Dolphin Experience Quotes

Negativity is totally unnatural. It is a psychic pollutant, and there is a deep link between the poisoning and destruction of nature and the vast negativity that has accumulated in the collective human psyche. No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it. Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed oak tree? Have you some across a depressed dolphin, a frog that has a problem with self-esteem, a cat that cannot relax, or a bird that carries hatred and resentment? The only animals that may occasionally experience something akin to negativity or show signs of neurotic behavior are those that live in close contact with humans and so link into the humans mind and its insanity.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.

Certainly on this planet it is not apparent that there are beings more intelligent than humans, although a case can be made for dolphins and whales, and in fact if humans succeed in destroying themselves with nuclear weapons, a case can be made that ALL other animals are smarter than humans.

If you want to have a child in order to have a beautiful, permanent experience, just get a tattoo of a dolphin riding a unicorn over a manatee, It will always be with you, stay exactly the way you made it, and bring you and the world joy without ever crashing your car or getting a stupid tattoo of its own.

It seems to me possible, even probable, that many of the nonhuman undomesticated animals experience emotions unknown to us. What do the coyotes mean when they yodel at the moon? What are the dolphins trying so patiently to tell us? Precisely what did those two enraptured gopher snakes have in mind when they came gliding toward my eyes over the naked sandstone? If I had been as capable of trust as I am susceptible to fear I might have learned something new or some truth so very old we have all forgotten it. They

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioral research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man.

Remember that your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit. One of the greatest insights that has come out of modern physics is that of the unity between the observer and the observed: the person conducting the experiment — the observing consciousness — cannot be separated from the observed phenomena, and a different way of looking causes the observed phenomena to behave differently. If you believe, on a deep level, in separation and the struggle for survival, then you see that belief reflected all around you and your perceptions are governed by fear. You inhabit a world of death and of bodies fighting, killing, and devouring each other. Nothing is what it seems to be. The world that you create and see through the egoic mind may seem a very imperfect place, even a vale of tears. But whatever you perceive is only a kind of symbol, like an image in a dream. It is how your consciousness interprets and interacts with the molecular energy dance of the universe. This energy is the raw material of so-called physical reality. You see it in terms of bodies and birth and death, or as a struggle for survival. An infinite number of completely different interpretations, completely different worlds, is possible and, in fact, exists — all depending on the perceiving consciousness. Every being is a focal point of consciousness, and every such focal point creates its own world, although all those worlds are interconnected. There is a human world, an ant world, a dolphin world, and so on. There are countless beings whose consciousness frequency is so different from yours that you are probably unaware of their existence, as they are of yours. Highly conscious beings who are aware of their connectedness with the Source and with each other would inhabit a world that to you would appear as a heavenly realm — and yet all worlds are ultimately one.

The ocean, for me, is what LSD was to Timothy Leary. He claimed the hallucinogen is to reality what a microscope is to biology, affording a perception of reality that was not before accessible. Shamans and seekers eat mushrooms, drink potions, lick toads, inhale smoke, and snort snuff to transport their minds to realms they cannot normally experience. (Humans are not alone in this endeavor; species from elephants to monkeys purposely eat fermented fruit to get drunk; dolphins were recently discovered sharing a certain toxic puffer fish, gently passing it from one cetacean snout to another, as people would pass a joint, after which the dolphins seem to enter a trancelike state.)

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioral research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.

I never sleep. Like the dolphin and the spiny anteater, I don't experience REM. Unlike the dreamless mammals, I'm a construct. I am a living program inside a vast network of electronic impulses known as the LINK. In that datastream I've uncovered the meaning of another kind of dreaming--that of a fond hope or aspiration, a yearning, a desire, or a passion. This much I have. When I dream, I dream of Mecca.

He even experimented on himself, hammering a sleeve into his own skull. Once this was accomplished, it was then possible to insert electrodes and inject chemicals “through small needles anywhere in the brain.

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons. Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backward somersault through a hoop while whistling the “Star-Spangled Banner,” but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish. In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioral research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.

For a conscious creature, there is something that it is like to be that creature. There is something it is like to be me, something it is like to be you, and probably something it is like to be a sheep, or a dolphin. For each of these creatures, subjective experiences are happening. It feels like something to be me. But there is almost certainly nothing it is like to be a bacterium, a blade of grass, or a toy robot. For these things, there is (presumably) never any subjective experience going on: no inner universe, no awareness, no consciousness.

