Pets: A Gateway Drug

Julius the cat and Rocket the dog

Understanding the Amazing Vastness of Life on Our Home Planet

Humans are an arrogant lot. So proud of our technologies, our cars, our airplanes, our computers, our philosophies, our mathematics, our literature, our roads, our cities, our religion, our top of the heap-ness. So wrapped up in being homosapiens, it can seem impossible to get out of this mindset, to truly escape that notion that we are the Best. Most of our Big-5 senses are actually rather dull compared to many of our fellow non-human earthlings. In terms of our impact on planet Earth, we are awesome in a mostly awful way. The question this leads me to is: Is it possible to get out of our human heads? Well, not really, I’m afraid. But we can try. And in trying, we can gain some rather amazing insights. One of the best ways to try is to really observe other animals (and plants!). And some of the most accessible animals to observe are those who live in many of our homes. Our pets! But you can’t take them for granted. You must pay attention to all they do. They can expose you to another element; and it sometimes seems supernatural!

Love Is the Drug

This “gateway drug,” these creatures who live so nearby to us, can serve as an introduction to this truly vast world of life on earth—from microscopic to humungous—all around us. It starts at home: when you open the door to compassion, understanding, and some patient observing, this amazing and seemingly endless world opens its gate and offers you, at the very least, a peek at some marvelous and sometimes bizarre creatures.

Let’s start with kitty. When she is awake for that 2-3 hours per day and not griping about that crappy food you give her, she is often patrolling the house. If you happen to have a mouse in the house, she is well aware of it long before you are. She has already heard it.

And then there is that pup with that amazing schnoz. From the top of snow to something afloat on the wind, to a ball just 10 inches from his face that he insists on tracking by scent rather than just looking around like we humans would do, he seems to see an entire world with his nose. A world that we are blind to.

I Wanna New Drug. One That Doesn’t Spill. Or Come in a Pill

Cats and Dogs have “grown up” with the human race for thousands of years. We move in sync by co-habitating. That alone makes them great ambassadors to the vast array of life outside the house. We understand and love them, yet they are different enough from humans with their “other” language and thought-processes to render them a bridge to other creatures that are vastly different from us humans.

And, of course, there’s the possibility of other in-home pets—birds, snakes, fish etc.—that can introduce us to the vast life on earth. BUT, I don’t think we need any in-home pets to open “the gate.” They just make it easier and more likely for us to pass through this gate to take us outside all the trappings of the human world and go on a journey of what will surely be a lifetime of exploration.

The Truth Shall Set You Free…to Sense, Explore, and Marvel

Once you accept the reality of these amazing abilities of our non-human sidekicks (housemates, bedmates), just look around. Unmoor your mind from the way we process and codify what is mostly delivered to us by our vision. I’m not dissing our human vision (it’s actually pretty amazing in the vastness of the animal world). It’s all a bit of an illusion, a way of interacting with the world we move through. (What about blind people you say!; an interesting question I can’t be distracted with right now). We also have rather large and sophisticated brains; but so do other animals. And, I have to say it, size doesn’t always matter! The bird brain does some amazing feats. We also need to unmoor our minds from ranking other lives by how much they are or aren’t human-like. If we can do that, even just a little, we are much better prepared to explore our planet with humility and compassion.

I consider myself mostly a scientist, with a dose of philosopher, a pinch of dreamer, and poet (though a lousy poet). So, if we look around at the non-human world (just animals for the sake of this discussion) we discover some truly amazing abilities relative to our own. These abilities may seem supernatural. But they are in fact quite natural even though we may not know how they work. And, a warning, don’t be too cocksure about what another creature may see or feel. It’s a guess, and it can get quite complicated. Considering some non-human creatures, here is just a sampling of some superpowers:

Octopus 

Superpower: They certainly don’t look like us. And they spend most of their time in water. They do seem to recognize individual humans. They seem to make conscious decisions and even open jars like a human might do. BUT. They have 3 hearts, and it’s as if they have 2 brains (or more)! A relatable brain sits behind 2 large eyes in a head that seems relatable. BUT. They have arms that move about independently, seemingly having minds of their own. It’s as if the Octopus has 2 (or more) consciousnesses! Those arms roam about tasting and touching, then discuss things with that other brain that is vision-centered and contained in the head.

Naked Mole Rat 

Superpower: They can handle pain; not all pain, but the kind that comes from lack of oxygen. Naked Mole Rats live most of their lives underground in tunnels that often run quite low on oxygen. They are eusocial. Their social stratum is more like ants and termites than any other mammals. They have a queen or queens who have the babies, surrounded by a whole bunch of sterile workers, often huddled in this tight network of tunnels. A lack of oxygen for other mammals would cause such discomfort after a minute or two that they would panic for an escape. Not so for these guys. They can survive without air for up to 18 minutes.

Bacteria 

Superpower: The subject of Bacteria is immense and amazing. So, I’ll just say this: with a long history of being maligned as the bad guys, it’s becoming clearer that most life as we know it wouldn’t exist without a large variety of bacteria swarming through it. Clearly there are some “bad” bacteria. But by far they are essential for life, our cohabitators. So, you can stop with the anti-bacterial soaps and the bleach! There’s some exciting and emerging science detailing just how much bacteria participate in so many vital functions within our own bodies. We are never alone, even within our own skin!

