#animal

I would come to learn that the alpha female can read every single bit of food you put into your body. Make a choice that'a going to keep you strong and fit for the pack and you will pass muster; make a choice that's the equivalent of chocolate cake in the human world and you'll wind up urinating in streams to disguise your scent, or else suffer the consequences. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#family-life #science #family

I know that man started animal husbandry thousands of years ago, and I think it’s disgusting. Men and animals should never be allowed to marry. Or have sex. And maybe not even engage in necking, unless it’s a man and a giraffe. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#disgusting #funny #marriage #funny

Intelligence is the capacity to know what we are doing and instinct is just instinct. The results are about the same. ↗

— Will Cuppy

#consciousness #humor #intelligence #humor

<...> I’ve never believed there is any animal more dangerous than a human being. I never will. It’s the intelligence. It’s the mind that makes it so. ↗

— Maggie Shayne

#human-being #intelligence #mind #intelligence

The keepers would give the gorillas an assortment of fruits and vegetables each afternoon, and on this particular occasion, Judy Sievert tossed Nina an apple, which rolled away. Instead of going to get it, Nina just 'sat there sadly,' in Judy's words. Judy continued her rounds, handing out yams and apples to the other gorillas, but Nina sat there looking appleless and downtrodden. Taking pity, Judy tossed her another apple. As soon as Nina had it, she got up and went over to where the first apple had rolled away, taking it too. ↗

— Eugene Linden

#deception #gorillas #intelligence

If an animal does something, we call it instinct. If we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence. ↗

— Will Cuppy

#intelligence #intelligence

All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog. ↗

— Charles M. Schulz

#dogs #humans #life

Discipline isn't about showing a dog who's boss; it's about taking responsibility for a living creature you have brought into your world. ↗

— Cesar Millan

#discipline #dogs #life

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. ↗

— Henry Beston

#life

We humans may be brilliant and we may be special, but we are still connected to the rest of life. No one reminds us of this better than our dogs. Perhaps the human condition will always include attempts to remind ourselves that we are separate from the rest of the natural world. We are different from other animals; it's undeniably true. But while acknowledging that, we must acknowledge another truth, the truth that we are also the same. That is what dogs and their emotions give us-- a connection. A connection to life on earth, to all that binds and cradles us, lest we begin to feel too alone. Dogs are our bridge-- our connection wo who we really are, and most tellingly, who we want to be. When we call them home to us, it'as as if we are calling for home itself. And that'll do, dogs. That'll do. ↗

— Patricia B. McConnell

#dogs #earth #life