr. As it's the holidays, here's a link to its jubilant overture.

The Slavic names listed above also play off the riff of flying mouse, culturally independent from each other. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising when you consider how unusual bats are in relation to other mammals. It's not hard to imagine the first human of every culture to lay eyes on one and saying to his partner, "Look Shiela, a flying mouse!"

The Spanish name for bat originally came from the Latin Mus caeculus meaning "little blind mouse." Over the centuries as Classical Latin spread throughout the Roman Empire, it was absorbed by the different populations and morphed into Vulgar Latin (or Latin of the people), which further morphed into what we now call the Romance languages. 

In the case of mus caeculus according to ChatGPT, "sounds shifted, vowels weakened, and the phrase became a single lexical unit." The shift was so radical that eventually Spanish speakers no longer heard the word as little blind mouse, but just plain Murciélago, for my money, the coolest bat name around.

Over in France, bats aren't blind, they're bald. Why bald? One theory for the French word for bat is that the word was originally Chouette-souris meaning owl mouse, which makes way more sense, although as my wife just pointed out, owls eat mice. Anyway, according to the theory, at some point Chouette was replaced, perhaps inadvertently with Chauve (bald) which is the moment when the French bats all lost their hair. 

And in Italy, Pipistrllo which certainly gives Murciélago a run for its money on the coolness scale, comes from the Classical Latin word for bat, Vespertillo, literally "evening bird". From there, courtesy of Google AI, Verpertillo evolved

through Old Italian vipistrello, with a possible influence from pipistrella (a small cape/overcoat), suggesting a "winged little creature" or "cloaked one" meaning.

Here's my rather uneducated take: perhaps because of their uniqueness, intriguing mysterious nature and mythological significance, bats capture the human imagination more than most other animals, which is why they inspire such cool names, just as squirrels, by comparison rather playful and silly animals, inspire playful, silly names.

It's just a thought.

OK the moment you've all been waiting for, on to Mr. Rat:

Romance languages:

French: Rat

Italian: Ratto

Potuguese: Rato

Romanian: Sobolan

Spanish: Rata

Germanic Languages:

Danish: Rotte

Dutch: Rat

English: Rat

German: Ratte

Swedish: Råtta

Slavic Languages:

Belorusian: пацук (pacuk)

Bulgarian: плъх ,(plŭkh)
Czech: Krysa
Polish: Szczur
Russian: крыса (Krysa)

The etymology of the various words for rat is super interesting, as of course is the animal itself.

Seriously.

Given the information presented above, if you just consider the Romance and Germanic branch lists with their consistent names for the animal, (with the exception of the typically contrarian Romanian), you could reasonably assume that the word rat has roots going back to PIE. But when you look at the Slavic words, there is no relation at all.

So what gives?

It turns out that the Latin name Rattus, came on the scene relatively late, perhaps in the third or fourth Century CE (AD if you prefer). Before that, Latin didn't distinguish between mice and rats, their word Mus sufficed for both. All that changed as the Black Rat, Rattus rattus, originally native to the Indian subcontinent, began to appear in Europe as trade routes were established with Asia. Uninvited, the rats hitched rides aboard ships headed westward and planted stakes in Europe.

The Black rat quickly proved itself to be an unwelcome guest wherever it landed.

Here's a quote from a fascinating book I read several years ago called: Rats: Obeservations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, by Robert Sullivan:

Rats generally wreak havoc on food supplies, destroying or contaminating crops and stored foods everywhere, Some estimates suggest that as much as one third of the world's food supply is destroyed by rats. 

I probably don't need to mention that serious as the problem rats caused the food supply, it got much worse. Again, quoting Robert Sullivan, rats...

carry diseases that we know of and they may carry diseases that we do not know of-in just the past century, rats have been responsible for the death of more than ten million people...

And that's just in the last century. In the Middle Ages, the Bubonic Plague pandemic (the Black Death), caused by the Yersenia pestus bacterium transmitted by fleas who hitched rides (also uninvited) aboard the backs of rats, took perhaps 100 million human lives, over one third of the population of Europe, during the course of two years.

Small wonder they had to come up with a new word to distinguish these intruders from their meeker cousins. No one knows exactly where the name Rattus comes from, some speculate it was a slang term invented by sailors, just like aargh and shiver-me-timbers. And as the rat problem persisted throughout much of Europe, the name rat spread along with the animal.

It is speculated that the name rat didn't catch on in Eastern Europe however as there, local names already existed that separated mice from rats.

 
The Black rat was eventually displaced in Europe by the larger Brown Rat, Rattus norwegicus,*(4) originally native to China, which first arrived in Europe in the 18th Century. Ironically, the displacement by the larger rats coincided with the end of the major plague waves leading some researchers to believe that the two events were related as the Brown rats' preference for the subterranean life led to less exposure to humans meaning fewer transmissions of the disease. 

Other scientists however speculate that rats' contribution to the spread of the pandemic was vastly exaggerated in the first place. *(5)

Regardless, our relationship with the pesky rodent has been strained to say the least. It's probably safe to say that rats are among the most vilified animals in existence. On the other hand, unlike bats and squirrels, rats are domesticated both as pets (rat fanciers insist they make fantastic pets), and perhaps more significantly as laboratory animals.

So where do rats fall on the "cultural importance scale"? 

• Domesticated? yes.
• Hunted much? yes, in parts of Asia and Africa where eating the animal is not considered taboo.
• Used for transportation? well like bats, only for fleas so I'll have to give this one a no, at least for humans.
• Mythologically central? Absolutely. Just for starters, the first animal on the Chinese zodiac is the rat. *(6)

And while it might fall under the category domesticated, ChatGPT's cultural relevance scale doesn't really mention work animals like dogs, oxen, sheep and a whole slew of other animals whose services we have historically depended upon. As such, their service to us as research animals (ethically challenging as that may be), makes rats to this day invaluable to human beings. 

Considering these categories, I'd say that rats are indeed culturally important animals. And when you add into the equation the negative traits (which as we've seen may be a bit exaggerated) that have affected human civilization for millennia, I'd say that rats are off-the-chart culturally significant.

So take that, cats, who are nowhere to be found in the Chinese zodiac.

CODA

To be honest, while it is entirely relatable, I'm not crazy about ChatGPT's use of the term "cultural importance" when it comes to describing animals, because it seems to convey a value judgement. That is to say an animal that is not "culturally important" must therefore be unimportant. Of course this defines human relationships with animals from time immemorial, in other words, if we're able to exploit an animal for our needs, it must be important. 

