people and animals

by: Yoko


(1)Video clip of cows
(2)Story of Janet

‘’How intelligent cows are!”   When I saw a program of cows on computer, I was surprised. The program was tracing how they eat walnuts in hard shell.

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 We could see the intelligence of cows because they know that height can be force, cars can crash nuts and there is a certain period that all cars stops so they can across the road safely. Other animals also have intelligence.I have a dog. He knows what makes me angry at him. After I found messed trash on the floor and say “What?!” , he always quickly runs away. We can also see their intelligence by seeing shows of animals for example monkey, sheep, dolphins and so on as an entertainment.Their intelligence amazing us and we have fun to see them. However, there is a thing that we have to think.

  

“Elephants and the circus: The Story of Janet”, the story of elephants which killed people, also showed us their intelligence and they have their own mind. In the Janet case, she escaped from a circus tent and tried to kill people. She didn’t hurt people randomly. She was targeting trainers and other employee who were worked in circus and she piked up person and tossed him and after that she tried to stomp him. In case of 2006, trainers were attacked by elephant like the Janet case.  Spokesman explained it accident, however people who had come to see the circus said that the elephant looked like get angry by been hit her near the eye by trainers.

Although we knew that animals have intelligence, I realized that we use their intelligence and tend to forget thinking about their freewill. In the incident of Janet, she refused to back to the trailer. She didn’t want to be treated violently and she wanted to go more comfortable place. To think animal as a “labor” is too selfish of people. 

I think there is a way to live with animals. For the animals, advantage point of living with human is that they don't be hungry and they don't be faced in danger. Only if we respect their free will, we can live together.

I also learned that every news has been corrected by someone.  Circus spokesman don’t want to lose their reputation so they hide the fact and blame elephants. If I had heard the Janet's news only by TV and didn't read this article, I would have thought that it was just an accident and have some fear to elephants. I thought we have to see news from  many aspect.

Animal Intelligence

by: Cary

Before reading this article, I have never think about that animal has free will or not. And I though that human are all carnivorous anmimals, all the non-human animals can become our food, like the pig, cows, snake, dogs, cats and so on.

However, after reading the article, Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet, I begin to consider that every kind of animal must have intelligence and emotion. Intelligence is not the patent of human, other non-human animals they also have intelligence, they have memory, they can caculate etc. For example, the bee can remember the map to find the flowers, they can comunicate with others by dancing. In addition, if the animal have intelligence, they should have emotion. They maybe angry, grateful, happy, distressed or even revenged.. Even if they can not express their emotion through facial expression, language, they can react to express their feeling. In 1992, Janet escaped the arena and attacked the people who hurt her. It is amazing that animal can also remember and have emotion. As advance animal, human being, we should understand her emotion. In fact, we still  continue maltreating the animals. We still using animal testing.

Does animal has rights?

Original Sources:

1. Animal Rights

Animals' Agency

by: Yousef Alahmadi

Prior to reading Jason Hribal's article titled "Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet,"(1) I used to believe that animals only acts on their instincts. However, I just realized that I was wrong. Reading about how Janet and the other elephants resisted their masters and decided to not accept the trainers miss abuse reminded me of the many stories of how people resisted unjust governments, such as the French Revolution between 1789 and 1799. Moreover, the elephants, in most narrated cases, killed only the trainers or the circus employees, and in Janet's second accident, which happened in Palm City, Florida, Janet was trying to revenge from the ankus by hitting it to van. Both facts confirms that their actions was not just a result of  the "musth," or heat, as claimed by 19th century scientists. It shows that the elephants, willingly, chose their victims, and they chose to fight the abusers. These actions are exactly what we call free-will.

Furthermore, the video clip of  the crows intelligent method of cracking walnuts(2) shows the animals capabilities of developing  multistage simple plans. the video demonstrates how crows developed a complex method of cracking walnuts. It starts by showing how a crow used the falling force and the stiffness of concrete to crack it. Then it shows a crow using the traffic cars to open up the nut. Even more striking, the crows figured out that it would easier for them to do it next to the traffic lights.  


Original Source:
1)The Story of Janet
2) Video Clip of Crows Cracking Nut

Do animals have intelligence?

by: Takeshi

  Do you believe that animals have highly intelligence? I did not think animals except human beings have intelligence before I watched a short video clip about Japanese crow. The outline is following. When a crow found a hard-shelled nut, he dropped it from a high place in order to crack it, and he finally got an inside. Furthermore, he was waiting for a time to turn the traffic light to blue when he retrieves since he understood the traffic system. 

 

  Before I watched the exciting clip, I seem to have had a prejudgement. I just had thought that except animals with highly intelligence like human beings and chimpanzees, living things have no free will because they cannot think logically and they only live, following their institutions. Since they have no reason to think highly, they would dream a life which contains a right to live beyond infringement by human beings or other enemies. However, a lot of animals generally have intelligence to some degrees. In an article in 2010, Jeffrey Kluger, a senior writer at TIME magazine said that, “Humans are the only ones who are empathic and generous, then. But what about the monkeys that practice charity and the elephants that mourn their dead?”

What I want to emphasize is that almost all animals have their own right to live freely. 

 

  

  There is other interesting story.Janet is an elephant in a circus. She got outside and chased down one circus employee and flatten him.This was because not she got crazy but she was imposed violence training. What the author want to say is that animals are naturally generous and kind. Only human make their status worse! Now is the time to consider the environment of animals.