Blue Whale

Superpower: The Blue Whale, and whales as a whole, operates on a timescale much different from humans. As the story goes, they evolved from a deer-like creature moving from land to water about 50 million years ago. Then they got huge. Seemingly Blue Whales are the largest animals ever to live on earth. Their hearing shifted to low infrasonic frequencies. With that, their superpower, one of their superpowers, is the ability to communicate over vast oceans of at least 1,500 miles. Blue Whales are loud. They can live to 100 years or more. They have huge hearts that can slow to 2 beats per minute when on a dive. And, most intriguingly, they just may possess detailed acoustic maps of huge swaths of the ocean floor.

Bat

Superpower: Bats! They are mammals. In fact, they are the only mammals who can fly for a sustained period of time. But, their true superpower is the ability to locate objects without the use of light: to echolocate! By sending out short ultrasonic pulses from her mouth she listens for the returning sound—the echo—to provide a “visual” of the scene in front of her when the light is too low for the eyes to provide the view. Bats are not blind! This echolocation allows her to hunt quite successfully at night in the dark in an arena where the eyes are of little to no service. Not too many creatures have this skill. Toothed whales (think dolphins and sperm whales) and bats have honed it to perfection!

Elephant

Superpower: Elephants are quite amazing in many ways, not to mention their sheer size. They have an intriguing ability to communicate through seismic signaling, i.e., vibrations in the ground. But for now, let’s just take a brief look at that immense protrusion on the front of that beautiful face: the trunk (the schnoz, the nose). Their olfactory system, that sense of smell, appears to be far more sophisticated than even that of the celebrated dog (but let’s not make this a competition!). The sense of smell by its very nature is a hard thing to study with a whole lot of certainty. Lots of creatures use it, and quite commonly as a means of tracking and mapping their environment. There is a notion yet to be proven that elephants can smell water buried under ground. Digging a “well” in times of drought they can find water.  As with those famed chemical sniffers of ants, there is a notion that elephants follow their migratory patterns by following chemical trails, sniffing their way. I personally believe that humans are guided in many ways by scents that we are consciously oblivious to.

Pistol Shrimp

Superpower: This little guy, approximately 4 inches long, has the power to clinch its claw so quickly as to create a shock wave at over 50 mph to stun or even kill a small creature within a few inches with no need to make actual contact to achieve this. Also known as the Snapping Shrimp, this ability to send out a shock wave competes with Sperm Whales and Beluga Whales as being the loudest animal in the ocean. The Pistol Shrimp often forms a symbiotic relationship with the Gobi (large fish in picture). Two different species, they have an established an alliance in which they help each other survive, even sharing the same “apartment.” The shrimp provides and maintains the apartment which they share. In exchange, the Gobi acts as a watchman, alerting the shrimp with a flick of a tail about potential dangers when out and about and searching for food. The human and in-home pet relationship starts to seem a little less unique or unusual in the vast sea of inter-species life on planet earth.

Barn Owl

Superpower: Where we humans use the fleshy part of our outer ears to funnel sound waves into our sensitive ear drums, Barn Owls use their entire face to gather those sound waves. Those sound waves are then funneled into a pair of “ears” (which are buried under feathers) that sit right behind those big beautiful eyes. Unlike humans, whose ears sit in symmetrical horizontal alignment, the barn owl ears sit asymmetrically with the left ear aiming slightly upward and the right aiming slightly downward. Typically, when we humans hear a sound we turn our heads to attempt to pinpoint the source with our eyes. The barn owl can pinpoint with amazing accuracy the source of that sound with these “stereo” ears alone. So, whether you’re in total darkness or hiding under the cover of snow, the barn owl will find you!

Rattlesnake

Superpower: From our human perspective, this is truly a weird one. Rattlesnakes belong to a group of snakes called Pit Vipers. These heat sensitive pits—pits nestled just behind the nostrils—allow the Rattler to hit a target with amazing accuracy by “seeing” a temperature gradient even in total darkness, even if the snake is totally blind. (When I was a kid, growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, I witnessed an event that I didn’t make sense of until years later. Houses on the desert’s edge were quite common. As I stood there, this scene unfolded. A snake and a small rodent both sat stock still about 3 feet apart. I too stood frozen, observing. Suddenly, the rattler made a lightning strike hitting the rodent and retreating just as quickly into the shadows. The rodent just stood there. “Run” I whispered to the rodent. But he just stood there. 2 minutes passed. The snake made another lightning strike, this time pulling that rodent deeper into the shadows of a small rock enclave and disappearing. Years later, upon reflection, I realized that the first strike was a venom injection, the 2nd was bringing home the meal. I don’t know if the heat sensors were involved in this pinpoint strike, or just the eyes. Quite impressive either way.)

