Listening to Nature
5.6 Listening to Animals: Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness of Non-Human Animals
Animals form an integral part of human life. Animals are companions in the home, cattle we graze to eat, and wildlife we encounter in our backyards, parks, in the wild, or in zoos. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Non-Human Animals, signed by prominent cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists, and computational neuroscientists informs us that animals experience emotions, have intentional capabilities, and possess consciousness:
. . . Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors . . . humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.[1]
Given that animals possess consciousness, feel emotions, and are capable of intentional behavior, and that animals are an integral part of our lives, then listening to animals is vital to our understanding and appreciation of human-animal interaction (HAI). The following sections explore this human-animal dynamic of listening to nature.
Human-Marine Animal Interaction
One illustration of HAI[2] research used thematic analysis in encountering, observing, interacting, recognizing, and “reading the signs” of over three hundred Australians’ experiences with marine mammals in the wild.[3] HAI experiences include, “. . . diving, snorkeling, boating, kayaking, swimming, with a variety of marine animals, such as turtles, seals, sharks, dolphins, fish, dugongs, seabirds, whales and rays . . .”[4] The interaction patterns revealed several benefits for humans. Among the benefits are esteem and fulfillment (sense of satisfaction, accomplishment), love, belonging, and connection (feeling cared for, included), positive emotions (happy, awed, appreciative), and perspective gaining (insight into a different way of looking). The HAI researchers conclude that there is an, “. . . innate need for people to feel they have bonded with nature and animals . . . [and] that when humans interact with animals in nature, they describe that their mental health and wellbeing is enhanced.”[5]
The interaction patterns described in Rachel Yerby and Samantha Lukey’s human interaction research with marine animals[6] parallel the three perspectives of listening to nature. The observational-emotional listening perspective begins when the researchers observe and describe participants’ interactions with the marine mammals. The symbolic imagining and meaning making listening perspective is evident in the researcher’s thematic analysis of reading the signs, and in participant accounts of their emotions and lessons learned. The mystical-spiritual listening perspective is apparent in the benefits of HAI. For instance, the impressions of recognizing and being recognized by mammals have an intuitive mystical quality. Other participant descriptions of the HAI experience as “hard to put into words” and “words are inadequate” align with the unspoken numinous quality of the mystical-spiritual listening perspective.
HAI patterns demonstrate that humans listen to animals within the framework of the three perspectives of listening to nature and that these HAIs have many positive benefits for humans.[7] In the next section, I turn from a consideration of human-marine animal interaction to human-land animal interaction, specifically HAI with horses and dogs.
Human-Horse Interaction
One of the most famous “horse whisperers” is Monty Roberts, a cowboy star at age five, a horse trainer most of his life, the subject of a Public Broadcasting Station documentary, and the author of The Man Who Listens to Horses.[8] Roberts developed the technique of “horse listening” (as he calls it) from observations of horse behavior in the wild, particularly when the alpha mare is interacting with a misbehaving juvenile horse. Roberts refers to the nonverbal horse behaviors as “Equus language.” Equus is based on horse dominance and submission cues, position in the herd hierarchy, and the horse’s need for social acceptance. With the knowledge of Equus, the human trainer can work with an untrained horse in a more humane way when compared to the traditional method of “breaking a horse.”[9]
In the horse whisperer method, the horse trainer begins by signaling dominance (e.g., waving their hands high in the air) and then listening for submissive cues from the horse (e.g., the horse turning their ears, biting and licking the mouth, and lowering the head). If submissive cues are present, the trainer turns away from the horse, inviting the horse to engage in social nudging. If the horse accepts the invitation and engages in social nudging, then the trainer reinforces the horse’s behavior positively through grooming.
This simplified description of the core training process requires knowledge of the horse’s language to listen and appropriately respond to the horse’s nonverbal cues. The “horse whispering” process has been used to train thousands of horses over the decades.[10] From a listening perspective, the premise that humans need to learn and adapt to the horse’s language seems to be the key to connecting, listening, and communicating with the horse. I advocate applying this principle more generally. Humans could reflectively observe animals in their natural habitat, learn their language, and then listen to connect and appropriately respond to them.
Human-Horse Listening Practice
If you have access to horses (e.g., a stable, pasture, ranch, or farm), consider listening with your eyes to the horses, especially when they are moving. I encourage you to listen to the horses using the three listening perspectives of observational-emotional, symbolic imagining-meaning making, and mystical-spiritual.