Original Sources

1) Wild crows inhabiting the city use it to their advantage

2) The Story of Janet

3) Inside the Minds of Animals

Animals and Human Beings

By: Ashley

I went to the safari in San Diego which is not really different from a zoo in fact. Animals have a little more space but not so much. When animals are in cage, it seems like the owners try to suppress their free will. In this safari, I saw a show with two elephants. Their trainers were showing how they were taking care of them by performing tricks. The woman who was presenting the show was saying that they have saved the aforesaid animals from being killed before. It sounds like they were trying to find a justification to the situation of the elephants. On the other hand, it may be true, and it is really respectable, but these animals were probably not expecting to spend  the rest of their lives in closed spaces, and to perform tricks for people to see.

The point it that some animals in zoos or circus are used for entertainment. It can be impressive to watch them perform their tricks. However, it is like changing their true nature and shaping their behavior to fit our taste and our expectations. It is only profitable for the people who own them and use them to make money. This kind of animals should live freely.

After reading an article on elephants in the world of the circus (1), it does not change my mind. On the contrary, it strengthens my preexisting beliefs. I was shocked to learn that elephants were treated so badly. No animals should receive such treatments. It is already hard for them to live this kind of life. They are like slaves who are "employed" to perform tricks. I did not think that the elephants were having such a hard time.

When I read that, in April 1999, Tarzan Zebini was attacked by an elephant because he was smelling strongly of alcohol, I was surprised by the extreme sensibility of these animals. They remembered that they have been trained by drunks in the past. As a result, they were afraid of being beaten again. What astounded me was not the fact that they rebelled against their trainers, but more the fact that they never "forget a face or a trespass" as it was mentioned in the first story with Janet. Animals are not so different from us, so what rights do we have to treat them that way ? They have feelings, they experience pain, and they have free will which sadly some people try to annihilate.

In many cases where elephants broke free and attacked the people who caused them painful experiences, the circuses were always hiding the facts which were later revealed by spectators. I was maybe more angry about it. It is horrible to hide the truth because it can lead to the killings of innocent animals like in Florida midway where the elephant of the Great American Circus was killed coldly by the police at the request of the owner of the circus. They did not care about the people who were protesting. They did not think that nothing happens accidentally. These kinds of incident are "provoked" by previous events.

From the reading, elephants rebel against their trainers who have treated them badly. They do not want to be obedient. They want to be free. They are not stupid creatures.

In the following video (2), a crow tried to crack a nut to eat it. He first used the height. Then, he used the cars to crack his nut, but he could not retrieve his nut. Finally, he used the traffic and the cross-walk to crack his nut and to safely eat it.

With this example, it is evident that animals are intelligent and reflect logically. They do something for a reason and not because of their hormones like say the scientists to explain the behavior of male elephants, or not by incident like in circus versions. Animals should be treated with respect. If people who train them don't do that, how can they expect to be treated with respect as well ? 

Original Sources:
(1) Article on elephants and the circus
(2) Video of a crow using traffic to crack nuts

animals vs. humans

by: Abduallah
original reference:
1) story of Janet

As for animals relationship with humans, i would mention that most people like animals regardless if they are team or wild . many people have pets at home , for example , dogs,cats , monkeys , birds and reptiles . People should treat them well by feeding them enough, playing with them , wash them and visit the veterinary continuously.

 animals do help people a lot , for example, dogs are a good friend for people , they like to have fun with humans and some dogs can secure the house and people's property , in addition , some pets remind you to do something important like take your medicine or spray the spiders and so on .  

Recently, some research show that having a pet in home may decrease loneliness and depression . in addition , pets can reduce stress and high blood pressure on humans.http://jhn.sagepub.com/content/15/4/358.short

unfortunately , some people treat animals harshly and without mercy and that reflect in animals badly, after that their behaviour would change and become more aggressive , rebels and lost control.

beside this , they will think that people are there enemies and they will be targeted by animals .

animal to protect themselves they starting to ram,hurt, push hard and sometimes they kill people.

animals reflects are very normal because, some people hurt them by slapping them with ropes , sticks, chains and more than that.

but people never think that animals have feelings , they feel the pain when someone shout out loud on them , enforce them to do something that they do not bear to do it .

in conclusion , treating animals well will by humans will reflect nicely on them on the other hand by treating them badly they will start the wars on target people.

Hybrid Cars

by: Yousef Alahmadi

With the continuous increase of gas prices, the use of alternative more efficient transportation method is very essentially. A very popular method, nowadays, is the new hybrid cars, such as Toyota Prius. Comparing to the normal cars, the hybrid cars can provide a very similar efficacy while burning less then half the gas a normal gas burns.  

Usually the designer of hybrid cars tries to utilize a different source of energy, such as solar energy or fule-cell energy, to reduce the consumption of fule, which causes the a noticeable increase of the car manufacturing cost. However, the newly introduced hybrid cars reuses the energy of the car, causing a huge reduction of the fule consumption while having, relatively, the same initial cost as regular car. 

One of the main differences between the hybrid and regular car is the breaking system. In a normal car, the car slows down using the regular breaks, which converts the moving energy of the car to heat energy (as shown below). Therefore, each time the driver of the regular car pushes the breaks he is losing energy, which means he is losing gas.

   

However, the hybrid car utilizes this lost energy by having a different braking system, batteries, and a motor. The braking system uses the slow-down energy to charge the batteries of the car. Then, the motor reuses this energy to speed up the car. By doing so, the loss energy in a hybrid car has been reduced to minimum; thus, the fule efficiency has been increased to the maximum.