End of Week Two

Over the last two weeks I have become more and more aware that I am not even close to doing my part in valuing and protecting animal lives. I will say I have always been curious as to if animals experience the world similarly to how we do and through the TIME articles we read, the Bird Brain video, and Jonathan Frazen article, I have been able to answer that question for the most part. I did not realize just how intelligent birds could be and was actually impressed by the many different challenges that they were able to solve in the video we watched. One of the most surprising parts of that was when the bird was able to tell who they should hide from or stay away from and who they could stay casual with, "When we first captured birds we were wearing this mask. So, the birds that were immobile under a net saw this person [with a mask] coming to them, grabbing them, stretching their wings out to measure them, applying rings to their legs to identify them, and then letting them go....A few days after the initial tagging, Marzluff walked across the campus again. He kept the mask on, but he left the crows alone to see if he'd get any response.... the birds immediately responded to that" (46:51). Personally, the only pets I have ever owned are dogs. I love them all, but I did not take into account that they too are experiencing their own world with emotions and feeling tied to it. With this, however, as much as I now know and understand, I cannot help but think I could be doing more to value lives of other animals. Just because I don't own a specific animal or get to interact with them, does not mean that I shouldn't care about their well-being, and we are doing lots of destruction to many animals lives by using the world to only benefit us, "at present, although our cats and our windows and our pesticides kill billions of them every year, and although some species, particularly on oceanic islands, have been lost for-

ever, their world is still very much alive" (Frazen, 2018, p. 43). So, I am excited that I am getting to know more about animals and more about ways I can be involved and positively impact animal lives because as humans we take so much away.

Safina Summary

Safina touches on some of the questions I have been having when it comes to animals. However, Safina puts it like this: who? Instead of animals being the it, he is asking who the animal is. Safina describes the natures in which animals are experiences their lives as who they are, and we, as animals, should be asking who these animals are as well. I think that this ties well with what Jonathan Frazen was talking about when he was saying that we should value the lives of birds. It's important that we appreciate and acknowledge the life around us, no matter what form, because it is a part of our lives, and as humans we have destroyed or have began to destroy the natural lifestyles of the lives around us.