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Hey I was gonna do that... I actually applied to get one of those cats. unfortunately they were all gone, but new cats will move in this week so maybe I'll get another chance. one of the cats is named after our presidentQuote:
Originally Posted by Danik 2016
I was thinking of you, when I posted this link as the only Litnetter, near enough to apply for one of these cats.
Sorry you were too late but it is important to know that the video is old and not a current one as I thought.
I wish you more luck this time, but if you canīt get one of these cats Iīm sure you will find another responsible cat donating instituition.
For American peers who want to adopt a dog or a cat there is an important information. There seem to be lots of animal shelters all over US, but there are also these death rows, where pets are put away if they are not adopted in time.
I donīt know if all shelters work alike, but it is important to know that so you can save one or more lives instead of buying a pet with pedegree.
I'm putting up this link which I just found in Google as example. But not being from US I donīt have any other information about the instituition as the ones on the link:
http://urgentpodr.org/
I think it would be important for you to look better into it to understand better what happened. The facts canīt be changed any more, but maybe you still have a feeling after a long time, that you could have handled the situation differently. I canīt say that being far away in time and space. But there may be different ways to understand this situation.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
I assume all pets in shelters are on death row, but that may not be the case.
I also handled the situation with those chickens and that dog poorly. Just about everything went wrong and I was responsible for most of that.
One can always interpret events in different ways.
Maybe from lack of information, Yes/No.
The animals themselves try to teach humans how to handle them (cats seem to be born with a manual of Human Pedagogy) but today you can also get a lot of information in the net.
That probably wasnīt the case when your story happened.
It is a live stream and I have been watching since it started. There were so many people who wanted to get them. Here on the ice there is really only one animal shelter and that is only for cats, they are one part of the team doing this. We don't have an issue with stray animals other than cats. No stray dogs here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Danik 2016
The new cats arrived today and as I am writing all five of them are sleeping in the same bunk bed
I just opened the link, and there is a message that the three cats were adopted and a new family is moving in. It seems the link remains a bit outdated, but it doesnīt matter so much as you seem to be the only Litnetter who is able to candidate for one of the cats.
They actualised the link, so one canwatch the new group.
Here's a link about a cat that nursed ducklings which is not something I expected to see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlqTHhdCQko
Also, Danik, your link to information about chickens led me to William Grimes "My Fine Feathered Friend". Apparently a black hen appeared in Queens (New York) and it is an account of one man taking care of it until it vanished. I took the Bekoff and Pierce book back to the library to finish later.
An absolute amazing story as the ducklings are not mamals and cats are used to predate not to nurse feather animals. It is a sight to see these ducklings feeding on the cat, and the cat handling them very carefully. I think the real kittens were less happy about that unexpected kinship. But all is well that ends well!:)
There is so much about the animal world that we donīt know und donīt understand. You probably did well to take back a book that didnīt answer your questions. That episode of the chickens and the dog still seems to distress you.Whatever actually happened it seems to have been very long ago and you are probably the only one still affected by this memory. Maybe it would be time to find ways to get over it.
Insect in Danik 2016's neck of the woods that I'd never heard of... http://www.strangeanimals.info/2014/...globulare.html
Interesting specimen, Tailor, never saw it though. Probably lives somewhere where the fauna is more varied than here
Here is another member of the family the "Little widow".
https://www.flickr.com/photos/simns/772184967
A new expression: "neck of the wood":smile5:
Those two insects are odder than I expected insects to be. We don't have to go to other planets to find bizarre forms of life.
I finished Grimes' "My Fine Feathered Friend". He mentioned some things one can do with chickens besides eating them.
1) You can hypnotize them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wMOR31ktPE (You can also hypnotize a dog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYmfVPPzFSw)
2) You can teach them to play the piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPBfMGLf9Q
3) They can beat you in tic-tac-toe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbxdXgCTJGo
1) Why should one want to hypnotize an animal?
