I've been having lots of conversations lately with housemates about animal sentience, and this recent video has me feeling stunned:


Even if the elephant had been 'trained' to paint this image, it's still brilliant. And there are too many things I've been reading and watching lately (about apes, birds, dogs, dolphins, etc) to not believe that animals are much more self-aware than we have given them credit.

How long have we been willing to harm them, believing that they are incapable of feeling pain or knowing justice or having a self? Thinking we are somehow better, more advanced, more brilliant..the only beings on the planet with a soul?

And, I keep thinking of the gorilla I met last year in Budapest. Looking at him, I knew there was another person on the other side. The encounter was too important, to personal, too real to believe that he didn't have a sense of himself meeting another being. (sigh)

How many species have we swept away with our greed? Our desire to dominate the planet? How would life change if we approached other living things as being just as relevant, just as important, just as alive? As if we were all simply varying expressions of the same life energy?