Enjoy EnglishコミュのCan Cats Reason?

I read a newspaper article recently about a female gorilla in a German zoo whose 3-month-old baby died. The mother gorilla cradled the baby in her arms for hours after it died, stroking it and calling it. It was said that she seemed very distressed about the loss of her baby. The visitors to the zoo felt very upset seeing her that way. However, other articles about the same incident were critical of people who project their human feelings on to animals.

Personally, I think that animals have feelings, too. Moreover, they are trying to communicate with us. It’s just that we humans are too stupid to understand them. People who have pets will probably have noticed that their animals have many things they want their owner to know.

I have three cats. They generally want to tell me the same few things: “I’m hungry”, “I need the toilet” and “I want to go outside”. They let me know with their voices and their actions, perhaps by standing next to their food bowls and calling in a loud voice. It is not difficult for me to understand this as meaning “I’m hungry”, and I am able to respond in a satisfactory way that fulfils their need at that time.

Hunger or the need to use the toilet are rather basic physical needs, and any animal will express distress in some way if unable to satisfy them. I have noticed, however, that my cats sometimes seem to have more complex thoughts than these. Here is an example. The oldest cat, Black Jack, came to me when I was in the bathroom and started calling to me loudly. I ignored him for a while, but he persisted, so I followed him, and he led me to the door, as if he wanted to go outside. There I saw one of the younger cats, Lucky, gazing in through the door with wide eyes, begging to come in. I let her in, and Black Jack at once and lay down to go to sleep.

In other words, Black Jack communicated something that was of no direct benefit to himself. He was able to understand his friend’s problem, and think of a way to solve it. Perhaps his thought process was as follows: “Lucky is in trouble”, then , “Perhaps I can do something”, then “I’ll bring Mum”, and finally, “I’ll keep going even if Mum doesn’t understand me, for Lucky’s sake”. This was a kind of volunteerism on his part, as it did not involve satisfying his own physical needs.

Or perhaps there is another interpretation….What do you think?

People with pets will surely be able to come up with similar examples from their own experience. I would love to hear about them. As our understanding of animals grows, I think we will be able to see that they are much more like us humans than we thought.