ANIMALS!

Which animals do you currently find most fascinating? Not necessarily the most beautiful, desirable to own as a pet, or anything else. Just interesting in some way, and give a brief reason.


I'll do mine right now so you can see what I mean. I'll choose five. How many you choose and how much you want to say about each is up to you.

Cats - big and small. The behaviors of all cats are so similar - you can watch a tiger preparing to ambush an animal and it looks almost exactly like a scaled up version of your housecat getting ready to pounce on a fake mouse. Also, they're the most "owned" pets in the world - and yet they have hardly been domesticated in the way dogs, cattle, sheep, and so on have. They have retained their wild behaviors and independence for the most part and seem more to be our buddies than our pets. Cats that are allowed in and out actually choose to be with us. And what's going on in their heads (if anything much) always beguiles me when I watch them staring at something. I also like their sleekness, reaction time, leaping ability, gracefulness, and speed. They are models of efficiency - as long as they are allowed to roam and play and are not overfed like their owners probably are.

Octopus, cuttlefish, and squid. These fascinate me because they seem to be the most intelligent invertebrates on the planet. In fact, the only intelligent invertebrates. And that gives us a whole other perspective on what complex or intelligent behavior really means. They're related to slugs and snails by way of an ancient limpet, and yet have independently evolved problem-solving behaviors much like many totally unrelated vertebrates did. Their alien looks and ability to change the color and texture of their skin, for camouflage or displays, is amazing and unparalleled in the animal kingdom. And we really know very little about them compared to most large animals, especially those on land. How smart are they really? How big do they get when you get WAY down there? No one really knows for sure. And squid taste good too with a little lemon and tartar sauce.

Orcas. We're really just learning how complex their societies are, how intelligent they are, and how fierce they can be while also being capable of extreme gentleness. They can kill a great white shark, but can be trained so humans can ride on their backs or be pushed through the water by their nose. They hunt in packs and display coordinated behavior, like rocking icebergs in sync to get sea lions to slide off, and riding the surf in to catch beachcombing seals at unawares. They've been worshiped by Pacific Northwest Native American peoples for millennia. Their coloration is striking. Like whales they have complex vocalizations which seem to vary regionally, like accents or dialects. There's just so much more to learn about these "wolves of the sea."

Great apes. Mountain gorillas, lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans are our closest living relatives on the planet. Most are dangerously close to extinction in the wild. I could spent hours talking about what it means to preserve them both for their own sake and for our enjoyment, fascination, and study. Comparing similar but different brains and anatomy, tool-use, and the like gives us better insight on ourselves, and our evolutionary past. Plus they fascinate me with their obvious (to me) sentience/self-awareness, their graceful braciation (excluding gorillas), extraordinary dominance displays, extreme gentleness at other times, curiosity, ferocity, familial and societal structure and rules, and on and on. I think anyone not fascinated by great apes most not be interested in animal or human behavior and origins much.

Ants. I hate ants but they are fascinating. In a sense they don't really act like individual organisms so much as the colony seems to act like a single superorganism. From tiny individual creatures without much more than a rudimentary nervous system and certainly no complex thought, genetically programmed for a few simple behavior rules, larger emergent behaviors arise that seem inexplicable from a reductionist point of view. One can view an ant like a neuron in this sense. No one would argue an individual neuron has intelligence, but a whole lot of them following fairly simples rules gives rise to sentient beings like ourselves. Colonies of ants can wage war, attack large birds, reptiles, and mammals and return the goods to the colony with the logistical precision of an army, they harvest aphids for their milk (in a sense herding them like cattle), and I could go on and on. Where does this emergent semi-intelligent behavior come from, when its constituent operative units are so utterly stupid? That's an interesting question with wide implications.

So that is one example how you might answer this question. Or however you wish - I'm just curious to see what people think are "interesting" animals rather than the usual "what're your favorite animals," to which boys always answer snakes, sharks, spiders, pit bulls, and dinosaurs, while females reply with koalas, pandas, kitty-cats, miniature dogs, and dolphins. Ok, that was obviously a joke and a massive generalization, but I'm sure you understand what I mean. People usually answer emotionally. I'm more interested in how you perceive the animal kingdom with your intellectual curiosity.