On the other hand, it works both ways. As we've seen, it was the cats who originally exploited humans. While there was mutual benefit in the relationship, this article claims that humans didn't really see a need to exploit cats in kind until the Egyptians did it, some 7,000 years later. 

It could also be argued that human exploitation of animals works to the animals' benefit, at least in a Darwinian sense. It may not work out so well for the individual, such as animals raised for food, but the relationship with humans all but insures the survival of their species. That's the subject for another post, or perhaps an entire book.

But in the grand scheme of things, no animal is unimportant as each and every species plays a role in the ecology of the planet. Consider that every time you stand before a mighty oak tree in the forest and realize that tree is there because at some time maybe a couple hundred years ago, a squirrel forgot where he buried his prized acorn. 

Or consider when you're sitting outside enjoying a lovely summer evening, that a single brown bat can consume up to 1,000 mosquitos per hour..*(7)

And beyond their indisputably crucial role in the ecosystems in which they are native, (messed up only when humans get involved), if you or a loved one has ever been treated for a disease that may have otherwise had serious consequences, you can more than likely thank a lab rat for its contribution to finding a cure. 

In short, no animal, plant or any living thing for that matter, is insignificant, ever.

NOTES:

*(1) Himmel über Berlin, (Wings of Desire) directed by Wim Wenders.

*(2) Es ist ein Ros entsprungen set to music composed by Michael Preatorius.

*(3) Cow, the female gender of Bos taurus is a word often used in contemporary English to describe Cattle of both genders. Why that is, is probably a worthwhile subject for an entire post.

Sus scofra domesticus and Canus lupis familiaris as their names imply, are the domesticated cousins of  Sus scofra (the wild boar) and Canis lupis (the grey wolf) which have evolved enough through their domestication to be considered sub species of their natural, i.e.: untouched by human hands cousins in the wild.

The common name "deer" is very broad, encompassing about fifteen genera. Odocoileus virginianus is the scientific name for the most common deer found in the Americas, the White-tailed deer.

Squirrel is an even broader term encompassing over 50 genera. The common English name for the species Sciurus carolinensis, Eastern grey squirrel, one without the big horny ears, is the most common squirrel in the United States. 

*(4) The Brown rat, among other things, is often referred to as the Norwegian rat because it was originally assumed the species arrived in Great Britain aboard ships hauling lumber from Norway. The English naturalist John Berkenhout bought into this myth, thereby preserving it for the ages as he's the one who christened the species with its scientific (binomial) name, Rattus norwegicus. So my assumption that scientific names have nothing to do with human feelings about living organisms, is itself a fallacy.The scientists who gave them their scientific names, were only human after all.

*(5) It should be noted that rats also die from exposure to the Yersenia pestus bacteria. Typical outbreaks of Bubonic Plague were proceeded by the discovery of large die-offs of the rodent. With their hosts dead, the fleas carrying the bacterium search for other hosts including humans. There were no such notable recordings of rodent die-offs before the Black Death suggesting that the pandemic had sources other than rats. 

*(6) Here's an assessment of the rat from a website I found on Chinese astrology:

Ranking the first in the Chinese zodiac, rat represents wisdom. Personality traits for the people born in the year of the Rat are intelligent, charming, quick-witted, practical, ambitious, and good at economizing as well as social activities. The weaknesses are that the Rats are likely to be timid, stubborn, wordy, greedy, devious, too eager for power and love to gossip.

*(7) There's a killjoy in every room. This article claims to debunk the "myth" concerning bats and mosquitos. But the gist of the article is that mosquitos only account for a small amount a bat's diet, and that bats alone are not the "solution" to the mosquito problem.  What the article does not deny is the number of mosquitos consumed by bats, and it also fails to mention that without bats, there would certainly be far more mosquitos.

Animal Stories

My daughter was watching a movie the other day called Hachi: A Dog's Tale. When I realized what she was watching, I knew I couldn't sit and watch it with her. The movie is loosely based on a true story about a dog in Tokyo who every evening walked to the local train station to meet his master as he came home from work, and continued to do so, long after the master died. The real dog Hachiko became a Japanese cultural symbol and hero. To this day there is a statue of him in front of Shibuya Staion in the neighborhood of the same name in the Japanese capital.

Like many people, I can withstand stories dealing with the most profound human suffering, misery and death, but I can't handle sad or sentimental tales about animals. Frankly, I have no idea where this feeling comes from. While I have respect for them and like animals just fine, I don't particularly consider myself an animal lover.

Perhaps my feelings come from the attributes most of us value in animals, especially our pets namely, trust, loyalty and unconditional love. Or maybe it is out of compassion for the vulnerability of all non-human animals, both domestic and in the wild, to the whims of nature and especially from their biggest threat, the most dangerous species of all, Homo sapiens.

We human beings have a peculiar relationship with the other species of life forms with whom we share this small planet. Every culture has a different philosophy regarding non-human life ranging from the profound respect found in certain Native American cultures who see all living things as kindred spirits, to many Western European cultures who took these words found in the Bible...

Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

...to mean "and God said: 'the world is your oyster, do whatever the hell you please with it.'".

And Western man did just that.

For example, until well into the twentieth century, it was common for Westerners not to give a second thought about wiping out entire species of plants and animals that were considered useful, dangerous, or simply inconvenient.

That has changed drastically just in my lifetime, brought about not in a small part by the environmental movement of the sixties and seventies which warned of the catastrophic, irreparable destruction we were inflicting upon our planet. Today, most reasonable people understand that all life is connected in one way or other, and the extinction of one species will have drastic repercussions for other forms of life, something Native Americans understood for centuries.

I'd also say it is the evolution, (some might call it devolution) of Western religious thought in recent years, at least in some circles, that enables us to have a more nuanced interpretation of the word"dominion" as found in Genesis 1:28. In other words, to many contemporary Jews and Christians, the phrase "have dominion over" is now closer to "take responsibility for" rather than, "use your capricious will", regarding our fellow travelers aboard Spaceship Earth.