Rattlers like to keep their pits cool; they seem to be more efficient when cold. There are still a lot of unknown correlations here. But here’s an interesting supposition: A sleeping dog has a relatively warm nose, but an awake dog has a relatively cold nose (compared to her body temperature), like the heat-sensitive pits of vampire bats and pit vipers. Could a dog nose also act as an infrared sensor? If so, what purpose could it serve? There’s no obvious function, past or present! The beauty of science: there’s so much we don’t know. The door’s always open for learning.

Sea Robin

Superpower: They’re just a conundrum! A fish? Sea Robins, or Triglidae, seem to prefer walking to swimming. They croak (and cluck and groan) like a frog and, from overhead, appear to glide like a bird. They are found in both temperate and tropical seas around the world. We call them fish, but they bend the definition to the extreme. One more bit of evidence for why “fish” don’t exist as a true categorical class. The more you learn, the less you know… Calling a creature a fish only gets you into the ballpark. There is some service in that categorization. But the ocean is immense and diverse. So, it seems a bit dismissive to call any specific creature a “fish.” The Sea Robin with its seeming mashup of various creatures (a fish that walks and has bird wings) is yet another example of variety and category-defying life on earth.

Rotifer

Superpower: Rotifers are everywhere it would seem. There are over 2,000 species of Rotifer around the world, found mostly in freshwater. They can also be found in mosses and soil and sewage. They can also live inside animals. They are multicellular (about a thousand cells) aquatic animals, some smaller than a red blood cell, some as long as 2mm. Small at any rate! They have a tiny brain, tiny red eyes, a complete digestive tract, and a reproductive system. One of their many superpowers is the ability to enter anhydrobiosis. Anhydrobiosis is a state a certain strand of rotifer can enter in which it gives up all its water in order to survive a fungal attack or just extreme cold. It can remain in this state for years, perhaps thousands of years (perhaps 30,000 years according to Scientific American, 2021). When conditions are ripe, it rehydrates and resumes the life of a rotifer. Rotifers stretch to the extreme the definition of what we call “animal.”  

Bring Me a Higher Love

I’ve found myself with a growing impatience for people who say they are a “dog person” or a “cat person.” It’s not so much that they prefer to cohabit with one or the other, it’s the dismissiveness of one or the other. As with most prejudices, it’s born out of ignorance or unfamiliarity. Only recently have I parsed some difference between cats and dogs and how we interact with them, and what we appreciate in them. Dogs truly are domesticated. Most dogs move in tandem with the humans in the household. Dogs seem to offer unrequited love. Dogs are human concoctions. Housecats, on the other hand, are mostly indistinguishable genetically from their wild cousins. When we connect with them as cohabitators, it somehow seems special: a bridge between the “wild” and the “domesticated.” And yes, cats offer and take love too, but unlike the affection of a dog, it seems a bit outside the human order of things. Cats may not go on a trail run with us like a dog might do (of course there are exceptions), and, unlike most dogs, they are not always seeking us out. So then cats, perhaps, are a better gateway to the animals outside our homes. At any rate, cats and dogs are endlessly amazing to me. They leave me curious and empathetic to all those other creatures I’ll never (willingly) share my house with.

So, where did the Human Race go astray? I won’t try to track that down today, though I do have notions. In our more recent societal history, say 10,000 years, a great wall has been erected separating us from the so-called natural world. Both plants and animals (and all in between) became something to cultivate. What could not be cultivated became feared. Much of what became feared became exterminated (and still is to this day!). To sum up, we arrived at the concept of 2 forms of life on planet Earth: Humans and The Natural World, with a big wall in between. The wall needs to come down! A lot of people know this. A lot of people have that suspicion. I hope it’s a lasting trend. It’s the only hope for a long-term existence of humans on this planet. Humans are pretty amazing too! Reducing our carbon footprint alone will not be the saving grace. And getting acquainted with all these other creatures not only brings a critical awareness, it is just plain fun! As a species, humans are more likely to take care of that which we understand and feel kinship.

And finally, meet Pat and Sam.

Pat and Sam on a hot summer day

I met them on a hot summer afternoon on an off-leash trail in Boulder County while out with a client dog. No other fools visible out here but me, the dog, Sam, and Pat. I caught them in an intimate moment. Antenna in the mouth. Those eyes! They seemed very relatable (no jokes please!). Had it not been for this dog, I never would have met them.

As I continue down this rabbit hole of enlightenment—that all creatures are truly different but ideally equal in terms of a right to exist in the world, not to mention their amazing abilities TO exist—something occurs to me. For those of us lucky enough to cohabitate with an in-home pet, one key to this gate to the non-human world is right in front of us (or under or on top!). There's a whole world of creatures out there with unfathomable superpowers. Once you start looking, it's a fun ride, a never-ending rabbit hole. Once you've met Sam and Pat, you will hopefully think twice about squishing a bug.

*A big shout out to Ed Yong’s book An Immense World. An inspiration and a fun ride!

*This is not a scientific paper. I’ve done my best to mirror the current scientific understanding of the behavior and traits of these various creatures (some I’ve read about, some I’ve had direct experience with, and some are my own deductions). In addition to that, please consider that science “facts” are always in flux as we struggle to understand ourselves and the world. The beauty of science!

Andrew lives and works as the owner/operator of Front Range Pet Care, LLC, in Boulder County, U.S.A., Planet Earth