Do Animals Have Emotions? Live from the Zoo

Changing myself first

How will I change the world? As young adults, I'm sure you hear suggestions all the time about how you are going to change the world. What big projects or big ideas will you give the world that will change the course of history or help mankind or help ward off global warming? However, I believe that figuring out how you can change the world may be the wrong way of looking at the issue. How can one change the world if they don't first look at how they can change themselves. This is where I believe we need to begin. We need to begin by first looking at ourselves and how we can make ourselves better people. Work to become as carbon neutral as possible as an individual before you begin to preach about global warming and saving the world. Cut down on your meat consumption before you begin espousing animal rights. Stop shopping at Walmart before you begin taking about the evils of large corporations. Become the nicest and most thoughtful person you can become. Treat everything with respect. Be respected and admired for what you do not what you say. Below is a quote that I believe captures the point I am trying to make. It's author is unknown but the message is clear.

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change the nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could have indeed changed the world.


While doing a search on the internet I found so many self-help websites. Each one claims to have the answer and each one wants your money. Do we really need somebody to tell us how to become better people? The self help industry is a huge industry which is making a lot of people very rich. I believe that the power to change lies within each one of us. We know ourselves better than anybody else and what we need to do to change. In any case, I attatched
Interesting Link:
Advice on how to work on yourself
This is a great magazine: A Real Life

The Emotional Lives of Farm Animals

What a delightful movie. Way to go Roxanne and Tyler for finding and showing this movie. How can we continue to deny the emotional lives of such animals such as cows, chickens, turkeys and sheep? Do we do so out of self denial? If we were to admit that these animals felt pain and fear than would we continue to eat the large steak on our plate? It's easier to enjoy meat when you don't know where it comes from. It's very similar to the Westerners who denied that Africans had emotions. If they admitted they had emotions they wouldn't have been able to enslave and torture them for their own benefit? Why can we admit that cats and dogs have emotions but not admit that farm animals do? I'm not advocating that everyone become vegetarian but I am advocating that we educate ourselves about where our food comes from so we can begin to make educated choices. Nice job you guys. I enjoy learning from my students.

Connections

The movie Grizzly man really struck a chord in me and it's a movie that I definitely can't easily forget. Was it the beauty of Alaska and the wildlife that resonated so deeply with me? Or was it the fanatical passion that Timothy had toward the bear and other wildlife? Maybe it was both. When I was younger I also shared that fanatical passion toward wildlife. I was a consummate hunter and trapper and spent all of my free time out in the wild. I even made my own wildlife documentary when I was in the 9th grade. It may seem odd that I could love and appreciate the wildlife that I was killing. But, hunting and trapping helped me to learn about and understand the wild that no textbook could ever teach me. I used to wake up at 2:00 am in the morning during HS for the month of November and check my trap-line until school started. These early morning forays into the wild were spent wading through rivers and creeks in the middle of the night checking my traps for muskrat, raccoon, mink, fox and beaver. Many mornings I would accidentally catch a skunk and would go to school smelling rather badly. However, in order to be a good trapper or hunter you have to think like the animal. You have to understand where they walk, swim, eat and fly. By thinking like the animal you begin to understand the animal and this understanding is what eventually made me appreciate and love wildlife in a way that no city person has the opportunity to. Watching my dog Midnight track pheasants and flush these birds out of their hiding place, tracking a deer through cornfield in the middle of winter, building a duck blind and calling the ducks to come and land in your blind or lying on my back in the middle of a corn-field while geese landed inches from my face. All of these experiences helped me to appreciate and understand some of the other creatures that we share this planet with.

In college I wanted to make this passion a career and therefore went on journey to become a wildlife biologist. I spent my summers doing research in Michigan, Montana and Canada. I published papers and conducted advanced degree work at a very early age. However, I soon realized that I did not want to earn a PhD and study wildlife from a distance. I also quickly realized that I loved wildlife in general and couldn't see myself studying only one animal for the rest of my life.

As I was watching Grizzly Man, I understood the passion that Timothy had for these animals. The feeling of connection that you only get from being in the wild. It makes me sad to think that so many people have never experienced this feeling of connection with the other creatures we share this planet with. Cities, concrete, cars, jobs and money have become the new "animals" that we look up to and revere. How can we save something if we don't revere it?

So was Timothy a hero? I don't know. What I do know is that he was out trying to do something, whether you agreed with him or not, while so many others sit back and do nothing. He was out there trying to change the world, not sitting on his back-side playing video games, obsessing about money and continuing to consume the resources of this planet. Anybody that sticks their neck out and does something new will be criticized. What choice will you make? Will you be the one sticking your neck out or the one doing the criticizing?

Where have I traveled?

One Blog or Many?

OK, should we have one blog for each student at HIS or should be have one blog per subject. Tell me what you think and please vote on which you would prefer. Here are the pros and cons:
One Blog/Student
Pros:
1. Everybody can see what you are doing in your other classes and can read and comment.
2. By having one blog it really represents a "Whole Child" education
3. It's easier to organize and manage
4. You might have more people following our blog
5. It's easier to follow one blog instead of 3 or 4 for every student at HIS
Cons:
1. It may be more messy because you could have a lot of entries
2. You can personalize each blog for each subject

Language Arts

You can use labels to separate your entries for different subjects Look at the side and see how I am using labels to organize my entries for different classes.