Who on earth, taught them these social skills? ❤️❤️❤️

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!