That said, today there is still no common ground, general standard, or set of rules governing how we should feel about or treat animals. That point was was brought home last week after a tragedy that took place at the Cincinnati Zoo. If your memory needs refreshing, a three year old boy snuck away from his mother and found his way into an enclosure which is supposed to separate human visitors from the great apes who call the enclosure home. The boy caught the attention of a 17 year old male western lowland gorilla named Harambe. At first, Harambe went over to the boy and appeared to comfort him as part of the boy's journey into the gorilla's home included a fifteen foot drop into the enclosure. Then, as humans are wont to do in situations like these. witnesses at the scene screamed and carried on, which appeared to startle Harambe who began to drag the boy by his ankles around the enclosure. Zoo officials decided there was nothing they could do but shoot the 450 pound ape to save the little boy, as no one could predict what Harambe's next move would be.

Harambe's death set off a firestorm of protest coming from every point of view along the animal rights vs human sovereignty continuum. Torn as this nation is about politics, I'd say that judging from the articles and comments I've been reading, the struggle over politics is peanuts compared to the emotions stirred by the killing of Harambe.

For starters, there was the natural reaction that questioned why zoo officials couldn't use a tranquilizer dart like they do on TV, rather than live ammunition. The reason given by the zoo made perfect sense, the tranquilizer would take time to take effect, meanwhile the gorilla might have become understandably irascible due to being shot, and take out his anger on the little boy. It's very clear to me that the zoo put every effort they could into insuring the safety of the child, even if it meant putting down one of their most treasured animals. It was a tragic but necessary decision.

That logic was not accepted by scores of individuals who  were appalled by the willful taking of Harambe's life. Some went so far as to say that every effort should have been made to protect the gorilla, even if it meant sacrificing the child. Along those lines, there has been a groundswell of public opinion stating that the mother of the boy should be held liable for Harambe's death. After all, the gorilla did nothing wrong, it was the mother who failed to watch her child properly, or so they say. An online petition called "Justice for Harrambe" was circulated by the organization Change.org and was signed by hundreds of thousands of individuals. The petition states:

This beautiful gorilla lost his life because the boy's parents did not keep a closer watch on the child. We the undersigned believe that the child would not have been able to enter the enclosure under proper parental supervision. Witnesses claim that they heard the child state that he wished to go into the enclosure and was actively trying to breach the barriers. This should have prompted the parents to immediately remove the child from the vicinity. It is believed that the situation was caused by parental negligence and the zoo is not responsible for the child's injuries and possible trauma.We the undersigned want the parents to be held accountable for the lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life.

Other individuals blame the zoo for failing to make the enclosure, which apparently has been around many years without incident. more secure. Still others claim the very existence of zoos in the first place is cruel and unnecessary. 

On the other side are the folks who are appalled that so much attention was given to the death of a gorilla. Many are using this story as a jumping off point for advancing their own agenda. Father Michael Pfleger of Chicago, never one to miss an opportunity to get attention, publicly expressed disgust that the death of a gorilla was getting more press than the shooting deaths of scores of young Chicagoans, (I'm not so sure that is true). Pro-lifers are taking the opportunity to say that people are more concerned about one gorilla than the tens of thousands of un-born children who are aborted each year. Even the Black Lives Matter folks have gotten in on the act claiming (in my opinion rightfully so) that the animal rights people seem to value the life of the gorilla more than the little boy, who happened to be black. They go on to condemn the creation of the "Justice for Harambe" petition for its being in their opinion, racially motivated, an idea which I think is absurd.

Mona Charen wrote an article in the conservative publication National Review titled: A Gorilla "Tragedy". The quotes around the word tragedy should tip the reader off that the writer believes tragedy in this case, is a poor choice of words. For Charen, we are "confusing animals with people" and that shame would be a better word to describe what befell Harambe. The fact that Ms. Charen took pains to point out that President Obama called Harambe's death a tragedy, leads me to believe that her concern here is more her own political agenda than philosophy or semantics.

She does make some interesting points however. Here's how she ends her piece:

Concern for animal welfare is not decadent. Some serious people argue that zoos and aquariums are inherently cruel, and they deserve a hearing. What’s so off about the reactions to this sad tale is the confusion about who has moral standing. “Justice” is not something to which animals are entitled, because animals are not moral agents. Those demanding “justice” for a gorilla are saying something nonsensical. Suppose the gorilla had climbed out of the enclosure and grabbed the boy? Would his advocates demand that he be tried for assault? Of course not. The gorilla cannot be held legally or morally liable for his actions, because he is a dumb beast. By the same token, he cannot receive “justice” from anyone. Animals can and should be treated humanely not because they are humane but because we are.

I agree with everything she says in her conclusion with the exception of her own poor choice of these words: "because he is a dumb beast." Here she is using this hopelessly outdated and intentionally provocative expression, in order to taunt certain (i.e.: liberal) readers whom she knew would find the term objectionable and yes, politically incorrect. Indeed it worked, several comments to the article slammed her use of that term.

Yet she is on to something here, namely the issue of justice for animals. It is no accident that our symbol for justice is a blindfolded woman holding a scale, the message being that all under the law are equal. It hasn't always worked that way in practice but that is the very foundation of our system of jurisprudence. 

Simply put, it is impossible to equate the lives of animals with the lives of human beings. If we did, I would be spending my life behind bars charged with, and admittedly guilty of the serial murder of countless creepy crawly animals in my home. You might argue that a gorilla is not the same as a cockroach. With this I agree, but that argument only serves to prove my point. Either all species are equal, or they are not. If in our eyes, the life of a gorilla is as valuable as the life of a human being, why then isn't the life of a cockroach equal to the life of a gorilla? Where do we draw the line?

Harambe - REUTERS/Cincinnati Zoo/Handout via Reuters

Animal lovers in fact are always drawing lines. Harambe has been described over and over again in the most superlative of terms, beautiful, magnificent, majestic, intelligent, and so on. Much has been made of the fact that members of Harambe's species are seriously endangered in the wild. If a child found himself inside say a hyena enclosure and zoo officials decided to shoot one or two of those animals to save that child, would there have been even a fraction of the outrage that resulted after Harambe's death?

Let's face it, plentiful, ugly animals always get the short shrift when it comes to PR, even among animal lovers.

What about the mother, did she neglect her responsibility to keep her child out of harm's way? I don't know, I wasn't there. The same witnesses who were cited in the "Justice for Harambe" petition were also quoted elsewhere as saying the child went from declaring his intention to descend into the gorilla enclosure to actually being there, in the blink of an eye. "The mother was not negligent" were the emphatic words of the people who were actually there. A few days ago Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters declined to press any charges against the mother. 