2 and 3) It seems they can be conditioned to a certain degree. I donīt know the game but the chicken knows what is expected of him.
I donīt like this conditioning of animals just to show them off in public and make money out off them. Put in a similar situation,
Gulliver used to think very poorly of the people of Brobdignag.
I have no idea why one would want to hypnotize them. What surprises me is that one could train them at all.
This article gives a general idea I think on how the chicken conditioning works. I hope the PDF can be integrally acessed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1338159/
From other headings in Google I learned that preparing chickens for show exibition is not something unusual.
They used newly hatched chicks for the training. That may give them more reliable results. Showing chickens is common, but I didn't realize before this that people got them to do tricks. I'm reading Lauren Scheuer's "Once Upon a Flock: Life with my Soulful Chickens". Grimes also mentioned that the chicken would sneak up behind their cats and make a noise to scare them. Also the cats and the chickens ate food together.
In the videos it looks natural enough. But in fact it might be a chicken harrasing conditioning based on a reward/punishment methods. I suppose the chicken recognise positions of objects/lights. I donīt think they are able to recognise written numbers. But if they are trained by a good player, who will teach them the several positions they have to choose, it will look for the public as if they were choosing according to the number. Same thing with the piano. The teacher must know how to play the tune. The birds probably memorise the position of the keys not the tune.
https://drsophiayin.com/blog/entry/chicken_training/
I can see that the training has to involve food and the animal being comfortable to be around the trainer as in the link you mentioned. Apparently they learn fast what they have to do to get the food. That means the human is not discouraged.
Reading Scheuer's book, chickens have different personalities. I didn't notice that in the ones I had probably because I didn't have the personality to pay attention to such things when I had those birds. Also it helps having different breeds of chicken so one can visually separate them. Mine were all white. I couldn't tell them apart. Scheuer got a mixture of different breeds. I got mine from a neighbor after helping him clean out his chicken barn. They were hens that the people missed when they loaded these birds off to market.
Yes I suppose chickens have different personalities but I never had chickens. I was more used to cats and cats do have different personalities. Something that is a bit confusing for me: chicken for me are either the yellow little ones or the food. The adults are either hens or their male companions whose name always gets censored by LitNet. I was somewhat confused when you wrote that your chicken ate their chicks until I realised that you were talking about a hen.
It seems that white hens are more viewed as pets, as people miss them when they bring them to the market.
I use the word "chicken" to primarily refer to a hen, or female chicken, although chickens in a general sense could include the males or "roosters". Chicken also refers to the food. A "chick" is what comes out of the egg until it gets too big to look cute. One thing I was told to be wary of with chicks is not to hug them to your cheek or give them a kiss because they do peck and could cause damage, but I was never tempted to cuddle with them.
Since I took care of chickens on our family farm (both hens and some roosters), cleaning the house, adding bedding, picking up eggs, they were never viewed as pets, but I can see how they might be. The handful of chickens I obtained later that the bad dog got his jaws into I picked up on my own. I was told by a neighbor that the hen ate those chicks because she needed calcium. I got them some minerals to supplement their food, just in case, but I don't know if that guy knew what he was talking about.
Thanks, Yes/No. So chicken is a synonym for hen, not the baby. And that advice about how not to cuddle chicks makes sense. Even with cats, I read somewhere, you have to hold them in a way they canīt claw you, specially if the cat doesnīt know you.
You are a regular farmer then. I thought you werenīt because you seem to have a very romantic view of poultry(I donīt like this word very much).
As for calcium, isnīt it mostly in the shell of the eggs?
I know some people who hold a cat like they are holding a baby rocking it on its back. I usually hold it so the legs are below me. I think it gives the cat more security. If a cat is trying to claw me, I usually set it down unless I have to carry it somewhere.
I've worked and lived in rural surroundings for twenty years or so, but I am pretty ignorant of much of what goes on with farming.
