Reflection: Interspecies Communication
Class Decisions
By Andrew (06/10/13 19:30:51)
Related animal: Human

Interspecies Collaboration Week 2

The reason I originally chose this class was because I was really interested in the description. I was interested in the description because there wasn’t really one at all and pretty much all I got from it was that we were going to attempt to communicate with animals during the quarter and that really intrigued me. My mother is a veterinarian at an animal hospital and at a rescue zoo in Big Bear Lake, CA and my dad is a retired professional horse jockey so I have been around many different species of animals my entire life. My mom has always thought that animals can really understand what she’s trying to say to them because much of the time they do exactly what she’s asking. This started with our own dogs and horse, but quickly spread to most of the animals at the zoo. One crazy experience I had with an animal was when I was five. My family and I went camping up in King’s Canyon. It was just passed sunset and everyone was washing up and getting ready for dinner. While everyone was busy doing that, I somehow slipped away from the campsite and was nowhere to be found. 15 minutes later my family had the park rangers looking all over the campgrounds for me. And after 30 minutes they brought in local enforcement to help with the search. After a little over an hour of searching and far into nighttime the rangers found me sitting playing with rocks and sticks about a two minute walk outside of the campground with two bears sitting just 30 feet away from me. Since they were so close and in the same opening, the camp rangers had to be very careful with talking to me and “saving” me. They scared away the bears and then picked me up and brought me to my parents. The whole time I had no idea that anything was wrong and I was just playing in the same area as these bears. I know I didn’t directly interact with the bears, but being so helpless and in such close proximity with them makes me feel now like we kind of made an agreement to play in our own areas. Sort of like we were cool with each other as long as I didn’t mess with them and they didn’t mess with me.


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