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thrulookingglass » Wed Aug 01, 2018 6:19 pm wrote:As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow Me", Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” - Mark 1:17
Fish are sentient.
I've fished the waters of Massachusetts since I was a little boy, mostly freshwater. I cannot afford a sturdy vessel for the sea, so I haven't salt water fished much, but have done some surfcasting. When you're a hunter you try and get into the mind of your prey, as a fisherman, much the same. A good fly fisherman shakes a bush near where the river flows to see what shakes, they choose their flies accordingly. I've always admired the fish I've caught. Beautiful beings. I turn back my catch (catch and release as they say). Fish do become very distressed from gouge of the hook, alien abduction. I've read much from those concerned, the less you remove them from their environment, the better chance of survival they have. I live very close to Cape Cod...we might need to call it Cape Plastic soon.
And while we're at it, perhaps ALL living things are sentient.
Are Trees Sentient Beings? Certainly, Says German Forester
By Richard Schiffman • November 16, 2016
In his bestselling book, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben argues that to save the world’s forests we must first recognize that trees are “wonderful beings” with innate adaptability, intelligence, and the capacity to communicate with — and heal — other trees.
Pele'sDaughter » Wed Aug 01, 2018 3:31 pm wrote:
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/07/ ... -says.html
A pod of endangered orcas, native to the Pacific Northwest waters, has been seen floating the body of a dead calf that died over a week ago.
J35, a 20-year-old whale, gave birth to the first baby orca in three years, but the calf died shortly after.
“The baby was so newborn, it didn’t have blubber. It kept sinking, and the mother would raise it to the surface,” said Ken Balcomb, a senior scientist with the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island, Washington State.
Since its death last Tuesday, the mother has been seen carrying the corpse of her dead calf on her forehead, pushing it to the surface of the water.
But over a week later, Jenny Atkinson, executive director of the Whale Museum on San Juan Island, said that experts now see other members of the pod “sharing the responsibility of caring (sic) this calf,” CBC radio reported.
“They seem to be taking turns.”
Atkinson told The Associated Press earlier that the pod is experiencing a “deep grieving process.”
While at least seven species in seven geographic regions covering three oceans have been documented carrying the body of their deceased young, scientist Deborah Giles with the University Of Washington Center Of Conservation Biology said that grieving for more than 24 hours is a rare occurrence.
The dwindling population of endangered southern resident killer whales has fallen to 75.
Tahlequah: An orca has carried her dead calf for at least 17 days and 1,000 miles
The stunning, devastating, weeks-long journey of an orca and her dead calf
by Avi Selk August 10 at 3:47 PM Email the author
A grieving orca was spotted off the coast of Washington state Thursday, carrying her stillborn calf through the Pacific Ocean for the 17th day in a journey that has astonished and devastated much of the world.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ani ... 87ff4d275c
A horse was neglected by its owner. Now the horse is suing.
Story by Karin Brulliard August 13, 2018
ESTACADA, Ore.
Justice is an 8-year-old American quarter horse who used to be named Shadow. And when he was named Shadow, he suffered. At a veterinarian’s exam last year, he was 300 pounds underweight, his black coat lice-ridden, his skin scabbed and his genitals so frostbitten that they might still require amputation.
The horse had been left outside and underfed by his previous owner, who last summer pleaded guilty to criminal neglect. And now Justice, who today resides with other rescued equines on a quiet wooded farm within view of Oregon’s Cascade mountains, is suing his former owner for negligence. In a lawsuit filed in his new name in a county court, the horse seeks at least $100,000 for veterinary care, as well as damages “for pain and suffering,” to fund a trust that would stay with him no matter who is his caretaker.
The complaint is the latest bid in a quixotic quest to get courts to recognize animals as plaintiffs, something supporters and critics alike say would be revolutionary. The few previous attempts — including a recent high-profile case over whether a monkey can own a copyright — have failed, with judges ruling in various ways that the nonhumans lacked legal standing to sue. But Justice’s case, the animal rights lawyers behind it contend, is built on court decisions and statutes that give it a stronger chance, particularly in a state with some of the nation’s most progressive animal protection laws.
“There have been a lot of efforts to try to get animals not only to be protected but to have the right to go to court when their rights are violated,” said Matthew Liebman, director of litigation at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which filed the suit in Justice’s name. Those “haven’t found the right key to the courthouse door. And we’re hopeful that this is the key.”