Poultry is a more professional way of referring to chickens. The calcium would be part of the egg shell. I don't know why that hen pecked her young, but people use incubators for chick eggs which avoids the risk of damage to the eggs. I haven't used them myself. For those hens that I had I could almost read their minds, but I didn't hypnotize them.
Anyway, here are some pictures of cats I ran into today while looking for something else. I think this blog only contains cat photography but I haven't looked at it for very long: https://meowingpics.wordpress.com/20...istmas-cats-3/
Cute pics!
I sometimes held my cats in rocking position, but they were cats that knew me very well and so they made velvet paws.
Putting a cat down when it tries to claw is quite a good idea.
I sometimes thought I could read the minds of my cats but with hens that must be much more difficult I think for there are less signs.
Sphynx cat
Talking of cats...The Sphynx cat is not a favorite with those that fall in love with a cats furryness but they are coveted by cat lovers that are alergic to cat fur. Without the natural protection of fur they are very vulnerable to the cold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphynx_cat
Looking at those pictures of a sphynx cat, one could more easily see their facial expressions without the fur and then imagine what they are feeling. With chickens, I look at their eyes and imagine what they must be thinking. It isn't as much to go on as one has with a cat.
My both tabby cats were very expressive. The problem sometimes is how much they really expressed and how much one imagines that they express.
One thinks one knows all about humans and animals one has lived a long time with until they surprise one.
Chickens are a mystery to me.
Ayam Cemani... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayam_Cemani
Interesting species, Tailor. I donīt think it exists here but that is good, because many people are superstitious about black hens and black cats.
These chickens one finds here and they are noted for their beautiful design:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmeted_guineafowl
It is the first time I heard of the all black Ayam Cemani. The guineafowl I've seen before. Although they look like chickens, I tend to think of them as not a chicken, but a guineafowl. However, I might be in the minority.
As with all empathy even between humans it might be mistaken.
My wife told me the other day that our cat "has me trained" when I told her the cat got me to turn on a faucet so the cat could drink from it. The cat has plenty of water. She just wanted to see if she could get me to do a trick for her. I might be imagining all that, but I like the idea of the reciprocal relationship of two species getting each other to do tricks.
We have black hens here but I donīt know it they are Ayam Cemani. I have mostly lived in urban environments and I am learning about chicken with you and stately. When my mother came to Brazil she had chickens. I suppose it didnīt work so well for later she opened a nursery for children.
I remember seeing guinea fowls in a smaller more rural town, where I lived some years and where the chicken used to be around. I thought the guinea fowl very beautiful.
Lol!Ithink your wife is right. What I obseved with my cat is that they love atention. When my last cat was still youg it went to the wardrobe and caught a certain cord girdle. He wanted me to go around with the girdle trailing on the ground so that he could chase it.
The one thing about the cat I have and the one that trained you with the cord girdle is that we know they are training us and we don't mind. We play along with them and they play along with us when we try to train them (at least the chickens seem to).
My bad dog trained me without my knowing it. He knew he wanted to get those chickens but he couldn't get off his chain. However, I would take him for walks down into the forest area behind the cabin. I think I would take him on walks for up to half a mile. When we were far from the cabin, I would unleash his chain and he would play around. Then he would come back like a good dog and let me chain him again. He won my trust. We did this many times. The day he decided to get those chickens we went down the woods trail. He wanted to go even further so I did. He waited for me to unleash him, like a good dog. As soon as he was unleashed he started racing back toward those chickens. I called out, "Fred!" The dog paused briefly, turned his head but not his body and gave me a wicked look. After his chicken problem was taken care of he never barked hoping I would take him for a walk anywhere.
I think thatīs were we differ, Yes/No. According to your account, the dog had it all planed coldly, just waiting for the right opportunity to get the chicken. A human might do it like this and not any human, but I am not at all sure of the dog. Why do dogs attack of a sudden people, sometimes even loved family members they wouldnīt have attacked before? I canīt tell you.
