As my readers already know I love the pontification of scientists. In the first place it gives me hope that they will be wrong in the larger things that they predict because they can be found wrong in the smaller things that they say. In the second place it's just fun for a "hi-skule gradiate" to get to do this to the Ph. D. level of thinking. However it does mean that I have to actually read what they say in the first place so probably some of my "larning" has not gone astray.
Here is an example of what I mean. "Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, joining only humans, apes and dolphins as animals that possess this kind of self-awareness, researchers now report.
"This would seem to be a trait common to and independently evolved by animals with large, complex brains, complex social lives and known capacities for empathy and altruism, even though the animals all have very different kinds of brains," researcher Diana Reiss, a senior cognitive research scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in Brooklyn, N.Y., told LiveScience."
Guess what, lady, I had a horse that could stop traffic (at least equine traffic) while he admired himself in a large mirror in a dressage hall. I know that the scientists equate the level of equine intelligence to be somewhat less than a pig's level of intelligence. But those scientists obviously did not know my War Hawk horse.
War Hawk arrived at this particular dressage stable as a rather awkward three year old Appaloosa. He was new to the dressage genre but he brought his inimitable way of going with him and wound up being admired by no less a personage than Col. Bengt Ljundquist who at that time was the dressage coach of the USET. Hawk's way of going and his self carriage were not the only things that set him apart from the other horses.
Even at that age he had a mind like a steel trap and it was always questing in search of new and wonderful things that he could use to befuddle humankind - a group of creatures that he found not only useful in providing his own comforts of life but also of interest in what was to be a lifelong study of his in how to circumvent authority without incurring the personal corrections that irked him.
Hawk was longed in a bitting rig every day at this stable to bring his musculature up to the point where he would be able to carry a rider. This was a very old fashioned thing to do but one that I came to admire and understand to be a very good thing for a young horse. Older horses that are in condition can also be longed this way and it gives them exercise without the heavier task of carrying a rider - also a very good thing for the horse.
In the dressage barns of that time, in the riding ring, there were large mirrors for the riders to use in assessing their position on the horse as they rode. Hawk found himself in the mirror immediately and would stop and stare if he was allowed to. Usually he was not allowed to.
However when the horses were exercised in a free longe with four horses turned loose in the ring and sent around at a smart trot with no tack on, Hawk was in his glory with the mirror. He would stand and simply stare at himself, turning his head this was and that as if to say, "So. This is me. It would appear that this time around I am a horse. A very colorful horse at that. Cool!"
And with three other horses bearing down on him at a smart trot he would hold his ground in front of that mirror until he was satisfied with his inspection of himself. The other horses would sweep around him and trot off down around the corner and, at his leisure, Hawk would join them trotting around and around and changing direction, always with an eye on himself in the mirror as he passed.
Sad to say but Hawk apparently had inspected his gifts of "empathy and altruism" and found them not to be of general interest at least as far as humankind went. No, for my Hawk horse it was every man for himself as far as humans went.
He did extend to me a willingness to go above and beyond what he considered due to other humans. I think that was because he understood he would be hard put to find another person who found him intriguing to watch as he dealt with life as a horse.
When I think about Hawk at that mirror, it really makes me sort of believe in reincarnation.