Keenly observe the horses. Look for details.
What emotions in your body are elicited by the movement of the horses?
Reflect on what you see and feel.
What kind of meanings can you draw from your experience of listening to the horses?
Are there any mystical-spiritual aspects of your experience that the horses reveal?
To further illustrate listening to horses, I narrate the following story.
There is a fenced pasture across from our neighborhood frequented by three horses. My past experience with horses is not amiable. At age seven, I trained Shetland ponies on my uncle’s ranch in California. I would climb on the horse, and they would buck me off. On and off, over and over . . . miserable. In my early teens, on family vacations in North Dakota, I lost control of the horse I was riding on more than one occasion and fell. In my early twenties, while working at a summer camp, one of my morning duties was bringing five horses down from the hill to saddle them. The horses didn’t want to come down the hill, and they didn’t want to be saddled. A battle of wills ensued every morning that summer.
With this kind of background, it took some courage for me to perch my body against the fencing of the horse pasture across from our neighborhood with my head above the top railing. I watched and listened attentively to the three horses, wondering what would happen next. One large black horse meandered over, and after gently stroking its forehead, I felt the weight of its head leaning on my left shoulder and nuzzling against the side of my ear. The horse stayed in this position, motionless, for bout ten full seconds. I felt a warm sensation spread in an instant throughout my upper torso. I also felt accepted, loved, and healed. In a slightly ironic twist, the horse lifted its head and gently (maybe playfully) nipped my ear before it trotted off. I interpreted this as I should not take myself too seriously. Overall, my efforts to listen to the horses in the pasture, and this encounter with the black horse, helped heal my phobia of horses. While your experience listening to horses may not be as dramatic, unexpected pleasures and insights can be revealed through attentive listening to horses.
Human-Ape Listening
Anthropologist Jane Goodall’s systematic and detailed accounts of her life listening to chimpanzees for over thirty years resulted in the discovery of a kind of chimpanzee language that we can listen for and, to some degree, interpret.[11] Goodall is conservative in her claims, suggesting that we have only begun to know the chimpanzee’s mind.
Unlike Goodall’s attempts at learning the chimpanzee language to better listen to them, there are attempts to teach ASL (American Sign Language) to apes. Two famous examples of apes learning sign language are Nim, the chimpanzee who was raised in captivity and learned thirty signs by age three,[12] and Koko the gorilla, who learned two hundred and forty-three signs after fifty months of training.[13] The advantage of animals learning sign language is that humans can listen and talk with animals. However, something is also lost in training animals to conform to human signing. We miss the opportunity to listen deeply enough to adapt to the animal’s language. There is also something lost in our ability to accept, appreciate, and respect our HAI interactions when we limit our animal communication to human sign language.
Human-Dolphin-Whale Interaction
Naturalistic research with humans and dolphins show many positive themes of well-being from participant descriptions of their interactions with wild dolphins, “. . . connectedness, relationships, and reciprocity; emotion and aliveness; meaning and making sense; accomplishment and intention; and harmony and engagement.”[14] These positive themes parallel Seligman’s PERMA model of human flourishing.[15] Overall, it appears that human interaction with wild dolphins involves various kinds of listening (e.g., perception, observation, interpretation, understanding, and meaning-making) that support human flourishing and well-being.
In Jack Kassewitz’s research with marine and land animals for over fifty years, he narrates a turning point in his life while working with a dying pilot whale.[16] Notice how his deep listening ends with an epiphany:
. . . hours in the water gently cradling him [the male pilot whale] in my arms, he rolled over until his left eye looked deeply into mine. At that moment, something palpable and profound shifted inside me. . . I experienced the depth of our connection across species, and it was beautiful, humbling, and profound . . . In that moment I was forever changed.[17]
Kassewitz’s story highlights the transformational power of a dying whale connecting with a human who was willing to listen with love. Kassewitz’s story also suggests that we all potentially have this power to listen, connect, and deepen our relationships with many kinds of animals. How many kinds of animals?
How Many Other Kinds of Animals Can We Listen To?