Do not postpone life until two pounds form now. Go on the trip. Wear the strapless dress. Go zip lining, or water-skiing, or swimming with the dolphins. None of us are guaranteed a future. Putting ff joy until you're the right size could mean you'll never experience it at all.

Consider, for example, how little we know of how ultraviolet light looks to a finch; of how echolocation feels to a bat, or a dolphin; of the way that a red fox, or a homing pigeon, experiences the Earth’s magnetic field. Such uncharted experiences exist in minds much less sophisticated than our own. What experiences, possibly of immense value, could be accessible, then, to minds much greater? Mice know very little of music, art or humor. Toward what experiences are we as mice? What beauties are we blind to?

There were whole habitats where people had had their higher brain functions disengaged, so that they could live like sheep under the care of machines. In others, they’d had their minds implanted into monkeys or dolphins: lost in intricate arboreal power struggles or sorrowful sonar fantasies. Elsewhere, groups of scientists who’d had their minds reshaped by Pattern Jugglers plunged deep into the metastructure of spacetime, concocting elaborate experiments which tinkered with the very fundamentals of existence. One day, it was said, they’d discover a technique for faster-than-light propulsion, passing the secret to their allies who would install the necessary gadgetry in their habitats. The first anyone else would know about it would be when half the Glitter Band suddenly winked out of existence. The Glitter Band, in short, was a place where a reasonably curious human being could easily squander half a lifetime. But I didn’t think Reivich would spend much time there before making his way down to Yellowstone’s surface. He would want to lose himself in Chasm City as quickly as possible. Either way, I wouldn’t be far behind him. Still

This is not true for other creatures, not even brainy ones like chimpanzees, bottlenose dolphins, parrots and octopi. They may occasionally use tools, they may occasionally shift their ecological niche, but they do not ‘raise their standard of living’, or experience ‘economic growth’. They do not encounter ‘poverty’ either. They do not progress from one mode of living to another – nor do they deplore doing so. They do not experience agricultural, urban, commercial, industrial and information revolutions, let alone Renaissances, Reformations, Depressions, Demographic Transitions, civil wars, cold wars, culture wars and credit crunches.

Now let me tell you something. I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers. I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost child; winds as tender and warm as a lover’s breath; winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds; winds that carried the moist rich smell of a forest floor, the smell of a million flowers. Fierce winds that churned and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten. I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends. I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling over grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people as they inched their way to the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp staccato admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat and the belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple heather. I have heard Wolves baying at a winter’s moon, Red howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multi-coloured reef fishes. I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things. But— All this I did without you. This was my loss. All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain. All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever-surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.

Perhaps the shortest and most powerful prayer in human language is help. —FATHER THOMAS KEATING A hardness we can't see, cold and rigid, begins to form between us and the world, the longer we stay silent about what we need. It is not even about getting what we need, but about admitting, mostly to ourselves, that we do have needs. Asking for help, whether we get it or not, breaks the hardness that builds in the world. Paradoxically, asking even for the things that no one can give, we are relieved and blessed for the asking. For admitting our humanness lets the soul break surface, the way a dolphin leaps for the sun. One of the most painful barriers we can experience is the sense of isolation the modern world fosters, which can only be broken by our willingness to be held, by the quiet courage to allow our vulnerabilities to be seen. For as water fills a hole and as light fills the dark, kindness wraps around what is soft, if what is soft can be seen. So admitting what we need, asking for help, letting our softness show—these are prayers without words that friends, strangers, wind, and time all wrap themselves around. Allowing ourselves to be held is like returning to the womb. As you breathe, try to relax and soften your guard for these brief moments. Breathe slowly, and feel your pores open more fully to the world. Inhale deeply, and let the air and silence get closer. Inhale cleanly, and allow yourself to be held by what is.

Today, ethologists who study the minds and behaviors of nonhuman animals show that, such as Darwin theorized, there is no radical break between the emotional and mental capacities of humans and other animals; instead, there is a continuity of capacities. As we shall see in chapter 17, ethologists who work with great apes, dolphins, and parrots, as well as a wide variety of other animals, continue to find more and more examples of this continuity. We now know that many animals can feel and experience much of what we once considered to be “human” emotions, that they have self-recognition and self-awareness, that they can communicate with each other (and with us) through sophisticated communication systems and perhaps even languages; they can make and use tools, empathize with others, deceive others, joke, plan, and understand the past and the future.

