"Animals, like us ... are not things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet they mourn. They love. They dance. They suffer. They know the peaks and chasms of being." — Gary Kowalski

By DR. CAMERON BARROWS

Through recorded history we humans have sought to find characteristics that separate, and elevate, people from other creatures with whom we share this planet. To be clear, no other creature has created the technology that allowed traveling to the moon or sent rovers to explore Mars. There is a difference. However, when we attempt to distinguish our sentience, having the capacity to have feelings, requiring a level of self-awareness and cognitive ability, we typically fail.

One standard of cognitive ability is tool use, the ability to take an inanimate object and use that object to achieve a goal otherwise unattainable. Yet chimpanzees and gorillas will regularly fashion a stick or a blade of grass to extract termites from mounds, or fashion leaves to more easily capture water to drink. There is also a finch on the Galapagos Islands that will use cactus spines to coax beetle grubs from the core of tree branches.

Then there are the crows, endemic to New Caledonia, that researchers have used to test multi-step problem solving abilities. The researchers would capture young, naïve crows and present them with a clear plexiglass box that has a prized food item, a nut or a fruit, clearly visible but unattainable without some multistep tool use. The simplest challenge might be to open a door. Then ever-increasing complexity would be introduced to see what cognitive limits the crows might have. Even when presented with a challenge requiring up to 10 or more steps before gaining access to the prize, the crows solved the problem; I am not sure whether the researchers have yet found the crows’ cognitive limits. I’d wager that more than a few humans would go hungry if presented with the same challenges. Are New Caledonia crows uniquely capable of problem solving? I suspect any raven or crow could do the same, but New Caledonia is a very nice place to conduct research. After a few months of being research subjects the New Caledonia crows are released and a new group captured to continue the research. I wonder what stories they then tell each other about their times working with those odd primates wearing white lab coats in such a tropical paradise (I am only guessing about wearing lab coats).

 

Another standard for sentience was whether an organism felt long-term loss and sorrow at the death of a companion. This sort of behavior has been documented in chimpanzees, elephants, whales, wolves, and ravens, primarily in social creatures that form long-term bonds, often through kinship lines. Perhaps related to this awareness of life and death, is the ability to create individual names for individuals within a social group. Recently, wild elephants have been found to have individual names for each member of their group. The matriarch will call out to an individual, to perhaps help care for a young calf, and only that individual will respond.

Another capacity associated with sentience, but one that has to my knowledge received much less attention, is joie de vivre, a love and joy of life. Probably because developing a standard of measurement has yet to be developed. Still, after an experience Katie and I had while managing the BLM-Nature Conservancy’s Northern California Coast Range Preserve in Northern California during the 1980s, I have no doubt of the existence of that joie de vivre in our non-human companions on earth.

One day a fellow contacted us, asking if he could release a young river otter on the Preserve. How he came in possession of this otter was never clear and was likely of a nefarious circumstance, something about finding it abandoned by its mother before it was weaned, before it had even opened its eyes. Now as an adolescent otter, it was clearly too much for him to handle. With more than ample naivete on our part, we reasoned that there were many wild otters living along the South Fork of the Eel River that bisected the Preserve, and this adolescent he had named Otto could be easily adopted by one of those family groups.

So, this fellow showed up with Otto one day. Our home/Preserve Office was no more than 100 yards from the Eel River, so I pointed in that direction and told him he could release Otto there. The fellow said that he was too emotional, asked us to do the release and quickly drove away. As his car sped away in a cloud of dust, Otto looked at me as if saying, “okay, now what?” Again, with more than my share of naivete, I walked Otto to the river edge and told him that he was now free. He looked back at me as if saying he had no idea what “free” meant. I nudged him into the water and it was clear that he had neve seen that much water before, and was frightened of it. Imagine a river otter being afraid of water! I was sure that once he got in the river his instincts would kick in and he would realize this was the habitat he was born to thrive in. That didn’t happen. I nudged him into the water again and again he quickly climbed out. Each time with the same result, except now Otto seemed to figure this was a new game. I tried tossing him further toward the center of the river and he immediately swam back to me, starting to enjoy this “game”, and suggesting let’s do it again. I thought maybe if left, Otto would start exploring on his own. This time tossed him as far as I could, and while he was still in the air I ran as fast as I could back to our home. Otto beat me back. So began our year of living with Otto.

For Otto, every day and every thing we did was a new game. Never could I imagine one creature having more joie de vivre. We took him down to the river every day and showed him how to catch crayfish, another game as long as we were there with him. We would take long hikes and he would follow along like a puppy. Occasionally we did see wild otters, and while they were interested in him, Otto was terrified of them. He did lose his fear of water and would love swimming with us. Those were the days of clothing optional swimming, and Otto found great joy in swimming beneath us and then nipping at our big white “cheeks." All the time we spent with Otto, we kept expecting that eventually his instincts and/or hormones would eventually kick in, and he would sooner or later find more enjoyment being a wild otter.

Then one day, after about a year living with Otto, a Department of Fish and Game Warden drove up and sternly said “I hear you have a river otter.” I truthfully replied that there was in fact an otter that lived nearby, but we never kept him in a cage, so he was never “ours." I explained the full circumstances of his arrival and that we still hoped that he would eventually see “the way of a wild otter” and become increasingly independent. The warden was a bit flustered, having expected this to be a black and white case with fines to be leveed and an otter to confiscate. He finally reasoned that after a year of us trying unsuccessfully to convince Otto to be wild, he was required to bring Otto to a professional wildlife rehabilitator, and so he did. We could hear Otto crying as he and the Warden drove away.

The next couple of years of Otto’s life we only know by occasional reports back from the Warden. Apparently, the professional wildlife rehabilitator immediately realized that Otto was imprinted on humans and so could never be released. Otto eventually was sent to the Oakland Zoo, where he spent the rest of his life. After maybe two years, Katie and I finally found ourselves near the Oakland Zoo and decided to see if Otto was still there. We followed the signs to the otter exhibit and peered across a split-rail fence to see two river otters playing with each other. I am not sure how we could tell, since all river otters look alike, but one was Otto. He was clearly enjoying his game of tag with the other otter – so much for him being terminally imprinted on humans and so unable to socialize with other otters and be wild. 

As we watched them play together, I very softly said, “Otto, you seem to be ok.” Otto immediately looked in our direction, saw us standing at the edge of the split rail fence, and began crying. After being absent for two years, he remembered us as his family. It was the end of the day, and no one was looking, so I stepped over the fence and reached down into the enclosure and pulled Otto out. I have never seen such joy. Otto was as happy as ever. We played there for some time, with Otto’s playmate looking very confused.

Eventually a zoo keeper showed up and we quickly explained our history with Otto. To her credit, rather than scolding us, the keeper reminded us that the zoo was closing in just 15 minutes, and after that I was to put Otto back in the enclosure. After those 15 minutes of pure joy for the three of us, I did as requested. Immediately, Otto started crying louder than ever. We could hear him crying all the back to our car; Otto wasn’t the only one shedding tears. In that visit we all shared immense joy, love, and suffered the anguish of loss and separation. There was no clear difference between those emotions between the otter and the two humans.

Nullius in verba

Go outside, tip your hat to a chuckwalla (and a cactus), think like a mountain, and be safe.