On Gifted Children

Lori Marino on July 22, 2015

We all know the stories of child prodigies, those precocious mathematicians and musicians who startle us with their maturity and their brilliance. Children like these are considered “gifted”. That is, they have a talent, at a very early age, that goes way beyond what most adults ever possess and they seem to be driven by their exceptional abilities. These children should be supported and cherished.

But there is another form of “giftedness” that is just as rare and, arguably, even more valuable in today’s world than intellectual or artistic bravado. That is the gift of compassion. This level of genius goes way beyond the “love of animals” that most children display. Instead, these young people are driven by an insight about our connectedness with the other animals that allows them to see things most others do not. And, like other gifted children, they are single-minded in the pursuit of their goals.

One such child is Joseph Moreno, an 11-year-old boy who lives in California and whom I met a few months ago when I was giving a talk in Los Angeles on elephant and orca captivity. Joe’s searching questions and sensitivity to the issues were remarkable, and when, after my presentation, he got up and spoke poignantly about the plight of these animals in circuses and zoos the whole audience was struck silent by the unusual degree of thoughtfulness he displayed and how he so freely and beautifully articulated his feelings. After the meeting, Joe continued to “work the room”, chatting up all of the scientists and advocates, getting autographs, and displaying a knowledge of animals far beyond his years. Yes, Joe is the whole package. Not only is he gifted in compassion but he is a young scholar-advocate who knows the power of information and education. See him in action here.

There are other young rock-star activists for animals out there who are clearly gifted in compassion. I was struck by the recent story of Bruno Barba, a 16-year-old high school student who had been caring for a pig named Lola as part of the Future Farmers of America program. But, at the end of the program, instead of bringing Lola to slaughter as the other children did, Bruno defied his school and his mentors, and brought Lola to Farm Sanctuary, where she will live out her life in safety.

Kids like Joe and Bruno are as rare as musical or mathematical geniuses. But there are plenty of other young people who display an understanding of other animals and an empathy for them that can either be encouraged by society or squashed under the status quo. They are the six-year-old who wants to be vegetarian because she doesn’t want to eat her friends, the animals, or the college biology major who refuses to dissect a rat, or the teenager who picks up earthworms from the sidewalk after a rain.

And just like other talents, no matter how brilliant or ordinary, the gift of compassion should be rewarded and nurtured. Parents with children who exhibit these abilities can be proud of their capacity for compassion. It’s something rarer and more precious than just about any other talent a child could have.

New Imaging Technique Reveals Dolphin Brain Pathways

Lori Marino on July 9, 2015

Figure shows the new pathways (in blue and yellow) connecting the midbrain of a dolphin to the temporal lobe.

Two dolphins who died more than a decade ago on a North Carolina beach are now the focus of an unprecedented finding in the scientific literature, giving scientists new information about how dolphin brains process sounds.

The new paper is co-authored by Kimmela Center Executive Director Lori Marino, who joined with colleagues at Emory University and at the University of Oxford to use a new imaging method, called Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), to explore the connections between areas in the two dolphin brains. Each of the large brains had to be scanned for over 12 hours for the imaging data to be obtained.

Earlier studies of a different type, done with live dolphins in Russia, showed that the pathway from the inner ear to the cortex of the brain culminates at the apex of the brain next to the visual processing area. All of that made sense because dolphins are echolocators and integrate visual and acoustic information very quickly.

The unique arrangement of the dolphin brain was added to existing pathways already laid down in mammals.

But when Marino and her colleagues used DTI to examine connections in the postmortem dolphin brains they discovered something never before seen: yet another pathway from the ear to a different part of the brain, the temporal lobe, where the primary auditory cortex of most mammals is located.

This second connection shows that the unique arrangement of the dolphin brain was added to existing pathways already laid down in mammals.

“We found that there are probably multiple areas in the dolphin brain associated with auditory information, and the neural pathways look similar to those of a bat,” lead author Greg Berns says. “This is surprising because dolphins and bats are far apart on the evolutionary tree. They diverged tens of millions of years ago but their brains may have evolved similar mechanisms for using sound not just to hear, but to also create mental images.”