We are striving to engineer the internet of all things in hope to make us healthy, happy and powerful. Yet once the internet of all things is up and running, we might be reduced from engineers to chips then to data and eventually, we might dissolve within the data torrent like a clamp of earth within a gushing river. Dataism, thereby, threatens to do to Homo sapiens what Homo sapiens has done to all other animals. In the course of history, humans have created a global network and evaluated everything according to its function within the network. For thousands of years this boosted human pride and prejudices. Since humans fulfilled the most important function in the network, it was easy for us to take credit for the network’s achievements and to see ourselves as the apex of creation. The lives and experiences of all other animals were undervalued because they fulfilled far less important functions. And whenever an animal ceased to fulfil any function at all it went extinct. However, once humans loose their functional importance to the network, we’ll discover that we are not the apex of creation after all. The yardsticks that we ourselves have enshrined will condemn us to join the mammoths and the Chinese river dolphins in oblivion. Looking back, humanity will turn out to be just a ripple within the cosmic data flow.

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Whatever the mechanism, this influence by future emotional rewards would be the basis of the intuitive guidance system that takes over whenever we follow our gut or whenever we act skillfully and instinctively in any domain. A premonition or hunch or creative inspiration that pays off in a confirmatory action is part of a reward loop, entraining the attentional faculty on those meaningful experiences coming down the pike. Engaged flow states may not only open the door to precognition by focusing the senses and busying the critical, conscious mind with other matters, they may also condition the precognitive apparatus, providing constant payoffs that propel us forward to the next reward in an ongoing chain—like feeding sardines to the dolphin of intuition.45 In this model, a presponsive behavior needs to be seen as one half of a two-part system, the other half being our everyday actions and experiences unfolding in linear time that serve to confirm it and thus give it meaning—for instance, Norman Mailer’s encounter with the New York Times headline about the spy downstairs. The crucial role played by confirmation is part of what makes the whole topic suspect for skeptics and even for many parapsychologists open to other forms of ESP. Since hindsight is biased by a kind of selection, it is difficult or impossible in many cases to prove that ostensible precognition is not either memory error or “just coincidence.” The difficulties go even deeper, in fact. As we will see later, a retrospective tunnel vision on events, especially after surviving some trauma—ranging from the most extreme, death and disaster, to minor chaotic upheavals like reading about a plane crash or a close brush with international espionage in the newspaper—seems to be precisely what people precognize or pre-sense in their future. We precognize our highly biased hindsight, taking us deep into a kind of recursive or fractal, M. C. Escher territory. This fractal quality, coupled with our ignorance of precognitive or presentimental processes working in our lives, creates the causal circularity or time loops I have mentioned. Such loops may be a universal feature of a world that includes precognitive creatures who are unaware of their precognition.

That’s why Fenwick and Oliviera went for the noise theory,’ said Palm. ‘Years ago, when the navy started experimenting with sonar, there was an upsurge in beachings all over the world. Large numbers of whales and dolphins died. They all showed signs of heavy bleeding in the brain and in the inner ear - injuries consistent with noise damage. In each instance, environmentalists proved that NATO military exercises had been going on close to where the bodies were found. But tell that to the navy!

THROAT CHAKRA—VISHUDDHA How do you know the truth? Truth is the operative word in this section, whereas voice is its secondary focus. Most people are focusing on voice and expression at the Throat Chakra — that is, the capacity to express ideas and thoughts. What matters most is not how you talk at the Throat Chakra, but what you convey. The "what" is your truth, your most insightful wisdom; the "how" is your medium to express your truth. Both the "what" and "how" of truth are sitting here at the Throat Chakra, at the center of your physical throat (or the apple of your Adam). What do you mean by "truth?" Many claim the reality is a personal quest to discover the values and beliefs that drive choices and decisions about your life. Others suggest that a collective truth exists, a unified wisdom to which all can aspire and seek integration. Let the intersection of these two approaches inspire you to explore individual and collective truths to understand how to integrate what you see, learn and experience into your life. Throat Chakra Gemstones The gems of this chakra are believed to be the gems of Lemuria, an ancient civilization aligned with the realm of the dolphin, which reflect knowledge that had been preserved and held in crystals before the destruction of that community. One of the main Lemurian gemstones, AQUA Atmosphere QUARTZ is a powerful purifier of the atmosphere and also encourages power, tenacity and stability. •       AMAZONITE is the primary stone of reality, and it enhances confidence for public speakers, allowing them to express with ease even the most difficult words and themes. •       ANGELITE (in crystalline form, known as CELESTITE) invokes the angelic forces to evoke in your spaces the presence of angels, like archangels. Take this jewel with you or sleep by it to feel more connected to your own personal angels and guides. •       Since centuries TURQUOISE has been valued by indigenous Americans who find it a powerful purifier and healer, as well as a tool that strengthens and defends warriors in combat. It was revered as a source of good fortune in antiquity Persia. Connect to your gemstones in the Throat Chakra in moments of anxiety or frustration. Here's how to do this: Lie down in a comfortable position and keep in your right hand, the receiving one, one or three of your beloved light blue Throat Chakra crystals, through which energy reaches your body. (Some people feel their left hand is their Receiving Hand; go with what they feel right for you.) Set the intention to receive the gifts of the Throat Chakra, peace, wisdom and truth. Then move the stones to your hand, or Projecting Side, so you can take the energy out into the universe as a gift for everyone. Imagine a bright blue ray of truth and light beaming out into the world for everyone to see, receive and enjoy.

