Do Animals think??

Do Animals think??

Hi Guys,

Hmmmm....

Wanted to start this blog with an interesting topic…

We all see animals (all kinds of animals) in our daily life;

• ·        Do Animals think?
• ·         What do you think will be running in their mind?
• ·         How can they not get tensed in life, stay completely relaxed?
• ·         Not caring if tomorrow is going to be tough or anything.
• ·         What do they do?
• ·         How can they just live?

Well many more questions were running my mind.

What can i say...

It all started in Delhi, when I saw a mule carrying a heap of mud on its back (heavy of course), got me thinking-what was ‘it’ thinking…

I know that they think, but what do they think?

It was interesting and I started a research on it, asked few people.  Some of them gave a common answer – ‘Obviously they think, but they don’t rationalize’. Hmmm interesting answer, but not convincing enough. Must be more to it, not that easy and simple is it?

So I searched few websites and did a bit of research, websites like:

• ·         http://kottke.org/10/11/do-animals-think
• ·         http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/03.14/01-thinking.html
• ·         http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/can_animals_think.html

All these websites have a little more to add to our discussion. They have proof that animals do think and some of them even analyze.

Well this answers our first question… Now to break up the second one, what will be running in their mind? That would be tough… but we’ll concentrate only on the outline and not in depth, we’ll try to generalize it.

Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist at New York University made it a little easier to understand how animals express their thoughts. If they are happy (dogs wag tail, cats purr etc), in short he tells us that understanding or recognizing their emotions is easier. 

(Ref:-http://www.livescience.com/18750-animal-human-emotions-fears.html)

 John B Watson in his book “Studying the Minds of Animals” has explained in similar form that animals thoughts are understood by their expressions just the way Humans thoughts are understood…No one can enter another living beings mind to find out what’s in it.

(Ref: - http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/Animals/index.htm)

Well let’s get back to our topic now… After reading all the above facts it’s certain that we Human beings can’t find out what is happening in the minds of animals. But let’s not drop our bags yet…we’ll try something different… a different approach perhaps.

Present = Gift

We all know Human beings are complicated and animals are simple… So if we apply assumption as a tool for our research then we can assume that animals think only about today (present), now…and nothing else..Not about tomorrow, not about yesterday but only today…

Well I got to this assumption based on some stories I had heard, like: A sheep, before getting killed by a butcher, always enjoys its final meal without thinking of what’s going to happen… (You may disagree stating that it doesn’t know it’s being killed, but they do sense danger).

Throw the stick please....

A dog loves to play fetch, gets the ball back to u, and finds happiness in the tiniest things…

Hence we can conclude our second question by stating that whatever runs in their minds they express it; they never hide it or try to process it. They live their life for the present.

Now moving on to the 3^rd & 4^th question, both of them are quite similar; how can animals not get tensed in life, stay completely relaxed? Not caring if tomorrow is going to be tough or anything.

Well it’s like a one word answer to this – It’s only because they make life SIMPLE… When life is simple then there is no tension, no worries and nothing.

Power of 99

My friend once told me a story; he called it “The 99 story”:

The story has 2 families, one a rich merchant’s family and another poor woodcutter’s family; The Merchant’s family always used to be tensed and work extra hard….once the wife of the merchant asked him, “why is it that we are always tensed, when we have more money than the woodcutter, Whereas he lives in peace with much little money?”

For this, the merchant replied, “that’s because he hasn’t fallen into the 99-trap”… Confused wife asks about 99-trap… The merchant goes in front of the woodcutters house and drops a pouch with 99rs in it, and returns home..

Next day, woodcutter’s wife finds the ‘money filled pouch’ and shows it to her husband. After a while they both decide to convert it into 100rs, once that was done then 200rs…….slowly into 500rs and so on... Hence changed their life into a tension filled one.

We all get to learn something out of the story..Animals think about today, now, this moment and act accordingly…. This makes them less selfish, caring for others, caring for our Mother Nature.

