Life Lessons from Dogs, Orcas, Pigs, Cows, Rats and Chickens

Yesterday I received a few holiday greeting emails and some people asked if I could please post something "short and sweet" (as Andy put it) about some life lessons we can learn from nonhuman animals (animals). They weren't necessarily looking for "self-help" examples, but rather were interested in some vignettes about what research has told us about the cognitive, emotional, and moral lives of other animals that might help us appreciate who they, the animals, are, and what we might learn from them about dealing with how we live with one another. While there are some useful lessons for how we might live better lives and cope with various stressors including failure from how porcupines deal with life's ups and downs, it's essential to get things right and not perpetuate myths about what animals do and why. I also want to emphasize that some things that other animals do wouldn't be human-appropriate. But, that's who they are and we need to honor the different ways in which they live as card-carrying members of their own species.

Dogs

Let's begin with dogs, for these are the amazing beings to whom many people turn for valuable life lessons. While many of the things they do would likely get you in lots of trouble, there also are, for example, some lessons about fairness and dogs trying to live by the "Golden Rule" even when they play tug-of-war.

Source: Marc Bekoff

Unfortunately, a lot of information on the web and in various media outlets about dogs and some lessons we may learn from them are just plain wrong, although some of these myths such as their being unconditional lovers have spread as well-accepted memes. Some people continue to misleadingly call them "the truths about dogs." All in all, if dogs were to use social media like Facebook, it would more appropriately be called Nosebook or Buttbook and it would be unwise for us to mirror the lessons we find there that typically work for our canine companions and clearly wouldn't work for us. Nonetheless, there are some valuable lessons they offer that might help us along.¹

Orcas

Orcas, also called killer whales, also offer some useful lessons we may choose to emulate, once again recognizing that their killing ways that have evolved in order for them to survive surely aren't behavior patterns for which we should strive. Along these lines, a new book by Alexis Pauline Gumbs called Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals contains some valuable examples and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The book's description reads: "Undrowned is a book-length meditation for social movements and our whole species based on the subversive and transformative guidance of marine mammals. Our aquatic cousins are queer, fierce, protective of each other, complex, shaped by conflict, and struggling to survive the extractive and militarized conditions our species has imposed on the ocean. Gumbs employs a brilliant mix of poetic sensibility and naturalist observation to show what they might teach us, producing not a specific agenda but an unfolding space for wondering and questioning. From the relationship between the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale and Gumbs’s Shinnecock and enslaved ancestors to the ways echolocation changes our understandings of 'vision' and visionary action, this is a masterful use of metaphor and natural models in the service of social justice."²

Pigs, cows, chickens, and rodents

All of these amazing beings offer valuable and positive life lessons from which we can learn a lot. For example, a new film called GUNDA chronicles the lives of a mother pig, a flock of chickens, and a herd of cows in which "Master director Victor Kossakowsky invites the audience to slow down and experience life as his subjects do, taking in their world with a magical patience and an otherworldly perspective."

These sentient beings all have rich cognitive and emotional lives and generally are peaceful and caring individuals.³ However, on occasion they do settle interpersonal conflicts with varying degrees of assertiveness, but they generally are peaceful and caring individuals who display compassion, empathy, and kindness. Rodents also care about the well-being of others. Voles are known to console other voles in distress and rats will free familiar trapped rats from being restrained and also save drowning rats and forego the chance to eat chocolate. They also share food when they sense other rats are hungry.

Some life lessons from other animals

New neighbors who have returned to their homes also during the current pandemic also can teach us lessons about who they really are and peaceful coexistence. There also are some valuable lessons that can help us along concerning the prominent roles of females and barriers to female leadership in a number of animal societies.⁴

All in all, numerous and a diverse set of other animals—not only mammals, birds, and other vertebrates, but so too invertebrates including jellyfish—offer valuable lessons from which we might learn how to interact more peacefully with one another and with them. A review of Nature's Life Lessons: Everyday Truths from Nature notes, "... we have to learn from 'them' and how the typically accepted chasm of difference we are taught about people and animals is misguided at best—we are all basically the same, and consequently all need the respect and same things in life—no matter what species you represent!" As I mentioned above, while there are many similarities, there also are some large differences from which we can still learn a good deal about ourselves, if that's the main goal of learning about other animals.

I hope this brief foray into the lives of other animals with whom we share our magnificent world will stimulate you to pay more attention to who they are and how they live. There are many valuable lessons about why different patterns of behavior have evolved and how they serve individuals of different species.

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Learning about how other animals live can also help us deal with the ups and downs of our own daily lives and remain hopeful in dark times. It's important to remember that we, too, are animals. There also are some important and surprising lessons we can use to make life better for all beings, nonhumans and humans, a win-win for all.