These efforts have been made amid broad growth in legal protections and advocacy for animals. Three decades ago, few law schools offered courses in animal law; now, more than 150 do, and some states have created animal law prosecutorial units. All 50 states have enacted felony penalties for animal abuse. Connecticut last year became the first state to allow courts to appoint lawyers or law students as advocates in animal cruelty cases, in part because overburdened prosecutors were dismissing a majority of such cases.
These developments count as progress, animal rights lawyers say, in persuading lawmakers and courts to expand the traditional legal view of animals — as property — to reflect their role in a society in which dog-sitting is big business and divorces can involve cat custody battles.
“Our legislature acknowledged that people care a lot about animals, and that’s something that’s evolving and increasing,” said Jessica Rubin, a University of Connecticut law professor who serves as an advocate in that state’s cruelty cases. “The law, hopefully, is catching up to where our morals are.”
MORE...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/nat ... _term=.b6c
Scientists Gave MDMA to Octopuses—and What Happened Was Profound
Ryan F. MandelbaumYesterday 11:00am
GIF: Jim Cooke (Gizmodo)
When humans take the drug MDMA, versions of which are known as molly or ecstasy, they commonly feel very happy, extraverted, and particularly interested in physical touch. A group of scientists recently wondered whether this drug might have a similar effect on other species—specifically, octopuses, which are seemingly as different from humans as an animal can be. The results of their experiment, in which seven octopuses took MDMA, were “unbelievable.”
Just think about an octopus—other than their impressive intelligence, they have little in common with humans. We’ve been heading along different branches of the evolutionary tree for 500 million years. Rather than one localized brain with a cortex, or a highly folded outer layer like our brains have, an octopus’s decentralized nervous system includes control centers for each arm in addition to a brain.
Given how different we are, Gül Dölen and her colleague Eric Edsinger wondered whether the chemistry behind human social behaviors—the system controlling the serotonin molecule—also existed in the solitary, asocial octopus. They began by analyzing the octopus genome, and found that octopuses, too, have genes that seem to code for serotonin transporters, proteins responsible for moving serotonin molecules into brain cells. Serotonin is the molecule generally considered to be responsible for feeling good. When humans take MDMA, it binds to serotonin transporter proteins and changes the way serotonin travels between brain cells, likely producing the warm and fuzzy high and perhaps the increased extraversion that the drug is known for.
The fun began when the researchers gave MDMA to seven Octopus bimaculoides octopuses inside laboratory tanks. They hoped to test whether the animals behaved more socially after receiving a dose of MDMA—a sign that the drug bound to their serotonin transporters.
After hanging out in a bath containing ecstasy, the animals moved to a chamber with three rooms to pick from: a central room, one containing a male octopus and another containing a toy. This is a setup frequently used in mice studies. Before MDMA, the octopuses avoided the male octopus. But after the MDMA bath, they spent more time with the other octopus, according to the study published in Current Biology. They also touched the other octopus in what seemed to be an exploratory, rather than aggressive, manner.
A member of the Octopus bimaculoides species
Photo: Tom Kleindinst
The scientists took this to mean that despite our vastly different brains, social behavior is built into the very molecules coded by our DNA, Dölen explained.
“An octopus doesn’t have a cortex, and doesn’t have a reward circuit,” Dölen, assistant professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, told Gizmodo. “And yet it’s able to respond to MDMA and produce the same effects, in an animal with a totally different brain organization. To me, that means we really need to appreciate that the business end of these things is at the level of the molecule.”
You’re probably curious: did the octopuses freak out? The scientists didn’t discuss such behavior in the paper, because it’s hard to quantify without anthropomorphizing the octopuses—Dölen warned me that the following is anecdotal evidence and not scientific observation. But yes, the octopuses acted like they took ecstasy. At first, when they received a little too much MDMA, they breathed erratically and turned white. But on lower doses, one animal “looked like it was doing water ballet,” swimming around with outstretched arms. Another spent part of the time doing flips, and another seemed especially interested in minor sounds and smells.
“This was such an incredible paper, with a completely unexpected and almost unbelievable outcome,” Judit Pungor, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon not involved in the study, told Gizmodo. “To think that an animal whose brain evolved completely independently from our own reacts behaviorally in the same way that we do to a drug is absolutely amazing.”