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Every so often, a heartwarming news story tells of a shipwrecked sailor who was on the verge of drowning in a turbulent sea. Suddenly, a dolphin popped up at his side and, gently but firmly, nudged the swimmer safely to shore. It is tempting to conclude that dolphins must really like human beings, enough to save us from drowning. But wait—are dolphins aware that humans don't swim as well as they do? Are they actually intending to be helpful? To answer that question, we would need to know how many shipwrecked sailors have been gently nudged further out to sea by dolphins, there to drown and never be heard from again. We don't know about those cases, because the swimmers don't live to tell us about their evil-dolphin experiences. If we had that information, we might conclude that dolphins are neither benevolent nor evil; they are just being playful.

Come out of the water, open your eyes and back to the here and now. Recreate the experience of swimming with dolphins using dance and movement. Objectives The aim of Swimming with Dolphins is to get clients to experience a range of feelings and thinking in a way that is relatively safe. Each client will have a different reaction to this visualisation and subsequent activity.

Elsewhere as Baker muses on the fluidity and apparent joyfulness of a seal’s motion at sea he speculates: It is a good life, a seal’s, here in these shallow waters. Like the lives of so many air and water creatures, it seems a better one than ours. We have no element. Nothing sustains us when we fall. Here Baker edges towards a remarkable revelation about the whole nature-writing genre. On reading the passage, one thinks of the specific creatures (as well as their most devoted author/admirers) that have made the deepest appeal to the modern British imagination: the otter (Henry Williamson, Gavin Maxwell), whales and dolphins (Heathcote Williams and the whole New-Age fixation with cetaceans) and birds, particularly birds of prey (W.H. Hudson, T.H. White and J.A. Baker himself). If we cannot move between the elements like these wonderful animals, then humans can at least imagine what it is like to be an otter or a peregrine. But no writer I know has taken us deeper into the life of another creature and allowed us to experience how that elemental mastery might possibly feel than John Alec Baker. Mark Cocker, March 2010

Every day is a chance to outsmart yesterday's version of yourself. So, why settle for the status quo when you can upgrade your brain's software with a daily dose of enlightenment? Dive into the pool of knowledge like a playful dolphin, flipping and frolicking through new ideas and insights. With each discovery, you're not just learning; you're leveling up your life game.

Germans have a term, Fernweh, that signifies “yearning for a distant place.” Having grown up in small-town Ohio, almost literally in the middle of a cornfield, I’ve always had a particularly strong sense of Fernweh. When I went to college, I took every opportunity to travel, working in Hawaii with dolphins, attending a semester abroad in England, and even backpacking through Greece. There have been countless vacations and trips. The world is a vast and infinitely interesting place, and in truth, I’ve always looked down on people who chose not to wander, not to see and experience different cultures. Maybe there was something deeply ironic in the fact that this chance encounter with an elderly Athabascan woman pushed me to reconsider my stance. She was content, serene. Could I say the same? Not really. She didn’t need to tell stories about wild sled rides to make her friends jealous; she didn’t need to supplement her life with cheap souvenirs from tourist traps. She only needed the now of the weather, the dogs, and the mushers. I wondered if all the adventures in the world could ever bring me such peace.

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No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it. Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed oak tree? Have you come across a depressed dolphin, a frog that has a problem with self-esteem, a cat that cannot relax, or a bird that carries hatred and resentment? The only animals that may occasionally experience something akin to negativity or show signs of neurotic behavior are those that live in close contact with humans and so link into the human mind and its insanity.