Whereas if we try to evaluate our behavior, we think a lot about future ruin it for next generation, get everything for ourselves etc etc

Well Partially answered our question din it.. Let’s finish our questions list… 2 more questions…What do they do? Simple very simple…they just live (enjoy every moment, every tiny part of life)..

Just relaaaxxx dude....

How can they just live? Well I guess that’s what differentiates them from us human beings.. We sometimes think even if we have to enjoy (what will others think, what about my status quo etc n all)

Hmmmm… I feel we have answered all our questions.. What dyu think will be the major difference if we compare us to animals… the real facts (not the ones we have made to show ourselves superior)

Evolution....

Sl.No	Human	Animal
1	We Communicate	So do they ( I don’t think there would be any miscommunication)
2	We rationalize (that’s how we are actually destroying this wonderful world)	They just live their gifted life
3	High Competition with each other	All live in Harmony (very few with low competition)
4	We Discovered and invented Selfishness	They are almost selfless
5	We Complicate Life	They don’t know the word complication
6	We work on breaking the mystery	They Enjoy the Mystery Suspense given by the holy one
7	Live one, Beat all	Live one, Live all

So here are few questions I would love to ask you..

• ·         Is Rationalizing good?
• ·         Are we really better than Animals?
• ·         Are we really Smart people? (animals are the first to know when an earthquake or tsunami occurs, they know when they have to move to summer side etc)

Think on these questions, until we meet again J

Thanks for reading…………..

Trip to Himachal (took us for a ride)

Hi everyone….

Hope you’re good…

Well, I have shifted to New Delhi and hence decided to explore it.

This blog is about the crazy trip I had (Kalka, Kasauli & Shimla) on this weekend!! J

Well.. I’m slowly getting adapted to the climate here… Travelling is an energy booster and I always have the need to recharge myself. And thus evolved the idea of a trip.

Delhi is hottttt, people do say this is nothing compared to march (gets me the chills I tell ya).. So I decided to search for a cooler place to go.. after a little research here and there, I found that Kalka-Kasauli trek is about 15kms and is supposed to be a wonderful trek. So I looked for the train availability and made a rough plan about budget, (told my roommate cum colleague, he joined along).

Trip was planned for a Friday night travel to Kalka. We boarded a bus from Munirka (place where I stay) to New Delhi Railway Station; we were already running late, the scheduled time of the rain was 21:25. So we hurried and somehow reached the station by 20:30. We went inside and saw that  there was a long queue, got the tickets to Kalka, and we relaxed.. (little did we know about what was ahead!).

We started searching the platform where Kalka train was supposed to be boarded from, we asked people in uniforms and laymen, but no one (NO ONE!!) had heard of a place called Kalka. We were in a dilemma, because the ticket was to Kalka and no one knew the place! It was 21:00 and the train was in 25 minutes and we were running around asking for directions,! Luckily there was a good Samaritan who told us that the train is from old Delhi station, once we got that news, we both ran like crazy towards the metro station. I had low balance in my metro card (11rs) and there was no time to wait in line for the token in any counter, so I took my chances and swiped it anyway and boarded the metro.

It took 8 minutes to reach Chandni Chowk, and we ran again (the time then was 21:10), we didn’t even stop to take a breath(metaphorically of-course! We breathed heavy alright!! :D ), we were sweating and gasping, but neither of us wanted to miss the train (Metro charged only 7rs getting my balance to 4rs,  lucky huhJ). 

Train Delhi - Kalka

Finally we entered the station at 21:20, with only 5 minutes left and we had to still find out the platform! So we spoke to few people got to know that its platform 5 and ran (remembered the movie Bhagam bhagJ). We reached and saw that general compartment was packed… it was 7 hours journey and we didn't want to stand in that compartment, so we boarded the sleeper and got 2 seats, so occupied those and slept as though we owned them J…

Kalka - First Destination...