One thing I was told a long time ago is that dogs may get more aggressive when on a chain. And it seems this dog was sistematically henpecked. When I was a child I got a puppie. I usually get along well with animals but Jambo was very wild and I think I got afraid of him. He ruined the garden and eventually my parents found other owners for him.
What happened to Fred?
Fred wasn't really my dog. I was just taking care of him for a few months till the owner returned although the dog was very young when I first got him. I gave him back to the owner.
The mystery about the dog and that chicken has two areas where many would agree with you and disagree with me. I admit I would be in the minority on these two issues:
1) How far in advance did Fred plan to trick me? I think it was weeks in advance.
2) Did the chicken commit suicide? I would say, Yes.
I am glad Fred went back to his owner because after what happened I donīt know how you would get along .
Of course I am not in a condition to answer these questions, but what they have in common is that they are based on the assumption that both animals acted as certain humans would have acted in that situation. The idea of a chicken comiting suicide because she has lost her companions doesnīt seem totally impossible to me but it is very strange. And I wouldnīt find it strange that the dog tricked you in the spur of the moment, but planing weeks in advance... I donīt know.
Unfortunately I didnīt find anything more scientific but this link might interest you.
https://www.quora.com/Do-animals-hav...the-harm#!n=60
That link was amazing and I bookmarked it. It also looks like crows and dogs and probably other species can share their desire for revenge with other crows and dogs and get their cooperation. Here is a link from that link showing this: http://www.seeker.com/angry-birds-cr...765286502.html I hadn't considered the social aspect of this, but that made me realize I assume those animals act as individuals. That even needs to be questioned.Quote:
Originally Posted by Danik 2016
My most intense encounter with Fred was after I walked that half mile back to the cabin finding Fred chewing on one of the birds. The surviving bird flew to a perch out of the way, but there was only room there for one bird. She could see all of the damage. Fred saw me, dropped the bird and went inside the cabin as if he were going to defend that place as his own. I walked in and listened to his growling and saw his bared teeth. I got onto my knees so I could more easily defend myself and hold him down when he came at me. I had his chain in one hand and I told him harshly to come to me. We stared each other down and I expected him to attack. I wasn't sure if I would survive that encounter unharmed. Then he lowered his head and walked over submissively and I chained him. I felt sorry for him at that point and forgave him whether he forgave me or not.
I didnīt know that either. Maybe it is just another form of protecting the group. What I miss in the internet are truly scientifical articles in English (written by researchers and not just by journalists). In Portuguese you sometimes find what you want, In English you usually have to pay for the articles.
As we say in Portuguese Yes/No, you poked the tiger with the short stick. The "tiger" in this case acepted you as his master in the situation, probably because you showed no fear.
I shoudnīt wonder if Fred got a bit confused in the beginning about who his real owner was.
I normally don't pay for research articles although I might purchase survey level books. Usually there is some source that will provide the non-expert level of information that I find relevant without cost. If I were a researcher studying a particular field, I would have to have those sources, but then I would probably be a member of those organizations already.
As far as science goes, most of this would be considered anecdotal, which is a kind of uncontrolled data or measurement. They could form the motivation of an experiment that generates more measurements. I usually restrict science to collecting data (including anecdotes), performing experiments to generate data and then constructing a model to explain the data. Anything outside that is philosophy or speculation.
Fred probably thought he was the alpha dog, and that would have been fine with me, but he was inside the cabin where he normally did not go. I would likely do the same thing if I were in his place. I do think it would be possible for him, seeing that last chicken approach him, to feel some empathy and not harm the chicken. That would be a real sign of compassion, but humans rarely do that either.
The lesser known "Google Scholar" might be of use for research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Scholar
It is limited in scope (small / growing database) but can come up with some interesting results.
Example: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q...n&as_sdt=0%2C5
Digg is being guest curated by Audubon today; a sample:
Woggins... http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles...m_medium=email
5 missing Audubon birds... http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles...m_medium=email