Whale Shows Empathy
With all the talk of empathy (or the lack thereof) in the Supreme Court, the health care industry, or society as a whole, it is good to realize that it is an ancient mammalian trait that is occasionally expressed by other animals. A twelve year old example is the gorilla, Binti Jua, who rescued a boy who had fallen into her enclosure at the Brookfield Zoo, in Chicago. But now we have a new hero, a Beluga whale, named Mila, who yesterday (July 28th) saved a member of our species. (In fact, animals far more often save members of their own species, which is what these behaviors obviously evolved for, but we tend to be more impressed when they help us!)
At a Chinese zoo, they had the brilliant idea of organizing a competition in which divers had to sink to the bottom of an arctic pool and stay down for as long as they could without breathing equipment. They were surrounded by Belugas. One terrified diver became paralyzed, however, and would have died in the icy water if it weren't for one of the whales, who spotted her troubles before anyone else did, including the event's organizers. A visitor on the gallery took pictures.
Saved by a whale!
The rescued diver, Yang Yun, thought she was going to die, but was quickly pushed upwards: "I began to choke and sank even lower and I thought that was it for me -- I was dead. Until I felt this incredible force under me driving me to the surface."
The capacity to empathize with others is what binds mammalian societies together: is it any different for ours?
More about this question in The Age of Empathy (Harmony, September 2009).
Michael Macher: What Animals Teach Us About What It Means To Be Human
What if you found yourself without a vocabulary with which to express the immediacy of your experience? Well, then you might know what it feels like to be an animal living in a world dominated by Homo sapiens.
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I didn't see empathy. I saw a whale who attacked what it assumed might be easy prey, only to spit the diver out when the whale realized she wasn't a seal. Sharks and marine mammals who prey on seals often mistake divers in wet suits for seals.
See Frans de Waal's Profile
Ever seen the teeth of a Beluga up close? Crushing a human leg is no big deal for them. The whale was extremely gentle.
Most of my cats are extremely gentle when they catch a mouse because they want to play with it for awhile. I once read that dolphins also like to play with their prey before they go in for the kill. Perhaps belugas do too. Or maybe something akin to empathy was involved, but that's not how I interpreted it.
Personally, I don't like to ascribe human motives or emotions to other animals nor do I think they benefit from this anthropomorphism.
i love whales
and old growth forests
and camping
how does that saying go?
Society is measured by how it treats its vulnerable.
There were stories in ancient Greece of humans being saved by dolphins, or of playing with them. If we can get along with our pets, why shouldn't we be able to get along with even more intelligent animals?
There was a recent show on where a family said they were swimming in a bay and suddenly dolphins swam very close to them in a real tight circle for a long time. The dolphins were protecting them from a shark that the father saw a little farther off. I guess we mammals stick together!
Then there were the dolphins who killed the woman who tried to swim with them.
Dolphins are wild animals and should be respected as such.
They had a program on public television the other night where it told of killer whales who used to alert fisherman of nearby sperm whales off the coast of Australia many generations ago. The killer whales would lead the fisherman to the whales, even at night, and in return the fisherman let the killer whales have the tongue of the sperm whale which is what they really savored. No kidding! There were several eyewitnesses still alive!
I saw that program too, what became a poignant point in the story was when the old woman telling story
realized the horrible slaughter that was taking place against these magnificient animals and called it 'murder'.
whaling was and still is horrible, violent, brutal and barbaric..
Great story, and thanks for the link to de Waal's new book. I love his work and i just pre-ordered it.
Perhaps what separates humans from other animals is the desperate quest that our species has to find something that distinguishes us from the other animals. - Ingrid Newkirk
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