Celebrating Our Animal
Friends
On World Animal Day Today
4th October 2025
Well, this post assumes
significance for four reasons.
The first one is, to pay a
tribute to Jane Goodall, [who passed away, aged 91 years, on 1st October 2025]
whose dwelling with the chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream National Park, on the
eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika in western Tanzania for 26 long years, changed the world’s understanding of animals.
Miriam Schlein’s book titled, Jane
Goodall’s Animal World: Gorillas, albeit endorsed and branded by Jane
Goodall herself, is an eye-opener series designed to reflect Jane Goodall’s
thoughts on animal welfare and animal rights. The book is meant to teach young
readers about animals by focusing on their daily lives, behaviour, and
environment, thus aligning with Goodall’s own method of immersive education and empathetic observation.
[Miriam Schlein wrote nearly
100 books for children over five decades. She was known for her ability to
teach young readers about animals in a highly engaging manner]
Reproducing Jane Goodall’s
impactful introduction to the book –
I have lived in Africa for
thirty years. I have spent hours and hours watching chimpanzees and baboons and
all manner of monkeys. But I have not yet seen a wild gorilla, the largest
living primate on earth.
When I was a child and dreamed of
Africa and its forests, I often imagined meeting a group of gorillas. In those
days we all thought that they were ferocious creatures who would charge on
sight and tear you limb from limb. How wrong we were!
It is true that male gorillas
may attack humans - but only in defense of their families. On those occasions,
they show great courage and often lose their lives as a result.
Today there are not many
mountain gorillas left, but many people are working to save those that remain.
The lowland gorillas need our help too, especially in countries where the
poaching is very bad indeed.
Let me tell you one last
story. It happened at a zoo in England. A little boy, about three years old,
fell into the moat around the gorilla enclosure.
The big silverback male hurried
down to the child, who was unconscious. Everyone thought that this was the end
of him. But the huge gorilla picked up the little boy and held him gently,
keeping the other curious gorillas away, and then handed him over to his
trusted keeper.
Unfortunately, it is we
humans who can be the ferocious, destructive primates, not gorillas,
signs off Jane.
On an added note, I well
remember, how, almost 18 years ago, we had the blessed privilege of meeting and
interacting with the legendary Jane Goodall in-person, on 22nd January 2007 at
the British Council, Chennai.
On that occasion, she had
made a profound statement -
“Every problem is being tackled by a
person or a group of dedicated passionate people who are prepared to risk their
life or lose their life for the purpose. That’s the reason for hope in this
planet.”
[I had taken three of my best
students – Murali, Solomon and Micosteen with me to this inspirational event.
To our sweet surprise, we were delighted to meet with Dr. Nirmal Selvamony,
Prof. Cherian Kurian and Mr. Rayson Alex ahead of us, at the event venue, all geared
up and excited to listen to the legend!] 😊
The second one is, to commemorate
World Animal Day today.
A day that seeks to remind us
of the importance of animal rights, highlighting the numerous threats animals
face, such as poaching, habitat loss, and cruelty in various forms.
A Day that also encourages all
of us, as planetariats, to improve the lives of animals, whether they are pets,
farm animals, or wildlife.
Indeed, one main objective
of World Animal Day is to acknowledge that animals are sentient beings with
their unique thoughts, feelings, and personalities.
Even doctoral dissertations
bordering on Animal Ethics and Animal Rights are few and far between.
In this regard, I would like
to make special mention of the PhD Dissertation work of Ms. Adarsa, A. K, who
did her PhD dissertation on Animal Ethics, under the supervision of Dr.
Lasitha, B. V, Kannur University, Kerala.
As her External Examiner, I was so
happy to read through her dissertation, and in a long time, I had marked it as
‘Highly Commended’, for her insightful reading of the fiction of Coetzee and
Atwood through the framework of Critical Animal Studies.
Moreover, on this special
occasion, I would like to cite from a book titled, The Inner Life of Animals,
and subtitled, Love, Grief, and Compassion: Surprising Observations of a
Hidden World, published in the year 2017.
