Wild Horses in Trouble

The February 2009 National Geographic magazine, both paper and online, has an excellent but sobering article about the plight of the wild horses in the ten Western states where they are trying to survive. Writer Alexandra Fuller gives a little of the history of the horses and mentions "Cattle Annie" who was largely responsible for federal protection of the horses. (See my article about Cattle Annie in the "Protecting Horses" section.) Fuller points out that the wild animals have been besieged by stock men and their cattle and sheep, machines on their range, helicopters, cars, and trucks, and now the added insult, the struggle to find oil under the Western ground where these animals live. The Bureau of Land Management is supposed to see that they are safe and that they are kept at workable, manageable levels on the Bureau's 258 million acres. The Bureau oversees about 30,000 horses. At prescribed intervals, a number of horses are rounded up (called a "gather") by helicopters and cowboys and the animals have uncertain fates. A particularly interesting part of the article deals with efforts to try a contraceptive solution to reduce the numbers of the fertile mares, but Fuller says that the Bureau is cool to the idea. What's going to happen to these horses who many feel represent the spirit of America?

Frontal lobes only 3.5 percent of a cat's brain

All cats' frontal lobes are 3.5 percent of the brain compared with dogs' at 7 percent and we humans at a whopping 29 percent. I learned this from the wonderful book I'm reading, Animals Make Us Human. Written by the champion of animals, Dr. Temple Grandin, the book's chapters are divided into dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, chickens and other poultry, wildlife and zoos. I started reading about cats first because I live with the mysterious little beauty in the picture whose name is Autumn.


Dr. Grandin explains a lot of mysteries I've wondered about in Autumn and all the cats I ever owned, and indeed a lot of mysteries remain to be solved.


Just because a cat's frontal lobes are a smaller part of the brain, does not mean they are stupid. Indeed, they are, according to research veterinarian Dr. Karen Overall, who investigates behavioral medicine, ". . . really bright, inherently cognitive individuals. [People] forget the most critical need [for cats] which to me is the intellectual one. I think we haven't given cats or dogs the credit they deserve for their cognitive capabilities. I think we've got an epidemic of understimulated cats whose intellectual needs aren't being met." "Intellectual needs", indeed!


On the basis of what Drs. Grandin and Overall say about cats' needs to be stimulated, I performed a simple, unscientific, stimulation experiment today. I took all Autumn's toys away except for his well-loved foil ball which he hasn't been interested in for a long time. I put it on a table where it usually isn't found. After he'd eaten his breakfast, he found it immediately on his tour of his house, and later when I was at the computer, he meowed several times from down on the floor. There he was , the ball in his mouth for me to throw, a game he used to play with me when he was a kitten. He played fetch down the long upstairs hall at my house even batting it into another room at one point, until I had to go back to the demanding computer. A happy little experience for Autumn and for me thanks to Dr. Grandin's book.

Horses and My Family

Horses and my family go back a long way. My maiden name was Coultous, which a University of Edinburgh professor informed me meant "Colt House." How cool is that? I had relatives long, long ago, centuries probably, who kept horses. And here is a picture I treasure from my family archives of my relative holding a darn big horse who doesn't really look that happy!

The Omak Suicide Race Kills Animals and People

Of the many rationalizations for this race, its description as "spiritual" by its defenders is the stuff of which delusion is made. It is not spiritual, or if you prefer, sacred, to put either horses or their riders into a terrain so steep and so rough that a death or injury is just about guaranteed. It is not sacred to make animals gallop so fast down the steeply pitched slope that they tumble over themselves and break their backs, or their riders die from being thrown. It certainly does not speak to things of the spirit for the townspeople to keep this horrific spectacle going year after year because they're making money. To read about the Suicide Race, go to this article: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118678342614494614-M49PZaSriaBsYASGQhdKeSlj5OU_20080810.html?mod=rss_free .

If you can stand to see a taste of it, watch the video here:

Go to my Protecting Horses page to read my article.