What I can say as a parent, is that two times my daughter was involved in accidents requiring a visit to the hospital, both of which took place literally right under my nose. In both cases she zigged when she should have zagged, but I'd be lying to you if I claimed there was nothing I could have done to prevent those accidents. What I could have done was prevent her from exploring the world,  from expanding her boundaries, from acting upon her creativity, and from having fun, but I didn't. Unfortunately, accidents happen, it's the way if the world. 

Likewise the little boy's mother could have prevented him from falling into Harambe's enclosure. Had she only tethered him to a leash so she could tend to her other children while preventing him from straying too far away, none of this would have happened. Short of that, she could have wrapped him head to toe in a bubble wrap suit so if he did manage to get away and roll or bounce into the enclosure, Harrambe's dragging him around his confines like a rag doll wouldn't have injured him, and he could have been rescued without the gorilla having to die. Of course the most effective thing the mother could have done was to stay home.

Because this incident concluded with the death of Harambe, people feel the need to blame someone. Had the ending been different, as it was in Chicago a few years ago when a child ended up in the arms of a female gorilla in a similar enclosure who tended to him and gently carried the child to the zookeepers, the attitude of the public would have been, no harm, no foul. That incident, exactly the same situation with a much different result, became the feel good story of the year, so no one batted an eye about those parents' supposed neglect.

Finally, what about our complicated relationship with animals? Is it possible to respect animals and still confine them to zoos, use them for scientific experiments, or eat them? I believe the answer lies in understanding our own place in nature. As I've stated before in this space, nature itself has no value system, nature simply reacts.

As the most successful species we know of, humans now have the power to destroy virtually all life on Planet Earth. We also have the power to save our planet from ourselves. A small part of that is the effort to bring species of plants and animals back from the verge of extinction. Conservatories and zoos play a huge role in that effort through education, research, fund raising and to a lesser extent, reintroducing captive members of an endangered species back into the wild. Zoos are important institutions because they teach us and future generations about animals, their role (and ours) in nature, and the necessity of conservation. All of the nature documentaries in the world can't hold a candle to the impact of seeing a gorilla or lion or any wild animal up close, looking at you straight in the eye. Nature doesn't care about the fate of species of plants and animals. Nature simply adapts, human beings either care, or they don't.

Like it or not, humans are among the animals on this planet who eat other animals. True, unlike certain meat eating animals, we don't have to eat meat in order to survive and it certainly would benefit many of us to eat less of it. As it's part of our nature however, I don't have a moral issue with eating meat. Nor by the same token, do I have a problem with using animals for responsible scientific research. 

The one caveat I would add in regards to our treatment of animals in captivity can be summed up in one word, respect. We need to learn from Native Americans who prayed for the souls of the animals they took for food. We need to be constantly vigilant to insure that the animals we use for our food or for research are treated humanely during their lifetimes. We must remember that everything we eat, plant or animal, was once alive, and we must teach ourselves to be thankful to those living things for giving up their lives so that we may live. Again, nature doesn't care if we live or die, any more than it cares about the lives of the plants and animals we eat. But human beings do care, or at least they should. The word humane sums up all the positive attributes that define us as human beings.

I believe it is not only right, but our moral imperative to take responsibility for the welfare of our world. Integral to that is to treat all life, plant and animal with respect, and to treat all animals, especially those whom we put into our service, be they housed in zoos, laboratories, farms or our homes, humanely. 

If we fail at this, then we are the ones who are the dumb beasts.

The ethical treatment of animals

I could see it coming for years. Perhaps it was when I first saw a mouse in the basement of my childhood home. Questioning the morality of setting a trap to break the neck of the tiny rodent, I pleaded with my parents to let it live while quietly wishing would it go away on its own. When the critter's offspring made their way upstairs into the kitchen and den, then ultimately up to the second floor where my bedroom was, not only was I setting the traps myself, but I went from timidly disposing the trap and the dead mouse together all the while keeping my eyes closed, to looking the little buggers in the eye as I loosened the spring trap, thereby releasing their lifeless bodies into the trash so I could reset the bloody instrument of death.

Maybe I saw it coming when I read an article in high school saying the problem of world hunger could be solved simply if the highly inefficient system of devoting millions of acres of farmland to raising feed crop for livestock were instead devoted to raising crops intended solely for human consumption. I toyed with the idea of becoming a vegetarian myself, but never stuck to my guns, I just liked eating meat too much.

That didn't stop me from having ferocious arguments with my father about the morality of eating animals, since it was a luxury I felt, we could learn to live without. My reasoning was there would be enough food for everyone, the animals we ate would be spared, and we would all live happily ever after. My father countered my argument by saying: "shut up, you don't know what you're talking about." Having experienced real hardship in his life, the loss of both his parents before his tenth birthday, the first hand experience of war, the occupation of his country by two hostile foreign powers, leaving his homeland for a foreign country with nothing but the clothes on his back and lots of ambition, my father, God rest his soul, didn't have the luxury of time on his hands to philosophize about what he was eating. He experienced times in his life when just having something to eat at all was enough. That feeling never left him.

Not having had that problem, what occurred to me back in my formative years was that one day, society would have to come to grips with our relationship with animals. On that day I reckoned, it would no longer suffice to justify our treatment of animals by simply stating that the difference was this: animals are animals, period. They're not human beings. "But aren't people animals too?" I'd ask. "Shut up, you talk too much" was the answer I got.

That only strengthened my resolve. My brazenness regarding our rodent intruders and my fondness for eating animal flesh notwithstanding, I could not bring myself to feel superior to non-human animals. For example, I never bought into the idea perpetuated by the religious, that human beings had souls while other animals did not. Nor did I agree with my mother's less metaphysical assertion that animals only acted upon instinct, not logic or acquired knowledge like humans.

My formative years coincided with a period in history when ideas about how people treated each other were turned upside down. Civil rights was the burning issue of the day along with the Vietnam War and the battle for equal rights for women. All those issues centered around ethics and morality, the struggle between the "us versus them" mentality, and the idea that all human beings deserve to be treated equally with respect and dignity. Hard to believe given the way people continue to treat one another today, but I truly believe we have come a long way in our society since those days. This country is more racially and ethnically diverse than at any time in its history and I believe, all the better for it.