This book is Jane
Goodall-ian in its scope, even as Wohlleben, a German forester, writes
about his decades of personal, first-hand observations of animals in the wild
and on his own estate in such an engaging and spontaneous style of writing.
The book directly confronts the
long-held belief that only humans possess complex emotions and a rich inner
world.
Wohlleben argues that animals
are not simply driven by instinct but are capable of experiencing love, grief,
compassion, shame, empathy, and even self-awareness.
Finally, the book gives a
clarion call for animal sentience and for readers to re-evaluate their
relationship with the natural world, thereby encouraging a deeper sense of
empathy and compassion for all animals.
One particular line from the book
really arrested my attention bigtime. Here goes –
Communication between people and
animals will always be very one-sided. People try to teach other species human
language.
The species is then thought
to be particularly intelligent when its members understand a lot of concepts or
commands, and perhaps can even utter a few intelligible words.
People are thrilled when
budgerigars, ravens, or apes like Koko can answer a question in our language.
If we really are the most intelligent species on Earth - and I believe we are -
why didn’t science approach this from the other direction a long time ago?
Why are years spent
painstakingly teaching lab animals sign language if modern researchers believe
that their capacity to learn is less than ours?
Wouldn’t it be much easier
if we finally began to learn the language of animals?
he asks. A real though-provoking question indeed!
Third, is about two memorable
photos that I had taken yesterday, as part of our Nature Trail deep into the
forests.
One is a snapshot of a swoop of
storks up above in the sky, that I tried my best to get a good pic! And to an
extend I hope I did!
These storks are high-renowned
for their graceful and seemingly effortless flight, which I found so awesome
and wonder-amazing to the core!
One thing I noticed about their flight
is that, we can usually spot them travelling
vast distances without flapping even a single wingbeat, unlike many other birds
that flap their wings each and every jiffy of their flight!😊
Yet another social
behaviour
that I sensed during the course of their flight is that, the the younger, less
experienced birds faithfully follow from behind, the skilled “leader” birds.
And the style of their flight is also so unique – they stretch their necks
forward and their long legs trail behind them.
I mean, who on earth,
taught them these social skills? Without any kind of arduous drills, intense rehearsals
or strenuous practice routines, the birds here were on their glide, in such a
graceful manner!
It is said that, in many
cultures, storks symbolize faithfulness, loyalty and familial devotion. The
Hebrew word for stork, ‘chasidah,’ means ‘faithful one’.
The storks are known for
their strong sense of bonding, and for their dedicated parenting. Both parents
share the duties of incubating eggs and feeding their young – a social behaviour
that has resulted in a lot of inspirational stories throughout history.
The ancient Greeks and Romans had
a great admiration for this strong social bonding and familial bonding
witnessed in the storks so much that they created laws encouraging citizens to
care for their aging parents, inspired by the storks!
Wise lessons we need to
learn from our animal friends, indeed.
Fourthly and finally, yet another
photograph that I had taken today, of a mother cow and her cute little calf.
The calf was nudging his mother all
through their walk to the grazing ground. Tens of cows were on their way to the
grazing field, but this little calf refused to allow his mom to walk! 😊
My friend, a Naturalist, tells me that, oxytocin, nick-named the “bonding hormone” plays
a central role in this process of the cow-calf bonding.
Also, the calf learns a lot of vital
social behaviour by observing and interacting with its mother in close
quarters like this one!
Through this bonding, the
cow teaches her calf about herd dynamics, and this maternal guidance is
essential for the calf’s ability to integrate into the social structure of the
herd, it seems.
There’s lots to learn from
our animal friends, on this, our shared habitat!
On an aside, the IUCN Red List
categorizes species into different groups based on their risk of extinction.
The “threatened” species include =
Reef-building corals: 44%
Amphibians: 41%
Trees: 38%
Sharks and rays: 37%
Conifers: 34%
Mammals: 26%
Freshwater fish: 26%
Birds: 12%
By combining conscious
individual efforts with larger-scale, systemic change, we can sure make a
significant difference in the fight to protect the world’s threatened species.
And here’s wishing you
all a Happy World Animal Day, folks!