Now that we got the time… my roommate (Mayank) told me “Next time thoda planning karke ayenge”…I smiled (laughing in my head.. thinking ‘when do things happen according to our plan anyway! :D’ )… the train started its journey at 21:30 and we were all set. After an hour or so the TT came to check tickets.. I smiled at him and handed him our general tickets… he looked at my face and informed that we need to pay 200rs for seats, we bargained and got them finally. After that I slept like a baby, the next morning around 4:45 we reached our destination.

It was early and around 5:30 when we started walking, we asked a few for the route to Kalka by walk and they looked at us as if we were out of our minds! Coz it was more than 30kms. They suggested that it would be better for us to take the bus. We anyway got the route and started walking, the view was good.

Snake route

It was a long walk after which we found people and they showed us the way. After walking more than 7 kms we realized that it’s just the road route and that there’s no path through the thick forest…even if there were any people, they did not know about it. So our trip got boring.. (boring coz I love walking through the forest!), the view was amazing and the feel was great, but.. it was still a road trek.

Bus - Shortened the trip ;-)

Mayank and myself discussed and decided to cut short the trek as the “Thrill” factor was missing, we boarded a bus to Kasauli. After  40 minutes we reached Kasauli and the climate was AM AAA Zing.. loved it... drank tea and had a light breakfast and then..off we went to see “Manki point” (its Mann Ki in hindi, lord Hanuman’s foot print can be seen there).

Church of England

People told its 4 kms to Manki point… but as we walked, the view was soo beautiful that we didn’t know when we covered 4 kms. We reached the place and it was within Air-force vicinity so no photos could be taken. Sad part was that only one was allowed at a time, as there was no locker for mobile phone (which was strictly not allowed btw).. So I let Mayank go ahead and waited outside the gate..all alone.. looking at the beauty of creation and day dreaming… after 30 minutes or so he returned and it was my turn to go…(lot of formalities ID proof etc) it was quite a walk, I met few army folks on the way, spoke to them, got to know the history of the place saw the temple on top. The view from there was mind blowing (one could see entire Chandigarh from there).. stayed there and spoke to few people and returned back to Mayank and we continued our journey back.

Nature en-route to Mann-ki point

We reached the bus stop, saw the Church of England which was built in 1884. We had to plan ahead as there was an entire evening to be spent. So as we sat in the bus stand, we decided to go to a new place. Boarded the bus to Dharampuri (40 mins) and then from there.. to our new destination - Shimla (2hrs).

We reached Shimla around 15:00 and din know any places so we went to the old bus stand and started walking to find some place to eat (till then we were living on minimal food).we found a Chinese restaurant (simply Chinese ka board, actually hard core desi), had 2-3 Paratha’s and with the help of android application started exploring Shimla.

Church in Shimla

We went to the mall road and saw lot of pretty girls J then visited the Church. After which we saw a temple (Hanuman ka) there was an open challenge

    "below 30 years if they reach the temple in 30 minutes they’re absolutely fit, in 45 minutes then only fit etc".

So we took up the challenge and started walking faster, after some distance the climb got steeper. We took some rest and asked few people about the distance and they told we had walked only 5% of the climb L.. We were looking at each other when we saw an old man carrying a wooden bed to the temple.. that boosted our energy and we started running.

en-route to hanuman temple

We met a lot of monkeys made few pit stops to get nice pictures and kept moving, finally reached and saw the time, we had reached in exactly 24 minutes (yes a record J). We were happy, Mayank visited the temple when I waited outside listening to the tales of mischievous monkeys.

Once he returned from the temple we started our journey back to the Shimla bus stand (had decided to try the bus). Boarded the bus to Shimla bus stand and from there bought the tickets to Delhi (bought deluxe tickets; nothing deluxe about it baaad experience; push-back seats doesn’t work, charging point doesn’t work & there’s a TV only for showcasing)..

Somehow managed the journey partial sleeping, partial fighting for a better (comfortable) position to sleep. Once we reached Delhi we had smiles back on our faces….

Well I hope you guys enjoyed reading this blog...Thanks all…have fun J