Back in the seventies while I was having all those arguments with my father, it occurred to me that once the battle for the ethical treatment of human beings would be won, there would be new battles to be fought, as there always have been throughout human history. One of those battles I thought  to myself, would be the struggle for animal rights.

Sure enough, in 1980 the organization PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) was founded. There are lots of animal welfare organizations that pre-date PETA, the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) comes immediately to mind. The difference is that PETA's goal is not humane treatment, but equality for animals; its catchy slogan, "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment or abuse in any way" tells us in no uncertain terms that this is an organization with radical ideals.

It's the letter "E" in PETA that is the organization's linchpin, and what is the most complicated aspect of the group. On the surface, the idea of the ethical treatment of animals is not troubling. After all, anyone with half a conscience understands that animals at the very least experience pain and would agree that it is unethical to make an animal needlessly suffer.

But ethics go much deeper than that. It's not difficult to determine basic right from wrong when it comes to human beings. That's because people of all colors and creeds have come to accept an axiom that serves as their moral guidepost, one that stands alone above all others. It has been around as long as people have been making rules of behavior, and it forms the backbone of just about every religion and legal system we have devised. So by and large how to we determine if our intended actions are ethical? We ask ourselves this simple question: "How would I like it if somebody did that to me?"

Now suppose we apply that "Golden Rule" to our treatment of animals. Since we wouldn't want ourselves or our children to be killed and eaten, applying the Golden Rule to animals obviously would preclude eating them. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Taking the application of ethics to determine our relationship with animals to its logical conclusion, any domestication of animals would have to be considered unethical, since we expect as human beings that it is our inherent right to have free will to determine our lives.

This means that every animal from a lion in a zoo, to a pig or horse on a farm, to a lab rat in a cage, to a goldfish in a bowl, ethically speaking, should be allowed the freedom to choose its own destiny. Anything less, PETA and its allies argue, is tantamount to slavery.

I should point out that PETA does not advocate releasing domesticated animals into the wild, far from it; but they do say we'd all be better off had the domestication of animals never happened in the first place.

Now I'm not going to slam PETA or similar minded organizations, they are a committed bunch whose heart is in the right place. As you can see from reading the top of this post, I asked those questions myself at one time; in a way I'm cut from the same cloth.

Unlike PETA members however, when I was a teenager I felt I had to reconcile my shortcomings when it came the inconsistencies of my feelings about animals and my actions that were very unlikely to change anytime soon. It turned out the answer to the problem was ridiculously simple.

We got a cat.

Before long, our mouse problem was solved. Of course, death by cat is much more gruesome than the trap. But I reasoned that has been nature's way of population control for eons, and who was I to argue with Mother Nature?

The cat experience made me understand that we humans live part time in two worlds, the natural world and the man made one. As much as we may try to avoid the former in favor of the latter, we can't completely avoid the laws of nature. We all experience bad weather, we all get sick, and even though we may be able to put it off, at some point we will all die. The man made world has done a good job of making nature's less appealing aspects more bearable for many of us but in the end, we are all at the mercy of its whims.

A big difference between the natural world and the man made world is that in nature, there is no concept of ethics. In nature, it is the strong who survive to live another day, while the weak inevitably perish. There are animals who by nature are predators and other animals who are prey. Most predators are both. By human standards, this system in inherently unfair. In the anthropomorphic world of fairy tales, nature documentaries  and Disney films, we root for the underdog: the poor three little pigs against the big bad wolf, the Emperor penguin mother on her unbearably long quest for food for her family against the seal that wants to eat her, or the brave, morally superior lion king Mufasa against his corrupt brother Scar.

But nature could not care less about the plight of the poor penguin and her starving family back home, any more than it cares who leads the pride of lions, evil Scar or noble Mufasa. Nature doesn't care, it simply adapts.

Right and wrong are man made concepts. I have no idea whether some animals share these concepts.  My guess is that most wild animals, (large herbivores like elephants and gorillas may be an exception), are so busy, engaged with everyday survival that even if they could, developing systems of ethics would not be particularly beneficial to them from an evolutionary standpoint.

Through domestication which began thousands of years ago, human beings brought animals into their own world of right and wrong, of laws and ethics. Gradually over time, changing ideas of ethics, and most importantly, the decline of our dependence upon animals, our attitudes toward them have changed. A PETA member might argue that since domesticated animals have been forcibly removed from the natural world to reside in the human one, they deserve to benefit from the same laws that protect human beings. In one of their tracts, PETA says this :

Animals surely deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation.

The paradox is that statement flies in the face of their saying animals should never have been domesticated in the first place. It seems PETA is as guilty as anyone when it comes to anthropomorphizing nature. As opposed to domesticated animals, animals in the wild have no rights whatsoever, they have only their strength, perseverance and their will to survive to protect them.  No animal in nature is ever free from suffering and exploitation. No animal in nature dies of old age.

I said earlier that the day of reckoning would soon be at hand. I was reminded of that when I heard the story about the new mayor of New York City waging a controversial campaign to ban horse drawn carriages in that city. The horse carriages, in Mayor Bill de Blasio's words' are:

...not humane; they're not appropriate to the year 2014; it's over.

I find it an interesting debate because it illustrates the widely divergent opinions we have on the treatment of animals, even within the animal welfare community. PETA (who has  remained uncharacteristically silent on this issue as far as I can tell), would argue that putting any animal to work, especially for "entertainment" purposes, is unethical. The ASPCA has argued that while they don't object to working animals per se, putting an animal in the dangerous environment of the streets of New York, constitutes animal cruelty. Other animal advocates have countered no, these animals have been bred particularly for this type of work, and it does them no harm at all. Still others would say quite reasonably: "an out of work horse is a dead horse."

The thing that troubles me about the horse carriage issue in New York is that the mayor and his allies are prepared to wipe out an entire business and the livelihoods of people based solely on personal conviction, rather than credible, objective, evidence. Whether the horse carriages are "humane" or not is opinion, not fact. The mayor is certainly entitled to his beliefs as much as anyone, however running a city based upon a mayor's personal conviction is in my opinion no different than running any government based upon an elected official's religious views.

Clearly we have a long way to go before we can learn to justly adjudicate issues regarding animal rights. As we have no Golden Rule regarding animals we can all rally around, it's going to be a struggle. PETA and other radical animal rights groups don't do themselves any favors by making statements like this one:

Only prejudice allows us to deny others the rights that we expect to have for ourselves. Whether it’s based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or species, prejudice is morally unacceptable.

