Coyotes, dingoes and wolves are all dogs, as intelligent and loyal as our familiars. Our treatment of them is unconscionable
Coyote
The coyote is a species of canine also known as the American jackal, prairie wolf, and brush wolf. It is native to North America, and it is smaller than its close relative, the gray wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. It fills much of the same ecological niche as the golden jackal does in Eurasia but the coyote is generally larger.
Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets
A life shared with pets brings many emotions. We feel love for our companions, certainly, and happiness at the thought that we’re providing them with a safe, healthy life. But there’s another emotion, less often acknowledged, that can be nearly as powerful: guilt. When we see our cats gazing wistfully out the window, or watch a goldfish swim lazy circles in a bowl, we can’t help but wonder: are we doing the right thing, keeping these independent beings locked up, subject to our control? Is keeping pets actually good for the pets themselves? That’s the question that animates Jessica Pierce’s powerful Run, Spot, Run. A lover of pets herself (including, over the years, dogs, cats, fish, rats, hermit crabs, and more), Pierce understands the joys that pets bring us. But she also refuses to deny the ambiguous ethics at the heart of the relationship, and through a mix of personal stories, philosophical reflections, and scientifically informed analyses of animal behavior and natural history, she puts pet-keeping to the test. Is it ethical to keep pets at all? Are some species more suited to the relationship than others? Are there species one should never attempt to own? And are there ways that we can improve our pets’ lives, so that we can be confident that we are giving them as much as they give us? Deeply empathetic, yet rigorous and unflinching in her thinking, Pierce has written a book that is sure to help any pet owner, unsettling assumptions but also giving them the knowledge to build deeper, better relationships with the animals with whom they’ve chosen to share their lives.
How COYOTE Almost Got Slopped by AI
The sordid tale of the freelancer who never was.
How to spot a psychopath: ‘It’s like the difference between a domestic cat and a wild cat’
People with persistent predatory personalities cause an inordinate amount of pain. Recently, our shared understanding of them has grown – and it could help protect us
Transylvania's Heritage on Instagram: "SHAPE SHIFTING WEREWOLF CAPTURED ON CAMERA IN TRANSYLVANIA? This week in Bihor, a farmer I know personally heard his shepherd dogs barking as a danger warning, on his land early evening. He took his basic thermal camera and saw was a pack of wolves that alerted his dogs. Went in to get help as many animals are killed by wolves in the area, but when he returned the wolves left. Only later upon looking at the camera footage he saw what it looks like a man figure coming out of a wolf and wolves leaving, claiming to be a werewolf shapeshifting. He claimed to me he even knows who the "strigoi" (evil spirit) is and that he is known do such things as "priculici" (werewolf) in the area. We also call these werevilf like spirits "moroi" in our region. You make what you want out of this video, I posted it here for debate, because whatever your belief is, this is worth seing."
787 likes, 54 comments - transylvania.heritage on February 22, 2025: "SHAPE SHIFTING WEREWOLF CAPTURED ON CAMERA IN TRANSYLVANIA? This week in Bihor, a farmer I know personally heard his shepherd dogs barking as a danger warning, on his land early evening. He took his basic thermal camera and saw was a pack of wolves that alerted his dogs. Went in to get help as many animals are killed by wolves in the area, but when he returned the wolves left. Only later upon looking at the camera footage he saw what it looks like a man figure coming out of a wolf and wolves leaving, claiming to be a werewolf shapeshifting. He claimed to me he even knows who the "strigoi" (evil spirit) is and that he is known do such things as "priculici" (werewolf) in the area. We also call these werevilf like spirits "moroi" in our region. You make what you want out of this video, I posted it here for debate, because whatever your belief is, this is worth seing.".
Humans Love Having Pets. Seems Like Some Other Primates Do, Too.
We aren’t the only animals that like to take care of other species. A new study finds that the roots of keeping a pet may stretch deep into our primate past.
“I am Not the Grace of Doe” – Radiant Obscurities
There is a beautiful and romanticized image of the doe. The doe is graceful, elegant, and delicate. She is shy and unattainable, disappearing softly at the slightest sound. Her eyes have become a cliche for the vulnerable, docile feminine, and a glimpse of her, staring back at you for a profound moment before she flies, is precious and moving.I am not this doe.In fact, in a way I hate this doe. No doe is really this doe. Let me tell you a few things about cervids, the whitetail doe in particular. Cervids are olfactory animals. That means they learn things about other deer with their sense of smell. What that means is that the smelliest things about deer are pretty crucial to the way deer live. As with many animals, urine plays a large part in communication – males will urinate in pools and wallow in them to advertise; they will also urinate on their feet to leave their scent with their hoofprints. Females advertise their eligibility to mate by urinating, also.It means that does will ingest the excrement of their young in order to prevent fawns from having a scent that would give away their position to predators.Does aren’t always gentle or vulnerable.In winter, does that are healthier and more able to sense danger will actively prevent other does and fawns from having access to food. Even if a high-ranking doe no longer needs to eat, she will fend off others from the food area and not allow them access, even if they are starving.Nor do deer always flee in the face of danger – several accounts chronicle deer attacking dogs and humans when threatened, in some cases quite brutally. Not many animals hold up closely to their romanticized stereotypes when their survival is put into question, but the desperate deer is the exact opposite of its gentle popular image, its adorable hoofs formidable and unexpected weapons.Besides that, deer do kill, sometimes to eat. A number of articles bring to light the fact that deer do eat carrion, and there is record of deer killing and eating grounded birds.For me, though, there’s more that negates the image of the wholly graceful doe than just wildlife facts. Because the grace of