Learning about animals

In most time of my life, animals other than human feels just like decorations of the background. Since my family has never kept any pets, the only chances for me to encounter animals were just like seeing a bird on the street or watching others taking their pet dogs for a walk. However, starting from last year, the owner of the gym I go to frequently started keeping a dog and a cat. I knew that most dogs are friendly animals. Since they are results of artificial selection and are the most domestic species on this planet, I expect them to be harmless and intelligent.

My experience with the gym master's dog tells me that I'm totally correct about it. However, about cats, they behave totally different than what I thought to be. I used to think that cats are no difference than dogs. They are domestic animals, and they should see human as their owners and should meow and swing their tails for foods. However, Temple Grandin's statement that "dogs serve people, but people serve cats" was totally correct (62). The cat she owned was not social at all. Not like dogs, it was afraid of human it didn't know. When I first wanted to get close to it, it was taking a cautious pose and was ready to run away while threatening me. Grandin also stated about training wild animal species that "if you pull, it pulls back automatically, and if you are too insistent and pull too hard, the wolf, no matter how calm and sociable it usually is, panics and tries to escape" (67). The same thing happens to cats. When I tried to hold it in hands the first time, it panicked and escaped as fast as it could. It also tried to scratch me. Now I understand that cats are more related to wilderness, and that they don't mind human as much as dogs do.

By reading the prologue, I think the author is trying to say that he wants to understand "who" are the animals, what are they thinking, what are they communicating. He believe that animals also have similarities in thoughts with human, that we should change our ways of seeing them. In the prologue, he mentions something about the communication between dolphins. In Time articles we've read, I learned that dolphins have their own "language". It can be far more complicated than what we thought and include body language and sonar language. They communicate with a large word base. It also mentioned something about killing an elephant is also hurting the minds of other elephant family members. It is also connected to the fact I learned from Time, that elephants would mourn for lost members in the family. They would stay around for days or even weeks, and sometimes not accepting the death of that member even if their bodies start to decay.