Species prejudice, really?

There is also a backlash against PETA from other pro-animal rights groups regarding their support of euthanasia over so called "no-kill" shelters which in effect sentence unwanted animals to lifetime confinement in a cage.

Full disclosure: I happen to agree with PETA on that one, as well as several other stances of theirs.

I do think the tide is turning and if the current New York animal rights struggle is any indication, we'll be seeing a lot more controversial struggles regarding animals in the near future.

For what it's worth, my theory is this: nature for better or worse has put human beings at the top of the food chain. We are far and away the most adaptable and as a result, successful species of life on the planet, (with the possible exception of rats and cockroaches). The fact that we evolved to eat meat is neither right nor wrong, as nothing in nature can be judged by those criteria. Therefore the personal choice to eat meat, even when there is an alternative, cannot be unethical; it is simply put, part of our nature.

As for our other employment of animals this is what I think:

• Animals and humans have lived together for thousands of years. Contrary to what many in the animal rights movements believe, I feel it has for the most part been a mutually beneficial relationship, certainly not without exceptions. 
• I believe that zoos when well designed, play an important role in society, educating and sometimes inspiring visitors about wildlife, ecology, and the natural world. 
• I believe that while countless animals have died in scientific studies, their lives were not lost in vain, and we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude, since many of us even owe our lives to their sacrifice. 
• I find it very difficult indeed to question the ethics of employing working animals such as those who give help to the blind, comfort to the sick and grieving, and countless other valuable services.
• Likewise for pets who often provide the only loving companionship their people experience.

In return, I believe that it is our moral imperative to treat every living creature with honor and respect. We are without a doubt responsible for the animals we created and for their welfare. As I said before, no animal should suffer needlessly.

Having said that, as a part time resident of the natural world, I am a human being and as such, I am compelled to put members of my own species first, just as I believe nature intended it to be.

Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it. It's continuously a work in progress and make no claims for it being bulletproof. 

We humans may not be the masters of the universe we think we are. Yet the power is surely within our hands to destroy all life (save perhaps the rats and the cockroaches) on our tiny planet. In that vein, we truly as it says in Genesis, have dominion over the world and all those that live in it. Since that is the case, it would behoove us to rule wisely.

Unfortunately, we're not a very wise species, we can't even figure out how to best get along with each other, let alone the other species with whom we share this planet.

Hold on tight my friends, it's going to be a long and bumpy ride.

The Carriage Trade

Riding in a horse drawn carriage through Central Park on a snowy winter's day is a unique urban experience.  I wouldn't personally know since I've never shelled out the fifty bucks not including tip for a twenty minute buggy ride, but it sure looks swell. If the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio gets his way, that iconic 150 year New York institution will soon go the way of Gage & Tollner, Penn Station and the automat.

One of de Blasio's campaign promises, along with other "progressive" issues such as universal pre-K, and the growing problem of income equality in the Big Apple, was to ban the the horse carriages. Citing cruelty to animals, the mayor said:

We are going to quickly and aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer a part of the landscape in New York City... They're not humane; they're not appropriate to the year 2014; it's over.

While de Blasio's other big ticket issues are on the back burner, the mayor is going full steam ahead with his plan to put hundreds of New Yorkers, both human and equine, out of work. Not to worry says the mayor, the future of the horses is secure as provisions for all of them have been assured on farms designed to take care of former work horses. As for the humans, the mayor has told them there will be jobs waiting for them as drivers of the new electric powered "vintage style" automobiles that are planned to replace the carriages. That is of course if they can come up with the $150,000 medallion fee.

Two groups, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Annimals (ASPCA) and a group called New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets (NYCLASS), are staunchly in favor of the ban. The director of the New York branch of another another animal advocacy group, Friends of Animals had this to say about the condition of the horses:

They are shackled into their carriages, pulling through streets of a chaotic unnatural environment and go back to their cells... They need the ability to graze and roam freely. They never get that in New York. They live a life of total confinement, day after day.

Some of that may be correct, however there are strict rules in place governing the treatment of the animals. The horses get every other day off, they are not permitted to work in temperatures below 18F or above 90F, and they each get five weeks vacation in the country every year. From all the accounts I've read, each carriage horse resides in a well maintained stall whose size is mandated by the city to be no less than 64 square feet, about the size of a great many New York City apartments and hotel rooms.

Many New Yorkers of the species Homo sapiens in fact would be more than happy to live under those conditions.

It's true the streets of New York City may have been a chaotic, unnatural environment for the horses' distant wild relatives. Not so for the horses of today which are the result of domestication and breeding that has gone on some say for over 6000 years. The carriage horses are draft horses, bred specifically to pull heavy loads. Draft horses have been doing this kind of work in the county and city alike for millennia; it is in their nature to pull things just as it is the nature of a thoroughbred to run, a retriever to retrieve, and a sheep dog to herd. One can say these animals are just as much the creation of human beings and as such are just as unnatural as cars, streets and traffic jams.

The big difference of course is that animals are living beings. Just as we created them, we have the responsibility to care for their welfare. With a few rare exceptions, the people in New York's carriage industry have proven to do just that. The most sensible piece I've read about the horses themselves was written a couple years ago and was published on a web site devoted to sustainability issues called, (what else?) Tree Hugger.com. You can read that piece written by Jaymi Heimbuch here. In a nutshell, she writes that the horses of New York City live and work in no worse conditions than the humans.

Not surprisingly, the people working in the industry are less than thrilled with the prospect of losing their livelihoods. Most of them consider themselves horse people, not gearheads. Driving a car through the busy New York streets while being expected to give tours at the same time, is not the same thing as doing it while at the reins of a carriage. Clearly it's not a slam dunk by any means that the horse people will make a successful transition to the cars, even if they wanted to.

The New York City horse carriages provide a valuable service not only to tourists who can afford to ride in them, but also to the countless men, women and children, New Yorkers and visitors alike, who get the chance to see, hear, to of course smell, and on occasion interact with the animals. My own experience of observing the horse drawn carriages while walking through Calvert Vaux and Fredrick Law Olmsted's beautiful Central Park, smack dab in the middle of the magnificent concrete jungle of Manhattan is this: an overwhelming feeling that all is right with the world. They just happen to be one of those lovely things that make New York, well, New York.