deer, the elegance, is not what makes me deer. As far as the romantic stereotype goes, I do usually feel more inclined to flight, and can be standoffish as a mode of self-preservation. I feel vulnerable in the way that I recognize deer are very, very “killable” – living in Vermont, I saw a great deal of dead deer and the mortality of the whitetail in a hunting community that supports a healthy coyote population was impossible to ignore. I do not feel graceful; usually I feel colossally awkward, and something about deer speaks of that awkwardness to me. Being spooked about nothing, the awkward indignation of being disturbed, the skittering flight are all deer. These things are aspects of the romantic stereotype, but I do not perceive them in a romantic way. I do not think being deer makes me mysterious, desirable, or delicate. Since I’ve become able to consciously analyze my animality, I have found it extremely important to define myself by the more negative or humble aspects of an animal as well as the positive and proud ones. I have difficulty understanding people who speak of their animality primarily in terms of the powerful, beautiful, majestic, or strong. Yes, there are things about deer that I think are lovely and ideal and that I relate to very much. I love the flick of their ears, the clarity of their gaze, the small cloven hoof poised not quite touching the ground, the flag of the tail, the sudden and fleeting bounding away. These are things that I can feel. But I can also feel the awkward stretch of the neck for browse, the indignation of being encroached upon, the need to hide, to flee, to fear. I can feel the undignified sound of the grunt and wheeze, the frozen discomfort of surprise and being caught in headlights, so to speak, and the hurried skitter away. Even the olfactory things that we consider unpleasant or gross in our culture make some sense to me – conveniently, as a human, I do not need to use urine to communicate sexual availability, but I rarely feel the need to rid myself of sexual smells when I notice them. I can’t deny the beauty and seriousness of feeling deer, or of following a deer path through the woods. I can’t ignore the bark and smell, the moss and magic, but I also can’t ignore that these paths are liberally punctuated with droppings. And this, for me, is an adequate metaphor for my experience of being doe: I can acknowledge the beautiful and wonderful, but must take into account the awkward and uncomfortable as well. I would not be deer if I could not accept both the loveliness and the unpleasantness of the doe.
Human Predators: Groundbreaking insights into the red f…
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That Winter the Wolf Came — Oakland Public Library
That Winter the Wolf Came — Spahr, Juliana — <p>That Winter the Wolf Came is written for this era of global struggle. It finds its ferment at the intersection of ecological and economic catastrophe. Its feminist and celebratory energy is fueled by street protests and their shattered windows. Amid oil spills and austerity measures and shore birds and a child holding its mother’s hand and hissing teargas canisters, it reminds us exactly what we must fight to defend with a wild ferocity, and what we’re up against.</p><br /><p>"In her poems, love does not resist the world beyond; love lets it in. Politics demands feeling rather than denuding it." —<i>Los Angeles Review of Books</i></p><p>"Geography, economics, ecology, hydrology, local and international history; repetition, flat limited diction, lengthy chant; intersections of incompatible discourses, such as a field biologist’s checklist plus memoir, medical record plus ode, incantation plus site report: Spahr draws on these resources and procedures to make poems that feel like bizarre, careful essays, and essays that feel like sad, extended poems." —<i>The Nation</i></p><p>"...a work of crisp wit, bizarre conjunctions and ultimately enduring moral authority." —<i>Publisher’s Weekly</i></p><br /><br />Excerpt:<br /><br /> It was Non-Revolution. Or it was me. Or it was Non-Revolution and me. I was unsure what it really was. Maybe it was my thoughts. My thoughts at one minute about Non-Revolution. About the smell of Non-Revolution. Sweat, urine, sage, pot, rotting food, hay, all mixed together. Perhaps about Non-Revolution’s body. I am sure I am not the only one who has thought it exceptional, but I am also just as sure that by the standards of bodies, Non-Revolution’s is fine but not exceptional. That is the point. That is why Non-Revolution is called Non-Revolution, why they have revolution as a possibility in their name but it is a modified and thus negated possibility so as to suggest they are possibly neither good nor fucked. Still something about Non-Revolution’s smell and body had gotten into me.<br /><br/>Renewed poetry of struggle at the intersection of ecological and economic catastrophe—feminist, ferocious, and finally celebratory.<br />
Human–Animal Interaction and Human Prosociality: A Meta-Analytic Review of Experimental and Correlational Studies
Pet ownership and interactions with animals confer various physiological and psychological benefits to humans. Although interactions with animals are commonplace, there is no consensus in the liter...
Tom Seeley: Honeybee Democracy
ATBuddy
Hatch, pet, and feed your buddy. Neglect it and it dies. A decentralized virtual pet living in your AT Protocol identity.
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
Check out Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? - Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition--in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos--to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we've underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal's landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal--and human--intelligence. by Dr Frans de Waal on Bookshop.org US!
Domestication Gone Wild: Politics and Practices of Multispecies Relations
“What do Pacific salmon, British falcons, pine trees everywhere, Ifugao pigs and spirits, and Norwegian apples have in common? They perform ‘domestication’ in ways certain to change the narratives and politics of domestication for scholars of whatever discipline and for critter people all over the earth. Read this book for up-to-the-minute, deeply researched, very smart, contentious takes on the shapes of conjoined humans and nonhumans living and dying together in diverse histories of civilization, colonialism, capitalism, times-past, and times-yet-to-come. Perhaps what opens up in this book are real possibilities for caring more materially in urgent times.” - Donna J. Haraway, author of Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
