Srimad Bhagavatam 4.22.31: […] “According to less intelligent philosophers, animals have no soul. But factually animals have souls. Due to the animals’ gross ignorance, however, it appears that they have lost their souls. Without the soul, a body cannot move. That is the difference between a living body and a dead body. When the soul is out of the body, the body is called dead.” Full Purport
Greenfinch (carduelis chloris). An individual’s personality can have a big effect on their life. Some people are outgoing and gregarious while others find novel situations stressful which can be detrimental to their health and wellbeing. Increasingly, scientists are discovering that animals are no different. (Credit: paulsbirdingdiary)
Animals Have Personalities, Too, Bird Study Suggests | Science News
ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2011) — An individual’s personality can have a big effect on their life. Some people are outgoing and gregarious while others find novel situations stressful which can be detrimental to their health and wellbeing. Increasingly, scientists are discovering that animals are no different
A new study led by Dr Kathryn Arnold, of the Environment Department at the University of York has added important experimental evidence showing that animal personalities are reflected in their oxidative stress profiles. The research is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Dr Arnold teamed up with graduate student Katherine Herborn, at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow, to classify the personalities of 22 greenfinches.
They tested each bird’s reactions to a novel situation by adding a brightly coloured cookie-cutter to each greenfinch’s food bowl, and timing how long it took for the birds to pluck up courage to approach the food. The researchers found that the boldest birds took only a few seconds to overcome their fear while more timid birds took up to 30 minutes to approach their meal.
Dr Arnold and Katherine Herborn also measured the greenfinches’ motivation to explore by attaching an intriguing object to the birds’ perches and timing how long it took them to land next to it. However, there was no correlation between the birds’ courage and curiosity.
The researchers then measured the birds’ damaging reactive oxygen metabolite levels and their defences against them. Comparing the bird’s blood oxidative profiles with their personalities, the team found that the most timid birds had the highest levels of damaging oxygen toxins and the weakest defences, so they suffered more oxidative stress than braver individuals. Also, the scientists found that the most curious birds (those that approached objects fastest) had better defences against oxidative damage than less curious greenfinches.
Dr Arnold wants to extend the work to establish how personality traits affects birds in the wild. She says, “Neophobic birds — those that are afraid of new things — may suffer high costs of oxidative stress and die early because they paid these physiological costs, but they might also be less likely to be eaten by a predator because they are more wary than bolder birds .”
The research also involved scientists at The Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology at Oxford and the WALTHAM Centre for Pet Nutrition at Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The research was part-funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Royal Society.
This one, the write-up part describing the scientists’ proceedings, is very humorous !
It is like one time that Srila Prabhupada was imitating the big scientists, who have such analytic categories as tasteless and odorless, saying that the poisonous chemical has no taste and no odor. He pretended to be such a scientific researcher, tasting the poison to see what is it’s character, and with his dying breath after tasting it, choked out, “It has no taste!”
Similarly, it is so absurd to me to see their big chemical analaysis, whereas any idiot who has ever kept birds knows full well that each one is different and has its own personality and nature. Same with squirrels and even turtles.
I recently saw a video where one squirrel’s mate got run over. The surviving mate actually went and laid over top of the dead partner squirrel’s body, lying in the street, risking its own life, to keep the crows from pecking at the dead partner’s body.
There are clearly somewhat self-aware souls involved here, not just external machines made of matter with no individuality or self identity, or love even.