Now that this imaging technique has demonstrated it can reveal connectivity patterns in postmortem cetacean brains, a whole world of opportunity opens up for exploring dolphin and whale brains, and all non-invasively.

Pigs Are Smart – and Machiavellian

Lori Marino on June 11, 2015

Winston Churchill famously said: “A dog looks up to you; a cat looks down on you; only a pig treats you as an equal.”

But that, of course, is hardly how we treat them in return. Pigs are typically viewed as things to be born in cages and kept in cages until they’re ready to be processed into pork chops and sausages.

Two scientists have now concluded that pigs are indeed extraordinarily complex animals, and that they share many of the characteristics we admire in, for example, dogs, chimpanzees, dolphins and humans.

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Infant Beluga Death Is No Mystery

Lori Marino on June 8, 2015

By Lori Marino

Last Friday, June 5th, an infant beluga whale born to Maris and Beethoven at the Georgia Aquarium took her last breath. The whale was 26 days old, and the second infant from the same parents to die at the aquarium in three years. The first one, her sister, died less than a week after she was born.

The senior veterinarian and the care staff at the Georgia Aquarium all seem baffled by the early death of yet another infant beluga. According to the aquarium, the infant was not feeding well and not gaining weight as expected. She became lethargic and then her heart stopped. The aquarium told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that her death “may remain a mystery.”

But this death is not a mystery at all. It’s a classic case of the well-known medical condition Failure To Thrive Syndrome. FTTS is seen in human children and other animals (it’s known as Fading Puppy and Kitten Syndrome in dogs and cats) when they fail to develop normally both physically and mentally.

The syndrome is associated with many diseases, but also with environmental conditions in which a child is either abused or neglected, and is not uncommon in orphanages. It’s also seen in other cognitively complex mammals, such as chimpanzees and elephants, who are kept in artificial conditions. So, the care staff at the aquarium need look no further than their Merck Manual of Medicine to find the answer to the question of why beluga whales do not reproduce well in aquaria and theme parks.

Why do so many marine mammals succumb to FTTS in captivity? Initially, this birth was hailed as the first successful breeding of two captive beluga whales, raising hopes among aquariums that they would be able to find a solution to their dwindling captive populations. But the facts make it perfectly clear why these breeding attempts keep failing and why beluga whales growing up in marine parks will never work.

Beluga whales are highly intelligent, socially complex mammals with brains over two and a half times the size expected for their body mass. Like other smart mammals, they depend upon a long period of learning to assume their roles as parents, siblings, friends and members of their social networks. They’ve adapted to living in fluid groups that in the open ocean can range from just a few individuals to sometimes thousands.

In the wild, a daughter learns from her mother and from other experienced females how to become a mother and raise her own children.

In the wild, female belugas choose when and with whom they want to mate. Their calves remain close to them for 4-5 years or more, during which time a daughter learns from her mother and from other experienced females in the group how to become a mother and raise her own children. When she eventually gives birth, other females in the extended family are present to assist in forming protected and caring nursery groups. This is beluga whale culture. These are the circumstances to which these whales have adapted over millions of years and that they need in order to thrive.

Now look at the situation at the Georgia Aquarium. Maris, the 20-year-old mother, was born at the New York Aquarium, where she was housed with other belugas who were stolen from their wild families. Her mother, Natasha, was taken from her family when she was only four years old. So Maris never had the benefit of a mother who could pass on important cultural information to her about how to raise a child.

Still barely out of childhood, Maris has been transported five times in and out of different facilities. At the Georgia Aquarium she was forced into a situation that left her little choice than to mate with a male, Beethoven, who was chosen not by her, but by the staff. (Beethoven is now on “breeding loan” to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago).

For Maris, there was no autonomy, no continuity, and no opportunity to develop within a natural social and physical environment. She and her two infants were all born into an entirely unnatural world, one to which they are not adapted. One need only see the photographs of the infant beluga surrounded by several humans in wet suits. The Georgia Aquarium describes these scenes as being in the “arms of caregivers”. Although intentions might be good, the presence of humans is not a condition to which infant beluga whales are adapted, and it’s doubtful that either the baby or her mother experienced these human intrusions as the warm and comforting interactions the aquarium claims they were.