In addition to marine mammals like dolphins and whales and land animals like horses, dogs, cats, and apes, we might be able to listen to many other kinds of animals. I wonder if each animal embodies a unique language. According to the World Atlas, scientists have documented “. . . 14% of living species. The remaining 86% of species that are estimated to exist have yet to be discovered . . . It is estimated that planet Earth has approximately 8.7 million species.”[18] Based on these estimates of the number of animals worldwide, I suggest that systematic, reflective, and patient listening to animals in their natural habitats to discover their unique languages remains relatively untapped.[19]
For manageability, I limited the focus of inquiry of the previous sections of this chapter to listening to plants and animals as representations of the natural world. The object of our listening could be expanded to include all living organisms on earth, from the single-celled amoeba to the emperor dragonfly and honeybees of the insect world, to blue-bellied lizards, and black rat snakes of the reptile world, and to the crabs, octopus, and fish of the oceans. I invite you to explore listening to the many life forms that make up the nature component of listening to the SONG of life in the local habitats wherever you live.
The next section on listening to nature develops listening to the elementals, the non-plant-animal-human parts of the natural world. Listening to elementals is even more controversial than listening to plants and animals. However, wisdom from Indigenous peoples worldwide suggests that listening to rocks, boulders, mountains, and, more broadly, the earth, sky, and beyond is possible.[20]
- Philip Low, Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Non-Human Animals (website) 2012. https://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf. ↵
- I use the term animal broadly, referring to both mammals and animals. ↵
- Rachel M. Yerbury and Samantha J. Lukey, "Human–Animal Interactions: Expressions of Wellbeing Through a Nature Language,” Animals 11, no. 4 (March 2021): 950, https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/11/4/950. ↵
- Ibid., 6 ↵
- Ibid., 2,10. ↵
- Ibid. ↵
- While we cannot know with certainty, we hope that HAI's also benefit the animals. ↵
- A "horse whisperer" is generally considered a person that understands and communicates with horses through an intuitive connection and heightened ability to listen to horses. The story of how Monty Roberts became a horse whisper is narrated in his autobiography. Monty Roberts, The Man Who Listens to Horses (New York: Random House, 2008). I also draw from Farmer-Dougan and Dougan's behavioral analysis of Robert's book. Valeri A. Farmer‐Dougan and James D. Dougan, "The Man Who Listens to Behavior: Folk Wisdom and Behavior Analysis from a Real Horse Whisperer," Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 72, no. 1 (July 1999): 139-149. ↵
- Ibid. A comparison of "breaking a horse" and the use of "horse whispering" is described by Farmer‐Dougan and Dougan, "The Man Who Listens to Behavior," 141-143. From my perspective as an animal lover and animal advocate, these traditional methods of "horse breaking" are cruel and barbaric. The alternative nonviolent "horse whisperer" approach to training a horse is more aligned with the ethics of listening to the SONG of life. ↵
- Roberts, The Man Who Listens to Horses. ↵
- Jane Goodall, Through a Window: My Thirty Years With the Chimpanzees of Gombe (New York: Mariner Books, 2010). ↵
- Herbert S. Terrace, A Chimpanzee Who Learned Sign Language (New York City: Columbia University Press, 1986). ↵
- Fred C. C. Peng, ed. Sign Language and Language Acquisition in Man and Ape: New Dimensions in Comparative Pedolinguistics (New York: Routledge, 2019). ↵
- Rachel M. Yerbury and William E. Boyd, "Dolphins and Human Flourishing: A Novel Application of the PERMA Model," Ecopsychology 11, no. 4 (December 2019): 201-212. ↵
- PERMA is an acronym that stands for positive emotions (P), engagement (E), relationship (R), meaning (M), and accomplishment (A). Martin E. P. Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being (New York: Atria, 2012). ↵
- Jack Kassewitz, Speak Dolphin: Deciphering the Dolphin Code (n.p.: CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2016). The subtitle of the book implies listening to Dolphins. ↵
- Jack Kassewitz, Speak Dolphin (n.p.: CreateSpace Independent Publishing, 2016), 3. ↵
- World Atlas. How Many Animals Are There in the World? (website) (2018). https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-many-animals-are-there-in-the-world.html. ↵
- It is probably unrealistic to hope that humans will attempt to listen with appreciation, care, and respect to all the animal languages in the world. I am not suggesting that humans attempt to codify animal communications in a formal linguistic system like human language. But I am suggesting that we attempt to understand how animals communicate with each other, their environment, and humans through attentive and respectful listening. Even if we only discover some of the ways animals communicate, it is a worthy endeavor because the intention to listen with reverence to the animals can only enrich our experience in listening to the greater SONG of life. ↵
- I provide many sources to support this claim in the next section. ↵