Incidentally, the cars that Mayor de Blasio and others have proposed to replace the carriages look similar to the car used in the 1968 movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. If you're old like me and can remember the film, that car could fly. If the mayor's new cars could also fly, even I would pay the fifty bucks for a short ride. Grounded however, I can't imagine many people would find the experience appealing for that price.

One might assume the new mayor of the largest, most important city in this country would have more pressing matters at hand than 250 or so well cared for animals. A cynic might even suggest that beyond an overwhelming concern for the horses' well being, the mayor might have an ulterior motive. Well it turns out he does.

It just so happens that one of the major contributors to the mayor's election campaign was a fellow by the name of Steven Nislick. Nislick founded NYCLASS, one of the the organizations mentioned above. For years he has been a major critic of the carriage companies and the stables that house the animals. He also gave a significant amount of money to a group focused on defeating de Blasio's primary opponent, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was opposed to the ban. Nislick also happens to be a very successful real estate developer. While he denies it, it has been widely speculated that Nislick has set his sights on the land where several horse stables currently sit upon, valuable Manhattan real estate on the West Side. With the carriages and stables gone, one would assume that the land they occupy would become available, and someone (hmmm someone like Nislick perhaps?) could get in on the action. Adding fuel to the fire, an anti-carriage leaflet in 2008 distributed by Nislick stated:

Currently, the stables consist of 64,000 square feet of valuable real estate on lots that could accommodate up to 150,000 square feet of development. These lots could be sold for new development.

Again it's only speculation that Steve Nislick and Mayor de Blasio's motivations are not entirely pure. But it would seem if they were truly concerned about animal welfare, especially the fate of domesticated horses, there would be bigger fish to fry. Why for example doesn't the mayor go after the horse racing industry? One of the most storied race tracks in America sits within de Blasio's jurisdiction. It's called Aqueduct Racetrack and it has been a fixture in South Ozone Park in Queens since 1894. The racing industry has a dreadful record when it comes to animal welfare. Where the carriage industry often takes in animals that would otherwise be rejected, breeders of race horses annually produce thousands more animals than can adequately be taken care of after their racing days are over. Given that the life expectancy of a horse is about fifteen years longer than the average racing career, most race horses face uncertain fates after retirement, many of them are shipped off to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada. In some cases, those are the lucky ones.

As far as I know, de Blasio has not uttered a word about the humaneness, or lack thereof, of horse racing. The jobs and revenue that the horse carriages bring into the city are a mere drop in the bucket compared to the vast potential of the racetrack and it's adjacent "racino." If you believe that Mayor de Blasio will make an impassioned demand to make Aqueduct and its casino go away for the sake of the horses' quality of life, then I have a nice bridge spanning the East River you may be interested in buying.

The mayor's prompt action regarding the ban has drawn ridicule in many circles from the New York Times to Rush Limbaugh. Already a favorite target of Limbaugh's, the horse issue has given the bellicose right-wing commentator/entertainer plenty of fodder for his diatribes against the mayor and his progressive agenda. At best, if the mayor is indeed sincere (and I have every reason to believe he is) in his concern for the animals' well being, putting this particular issue at the forefront of his administration in City Hall makes him appear frivolous and out of touch, given all the serious issues he must deal with. At worst, given his relationship with Nislick, even the suspicion of impropriety which certainly exists now, makes the new mayor appear to be a demagogue and a hypocrite, playing on the emotions of a small but vociferous group of well intentioned people, (the carriage opponents), as a springboard for his political ambitions. His actions as far as this issue is concerned will do little to promote his ambitious plans of helping the less fortunate people of New York, and perhaps will even go a long way to destroy them.

On the first day of this year, addressing the state of economic inequality in NYC in his inaugural address to his new constituents, newly sworn in Mayor de Blasio had this to say:

So let me be clear. When I said we would take dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities, I meant it. And we will do it. I will honor the faith and trust you have placed in me. And we will give life to the hope of so many in our city. We will succeed as One City.

By attempting to destroy an industry, its infrastructure, the other businesses that support it, and the working class jobs that go along with them, Mayor Bill de Blasio is perhaps unwittingly taking his city yet another step closer toward his stated goal of "One City".

One City that is, made up entirely of millionaires.

Noble bird

A clever ad campaign is currently being waged on an L car near you. Like many ads these days, if you're not paying close attention, you may get sucked into it without realizing what it's trying to sell you. Because I've enjoyed reading these ads during some idle time on the train, I'll put in a plug for the product they're selling, Amstel Light beer. The name of the campaign is "Savor Complexity" and the ads feature stories containing fascinating facts about common, heretofore under-appreciated stuff such as the stop light, burgers, dartboards and ping pong. I guess the comparison they're trying to make between these random objects and their beer is this: Amstel Light may taste like water, but that water has a very interesting (and complex) story.

Anyway the story that really caught my attention and inspired this post, is Amstel Light's tribute to the pigeon.

As an on again, off again birder, I understand the joy at seeing a species of bird for the first time, adding one more check to my "life list." However to most birders, a bird that one day is a splendid discovery, will become tiresome if you see it often enough. I remember going on a Audubon Society sponsored bird walk around a lovely nature preserve near our home. Some novice birders were thrilled at their first sighting of a beautiful black bird with red bands on its wings. The leader sighed, shook his head and said a little mockingly: "Man, that's just a Red Winged Blackbird." You can imagine then where the city pigeon fits on the hierarchy of your average birder. Of course, that's not the birds' fault, or problem.

Pigeons come from the same family as doves: Columbidae. Most people think of doves as lovely things to behold, the white one is known all over the world as a symbol of peace and love. Pigeons don't get that kind of respect. You may ask then, what's the difference between a pigeon and a dove. Well nothing actually, the two names are interchangeable, there is no scientific distinction between birds that are called pigeons and birds that are called doves. In fact, the official common name for your typical city pigeon is Rock Dove. Its scientific classification is Columba livia.

Many people however classify pigeons as flying rats, or Fugiens mures if you prefer. Here is a web site devoted to the cause of pigeon haters. This would be their anthem.

Whether you call them pigeons, rock doves, or winged rats, the birds do have some traits people find offensive. They're slobs for starters, roosting communally on poop strewn ledges, their nests are loosely thrown together collections of anything they can find, not the tightly woven architectural wonders that many other birds build. They don't seem to mind sharing their living quarters with the corpses of their fallen comrades either. 