Studies of welfare in captive belugas support the assertion that belugas cannot live, let alone thrive, in a setting in which they never evolved. In captivity their lives are shorter and mortality rates are higher. They often die of stress-related diseases which break down their immune system function. They fail to thrive.

So, when the veterinarians and staff at the Georgia Aquarium claim to be flummoxed over the death of two infant belugas, they need look no further than any basic marine mammal ecology textbook to find the answer to why belugas will never thrive in theme parks.

De-Extinction from the Animal’s Perspective

Lori Marino on May 17, 2015

The prospect of de-extinction – “reviving” members of extinct species – is gathering more and more international attention. For example, National Public Radio’s Science Friday (May 15, 2015) featured an interview with molecular paleontologist Beth Shapiro, the author of a new book How to Clone a Mammoth. She discussed how our increasing scientific capabilities in genomics, molecular biology and cloning are bringing us closer to realizing the goals of de-extinction. As a scientist, I get it; these are fascinating issues.

In a previous post, I outlined Four Reasons Why We Should Oppose ‘De-Extinction’. Some of the more thoughtful advocates for de-extinction, like Shapiro, share some of the concerns I expressed about bringing back an animal for whom there is no ecological context. But with all the excitement around the possibility of seeing a live mammoth (or saber-toothed tiger or any other), few, if any, scientists who are involved in de-extinction research seem to be representing the needs and concerns of the animals themselves.

As Shapiro points out, in order to create a “mammoth” who will survive more than a few days, several modern female Asian elephants will need to be impregnated. Modern elephants already have a difficult time reproducing and giving birth in captivity. And a mammoth baby brought to full term in a modern Asian elephant may be too large to pass through the modern elephant birth canal. Cesarean birth for elephants would not be feasible. The procedures any individual subject would have to be put through will essentially amount to a vivisection experiment. Who is willing to take the personal responsibility for making decisions that will probably end the lives of so many elephants, who are already becoming extinct and whose rights as autonomous beings will never be considered in the process of being used in this way?
De-extinction will not be possible without violating any reasonable standards of humane and respectful treatment of our fellow animals.

The long and short of it is this: De-extinction will not be possible without violating any reasonable standards of humane and respectful treatment of our fellow animals. Haven’t elephants withstood enough brutality and exploitation from our species, with poaching, circuses and zoos, and dying of exhaustion literally under the weight of being ridden by tourists?

Where are the arguments on behalf of the sentient beings who will bear the full brunt of these efforts as if they were inanimate scientific curiosities? We tend to forget that a species is comprised of individuals capable of experiencing both pleasure and suffering. Anything we do to a species we do to individual animals.

I am still waiting for Shapiro and the advocates for de-extinction to articulate a good enough reason for overriding the personal welfare of any unfortunate individuals who wouldbe used in this process. These concerns, if they do exist, should be sung loud and clear from the rooftops. If not, then they are in the undesirable position of defending an effort that shows the very opposite of respect and consideration for the welfare of other animals.

Update on Hercules and Leo Order to Show Cause

Lori Marino on April 22, 2015

The Nonhuman Rights Project issued the following update this afternoon on its lawsuit regarding chimpanzees Hercules and Leo.

This afternoon Judge Barbara Jaffe amended yesterday’s ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE & WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS by striking out the words “& WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS” from the title of her Order.

This case is one of a trio of cases that the Nonhuman Rights Project has brought in an attempt to free chimpanzees imprisoned within the State of New York through an “Article 70–Habeas Corpus” proceeding. These cases are novel and this is the first time that an Order to Show Cause has issued. We are grateful for an opportunity to litigate the issue of the freedom of the chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo, at the ordered May hearing.

The hearing is now scheduled for Wednesday, May 27 at 10:30 am at the New York County Supreme Court, 80 Centre St., New York, NY 10013. The hearing is open to the public.