There are limitations to the study, of course. Dölen pointed out that seven octopuses isn’t a large enough sample size to show differences between how males and females react to MDMA. She’d like to further test the changes in behavior, as well as what happens if they block the serotonin transmitter before giving the MDMA. Such a test would convince Dölen that she was really seeing the affects of MDMA on serotonin transporters. Pungor also wanted to test whether the drug would have different effects on octopuses of varying ages, or whether an octopus’s upbringing changed its sociality.
It’s clear that psychoactive drugs like MDMA, LSD, and magic mushrooms are going through a scientific renaissance—they’re being studied as potential treatments for depression and PTSD—and as their stigma decreases, scientists are more open to studying them, and more research funding becomes available. This could be important for our understanding of animal and human brains.
“People are beginning to recognize that these drugs are powerful tools for understanding how the brain evolved,” Dölen told Gizmodo. “They’re such strong activators of these behaviors. It’s not subtle.”
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-gave-mdm ... 1829191638
Fish aren’t covered by animal abuse laws, so man’s charges dropped, NC prosecutor says
By Noah Feit
April 09, 2019
The North Carolina man who was arrested on multiple counts of animal abuse after he abandoned his pet fish had the charges against him dropped Tuesday, the district attorney said.
New Hanover County District Attorney Ben David said he had to drop the charges against Michael Ray Hinson because “fish are not protected under the statutes relating to the cruelty to animals or misdemeanor abandonment charges,” WWAY reported.
“We take a very dim view of anyone who would abuse any creature great or small and appreciate their enforcement of the laws to protect vulnerable animals,” David said, according to Port City Daily. “Fish are not included in this statute, however, so my office is dismissing these charges.”
The 53-year-old Hinson was accused of abandoning his pet Oscar fish after he was evicted from his New Hanover County home March 22, WECT said. When the fish was found by sheriff’s deputies March 25, it was “was in poor health and swimming in a dirty tank,” the TV station reported.
https://www.thestate.com/news/state/nor ... 48964.html
....Switzerland put a ban on boiling lobsters alive this year. Instead, Swiss chefs are encouraged to sedate the lobsters by electrocuting them or stabbing them in the eyes before throwing them in the water—neither of which option sounds terribly humane. A 2013 study also suggested lobsters and crabs experience pain.
A Chef in Maine Is Literally Hotboxing Lobsters So They Die a Happier Death
The many miracles of marijuana.
By Sarah Rense Sep 19, 2018
A chef in Maine is getting her lobsters high with marijuana before cooking them in hopes of giving them a more humane way to die. As you may know, lobsters are traditionally boiled alive. This method still doesn't change that, but rather attempts to get the lobsters so stoned they won't really give a damn. PETA won't be impressed, but cannabis users might get excited to blaze and boil it.
Charlotte Gill is the owner of Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound in Maine. She's also a licensed medical marijuana caregiver. Despite owning a lobster restaurant for seven years, she told the Mount Desert Islander that she felt bad when lobsters showed up to be killed with "no exit strategy." So she picked out a lobster named Roscoe and literally hotboxed him. He chilled out. He didn't snap his claws. He seemed relaxed. Now, Gill's restaurant will have a hotboxing tank to sedate more lobsters, with a pump to infuse the water with pot smoke. (Roscoe was thanked for his service and released back into the ocean.)
And if you're a not-chill person who wants their lobster to die the old-fashioned way? Gill will still serve lobsters that were never under the influence. But she says the marijuana never gets to the diner.
"THC breaks down completely by 392 degrees, therefore we will use both steam as well as a heat process that will expose the meat to 420 degree extended temperature, in order to ensure there is no possibility of carryover effect (even though the likelihood of such would be literally impossible)," she said.
She also swears the hotbox lobsters' meat becomes even more delectable.
MORE: https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food ... ay-to-die/
Cordelia » Tue Jun 04, 2019 10:23 am wrote:A Chef in Maine Is Literally Hotboxing Lobsters So They Die a Happier Death
Man was appointed by God to have dominion over the beasts, and everything a man does to an animal is either a lawful exercise or a sacrilegious abuse of an authority by divine right. - CS Lewis
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