It's true that pigeons share some traits with rats. Their populations are intrinsically tied to those of human beings, and both are indelibly associated with the city. Rats and pigeons have been domesticated for thousands of years and as such, they have contributed much to our own species. In the wild however, people consider pigeons and rats to be pests. Both Columba livia and Rattus norvegicus are resilient, opportunistic species perfectly willing to adapt and as a result are tenacious survivors. 

Here the comparison ends.

Pigeons came to be city dwellers because people brought them here, as pets or working animals. The pigeon population that exists in virtually every city on the planet, consists of descendants of these domesticated birds that either were released by, or escaped from their owners. You can tell city pigeons are feral animals because of the variation of plumage, a result of selective breeding. The pigeon pictured above for example, is a variant of the familiar bird found in nature whose body is made up of mostly light gray feathers with dark stripes on the wings. The plumage of the bird in the picture would not occur in nature without a little outside help.

Rats were brought to cities by humans too, but they came mostly as stowaways.

Pigeons mate for life reproducing prolifically, a pair of breeding birds can potentially produce up to eight offspring a year but...

The reproduction of rats is astronomical. According to Rats: Obeservations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, an excellent book by Robert Sullivan, male and female rats might have sex twenty times a day and ...a dominant male may mate with up to twenty female rats in just six hours." Given the right circumstances, one pair of rats "has the potential of 15,000 descendants in a year."

Unlike their rodent cousins the squirrels, rats will not reduce their birth rate as a means to control their population, rather they will continue to reproduce at a furious rate up to the point where the food supply has been exhausted, then will resort to murder and cannibalism to bring the population down, ensuring the survival of the colony.

Pigeons are strictly diurnal, meaning they are active during the day.

Rats are nocturnal; seeing at rat during the day means that the area is overrun with them. Daytime rats are forced to forage in the light much to their own risk, because the food supply can't support the number of rats in a colony. When that occurs, weaker rats cannot compete with stronger members of the colony feeding at night.

The damage that pigeons cause to human beings is negligible, most of the diseases the birds transmit are not serious and are passed on only through close, very close contact with their droppings. Here's the lowdown from the New York City Department of Health.  

Rats as everyone knows are carriers of deadly disease. Again, quoting from Sullivan, rats...

carry diseases that we know of and they may carry diseases that we do not know of-in just the past century, rats have been responsible for the death of more than ten million people...

That number is small compared to the days of the Black Death in Middle Ages where the disease caused by the Yersenia pestus bacterium transmitted by fleas who hitched rides aboard the backs of rats, took perhaps 100 million human lives, over one third of the populaetion of Europe, over the course of two years. If that were not enough:

Rats generally wreak havoc on food supplies, destroying or contaminating crops and stored foods everywhere, Some estimates suggest that as much as one third of the world's food supply is destroyed by rats. 

The biggest difference I suppose is our feelings about the two animals. Rats are without a doubt, the most universally despised animals on earth. We may call them rats with wings but let's face it, the best word to describe the emotion most of us have toward pigeons is, indifference.

That's where Amstel Light comes in.
I defy you to feel indifferent about pigeons after reading this ad copy:

It was a particularly gruesome battle in WW I when hundreds of US Soldiers were trapped behind enemy lines. But one soldier refused to surrender, he escaped, fleeing through a barrage of bullets. He was shot through the chest. He was blinded in one eye. But he made it back to base 25 miles south. He alerted Division headquarters, and helped save the lives of 194 men that day. His name is Cher Ami of the 99th Infantry division, and he was more than just a soldier, he was a pigeon. So the next time you think pigeons are simple creatures, only good for defecating on the statues of American heroes, REMEMBER: Some pigeons ARE American heros.

The ad goes on to point out that 32 pigeons were awarded the Dickin Medal for Animal Bravery. In case you're wondering, only 26 dogs received the same honor, as well as 3 horses and, believe it or not, one cat. The cat's name incidentally was Simon, a ship's cat who despite several injuries to himself, managed to rid his ship of numerous rats, (and bring this post full circle). Here's Simon's story.

Cher Ami predated the Dickin Medal but he too was honored with several medals for his bravery. I don't know what he did with them. Upon his death he was stuffed and you can visit him, what's left of him that is, at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC.

I'm not sure if reading Amstel Light's tribute will change the minds of the virulent pigeon haters. They continue to plot and scheme of ways to rid the city of the winged rat. My favorite plan is introducing Peregrine Falcons into cities all over the world. Like pigeons, the native habitat of falcons are regions with steep cliffs where they roost, which are very similar to the tall buildings in a modern city. It's a win win proposition, the city turns out to be the perfect habitat for these magnificent birds who were nearly at the brink of extinction not very long ago. And their favorite food is, you guessed it, pigeon. One would think pigeons would be no match for the fastest animal on the face of the planet. But that would be a mistake, for while falcons can dive at nearly 150 mph, pigeons are strong fliers too, a healthy adult can hold its own with the predator in level flight. Pigeons, having lived with falcons for millennia, have other ways to evade the raptors as you can see in this amazing video:

Pigeon lovers, and there are a few of them out there, needn't worry, the survival of this bird is not in jeopardy. There will never be enough falcons around to effectively control the pigeon population.

How then do we control out of control pigeon populations without doing damage to other animals or ourselves? Well the answer if not the implementation is fairly simple. Just as with rats, limit their food supply by covering up our garbage, and by not feeding them.

The problem its seems is not with the animals; as usual, to quote Charlton Heston: "it's people."

We humans have a strange relationship with animals. The animals we value most are the ones we create, namely our pets. In the wild we value vulnerable animals, especially if they're cute or pretty. It makes us feel good to rescue these not very successful (in the Darwinian sense) species from extinction. It's the successful species, the ones that will survive with or without us, that we're not so crazy about.

Pigeons have been faithful companions of ours for thousands of years. As you just read, they have served us very well without asking much in return. Only recently have we forsaken them, and left to their own devices, they have done pretty well for themselves. As such they are the quintessential urban dwellers.

In a way, they are like us.

That's probably why we dislike them.

I hope this display of pigeon prowess opens your eyes if just a little to one of God's great creations. Like all animals, they are truly amazing, even if their habits are a trifle disgusting. In all honesty, so are ours. In that vein, I'd like to suggest we do something in appreciation for our urban companions.

Maybe we could all take a pigeon out to lunch.

Just make sure he buys.