I used to think showing my pain to the world was a way of helping others who experience similar pains. I didn’t mind being seen as broken as long as it made someone else feel less broken. Though as time has gone on, I am learning that the most important thing I can show the world is actually my healing. I need to show the world the temporariness of pain.

Indeed, the nervous system of the octopus, thought to be the most intelligent invertebrate, is comprised of approximately half a billion neurons, more than six times the number in a mouse brain. Additionally, like humans, dolphins, and elephants, octopuses have a brain with a folded surface, ostensibly to pack in more neurons in a confined space, in contrast to the smooth-surfaced brains of other cephalopods, mice, rats, and marmosets. Thus although octopuses don’t have cortical regions associated with ToM, they have an exceptionally large brain capacity and may have evolved to solve the problem of ToM using different anatomical strategies.

The findings that were deemed believable enough to be published, however, revolutionized ethologists’ thinking. Ethologists began to speak less often of a chasm between man and ape; they began to speak instead of a dividing “line.” And it was a line that, in the words of Harvard primatologist Irven De Vore, was “a good deal less clear than one would ever have expected.” What makes up this line between us and our fellow primates? No longer can it be claimed to be tool use. Is it the ability to reason? Wolfgang Kohler once tested captive chimps’ reasoning ability by placing several boxes and a stick in an enclosure and hanging a banana from the high ceiling by a string. The animals quickly figured out that they could get to the banana by stacking the boxes one atop the other and then reaching to swat at the banana with a stick. (Once Geza Teleki found himself in exactly this position at Gombe. He had followed the chimpanzees down into a valley and around noon discovered he had forgotten to bring his lunch. The chimps were feeding on fruit in the trees at the time, and he decided to try to knock some fruit from nearby vines with a stick. For about ten minutes he leaped and swatted with his stick but didn’t manage to knock down any fruit. Finally an adolescent male named Sniff collected a handful of fruit, came down the tree, and dropped the fruit into Geza’s hands.) Some say language is the line that separates man from ape. But this, too, is being questioned. Captive chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans have been taught not only to comprehend, but also to produce language. They have been taught American Sign Language (ASL), the language of the deaf, as well as languages that use plastic chips in place of words and computer languages. One signing chimp, Washoe, often combined known signs in novel and creative ways: she had not been taught the word for swan, but upon seeing one, she signed “water-bird.” Another signing chimp, Lucy, seeing and tasting a watermelon for the first time, called it a “candy-drink”; the acidic radish she named “hurt-cry-food.” Lucy would play with toys and sign to them, much as human children talk to their dolls. Koko, the gorilla protegee of Penny Patterson, used sign language to make jokes, escape blame, describe her surroundings, tell stories, even tell lies. One of Biruté’s ex-captives, a female orangutan named Princess, was taught a number of ASL signs by Gary Shapiro. Princess used only the signs she knew would bring her food; because she was not a captive, she could not be coerced into using sign language to any ends other than those she found personally useful. Today dolphins, sea lions, harbor seals, and even pigeons are being taught artificial languages, complete with a primitive grammar or syntax. An African grey parrot named Alex mastered the correct use of more than one hundred spoken English words, using them in proper order to answer questions, make requests, do math, and offer friends and visitors spontaneous, meaningful comments until his untimely death at age 31 in 2007. One leading researcher, Ronald Schusterman, is convinced that “the components for language are present probably in all vertebrates, certainly in mammals and birds.” Arguing over semantics and syntax, psychologists and ethologists and linguists are still debating the definitions of the line. Louis Leakey remarked about Jane’s discovery of chimps’ use of tools that we must “change the definition of man, the definition of tool, or accept chimps as man.” Now some linguists have actually proposed, in the face of the ape language experiments, changing the definition of language to exclude the apes from a domain we had considered uniquely ours. The line separating man from the apes may well be defined less by human measurement than by the limits of Western imagination. It may be less like a boundary between land and water and more like the lines we draw on maps separating the domains of nations.

The taste of fresh orange juice. A fig. the sight of a flower. The sound of music. A slab of sunlight on floorboards. Cats and dogs and goats and lizards and dolphins. Harrison Ford’s face. Imagine if you were from a planet with none of those things. Imagine how full of wonder everything would seem. How unjaded we would be by everything in front of us. How a picture of a sunset would never seem corny again. How a simple walk in an orchard would be utopia. How a cool breeze on a hot day would be a lottery win. How each and every bird song would be a symphony.