The highlight of this week were the wolves; As I read Safina’s chapter about wolves, I was awestruck. It was beyond my expectations how wolves behave among a pack, on their own, and under a threat. Reading the text was truly mesmerising, especially about the magnanimous twenty one and his grand-daughter six. It was intriguing to know how a predator like the wolf could spare the life of a rival, that too more than once.
Another story that interested me was how six dealt with coyotes causing her pack problems. It was evident how she was deliberately trying to send a message by killing just the coyote cubs and not even laying a hand on the adult coyotes. This instance tells us how animals are not mindless beasts but rather intelligent creatures.
The next chapter by Safina was “Whines & Pet Peeves”. This chapter discusses how animals have knowledge of their surroundings and how they know what all is going around. This argument is explained better with the example of the story of the two dogs Jude and Chula: Jude and Chula are two dogs from the same household and it is particularly interesting how the author tells their story. How they learn to differentiate between porcelain rabbits and real ones, how for a dog what walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, is not a duck unless it smells like a duck. What stands out the most is how Jude takes the author to Chula, when she was lost.
Coming back to my research about lions: I initially began with Wikipedia and Google Scholar for basic information and studies about animals, but surprisingly, the most important article I found was while I was going through my snapchat. I saw some news about how lions kept in cages in South Africa are suffering from mange, and how they are bred to give birth to cubs, and then the cubs are snatched away from them.
After viewing this article I focused my research on such inhuman instances towards animals, namely against lions. I plan to keep on researching about the royal king of beasts.
I just wanted to say that I love the layout of your homepage. I also enjoyed Safina’s chapter about wolves. It was really interesting learning about a whole different lifestyle of animals.
Wow I didn’t know that snapchat was a good source to find information about animals. Social media teaches you new things everyday.
Great post! Just remember that the issues with lions (like the one you wrote about in this blog) is something to save for the AP (weeks 6-10). Right now what you want to find is research on lion intelligence, social intelligence, social groups, etc.