Elephant Rescues

I found these videos very touching - and the one thing that they forcefully bring home is that human beings are not uniquely intelligent nor are we the only creatures with emotions. Not that I've ever really believed that we are so special. After all, as a species we seem to hate as much as we love. Why else would we have wars over trivialities and why would so many of us - and I'm looking at the current Australian Federal Government and the socially unfair Budget they are trying to introduce as a perfect example - be unable to empathise with others? In my opinion, animals do have emotions and are capable of caring for others. They are almost certainly different in some ways from human emotions and I doubt they have deep philosophical discussions about them like we do - not that we seem to gain much from that - but that doesn't mean they are any less real.

Let's face it, the fact that many of us can believe rubbish like rhino horn or tiger testicles are aphrodisiacs doesn't speak too highly of our intelligence, does it, nor does that we still allow slavery to exist in some parts of the world while treating men and women as equal is anathema to a large part of the human population. We might think we are superior but we still have a long way to go and when I look at these videos I begin to wonder exactly why we see ourselves as better than animals.

So here are the links.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Fi2ccZ8GE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd-LtWtNvDw

Then there are these videos of Koko, a female lowlands gorilla who was taught sign language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNuZ4OE6vCk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQCOHUXmEZg

So what do you think after watching them?