Animals could have a desire seek revenge it seems!

Hal1 wrote: »

Cats evil backstards, nuff said.

/thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCf950nbCVY

The Sunday Times
June 17, 2007

Kelvin Parker's holiday at Victoria Falls turned into a nightmare because of
a guide's lapse of judgment. He tells of the minute his world fell apart
Ann McFerran
Today, as he does every day, Kelvin Parker will walk for five or six hours.
In March this year his beloved wife Veronica and daughter Charlotte were
savaged to death by an elephant in a Zimbabwean game park. He, too, was
chased but escaped. Such is his grief that trudging the streets has become
the only way he can keep his mind from returning to that sunny morning in
the African bush.

"I still feel as though I'm being chased by the elephant," he says. "Walking
is the only time when I don't feel bad and I don't weep. If I'm not walking
or somehow keeping busy I am hit by this terrible weight of grief and
loneliness."

Kelvin, 53, is a likable, slightly chaotic man who weeps frequently as he
describes how Veronica and Charlotte were wiped out in less than a minute on
what should have been a glorious holiday. For the previous four years, the
Parkers had been living in a remote part of South Africa, but with
10-year-old Charlotte's secondary education looming, the British-born couple
had decided to settle in France, where they'd once lived.

Throughout their somewhat unusual and peripatetic 18-year marriage - they'd
also lived in Japan, Hong Kong and Portugal - the Parkers financed
themselves by renovating houses. "We were hedonists, lotus-eaters,
travellers," says Kelvin. "Making money and careers didn't matter to us.
Life was what mattered."

When they met they were both working for an advertising agency in Hong Kong
and proved the perfect match: "I was good at the big things; Veronica was
good on detail. She was charming and calm; I was emotional and explosive."
Their daughter, whom they called Charlie, after Charlie Parker, was
"exceptional - brilliant at school, an outstanding athlete", according to
Kelvin. "I know everyone says this about their children, but with Charlie it
was true."

In recent years they had spent most of their waking lives together: "I might
be plumbing; Veronica might be cooking or even holding the other end of a
pipe for me. Even our work had a terrific intimacy."

Every evening at 6.30, the Parkers sat down to talk about their day over
drinks and snacks. "Veronica and I would have two glasses of dry white wine
while Charlie had Appletiser. In the school holidays she'd have tea and
bickies in bed with us, first thing. The three of us were completely
entwined." Kelvin pauses to blink back tears: "At least I know that when
they died we'd done everything we could to know and love each other."

Before they left South Africa they decided to make a trip to Victoria Falls,
which Veronica had always wanted to see. Kelvin found a four-day package
deal that included two days of safari in the nearby Hwange national park.
"Quite honestly we weren't terribly interested in the safari," Kelvin says.
"We'd seen lots of animals. But the package made sense financially."

The family loved Victoria Falls and were delighted with the safari lodge. On
their first evening they watched wildebeest, giraffes and elephants at a
nearby watering hole. Charlie enthused: "This is the prettiest place I've
ever been."

At dinner an English couple raved about the lodge's safari guide, Andy
Privella. "He's fantastic," they said. "He took us right up to an elephant
and we stroked it."

Early next morning, on their first safari walk, the much-praised guide told
the Parkers what they must do: "You walk when I say walk. You stop when I
say stop. If something happens I will take care of you."

"He explained he had a rifle, and I noticed he put one bullet in the
chamber, leaving the rest in his belt," says Kelvin.

They set off, in single file, following the guide, who pointed out
footprints, animal droppings and food. They saw giraffes and zebra but no
elephants. After returning to the lodge for breakfast the guide took them
for a drive.

"Maybe what we said on the drive helps to explain what happened," says
Kelvin.

"The guide had been a hunter. We said we didn't like hunting because it
seemed to be about people's egos. On the other hand, we said, you have to
cull elephants where there are too many, like in part of South Africa. We
also talked about male elephants 'in musth', in a state of sexual arousal,
and how you have to be very careful around them. The guide said he thought
that might be exaggerated."

They drove near some woodland where elephants usually gathered but there
wasn't one in sight. The Parkers didn't care but the guide seemed bothered.
"That sucks," he said. At 10.30am, when they stopped by a waterhole to enjoy
a beer, an elephant lumbered into view, about 600 yards away.

The guide suggested he take them to see it up close. The Parkers felt they
couldn't refuse. "We felt the guide would be disappointed if he didn't
deliver for us," says Kelvin. "Maybe this is the kind of people we are.
Bloody stupid, when I think about it now. We did that walk for him!"

The plan was to observe the elephant from an ant hill about l00 yards away.
As they walked Kelvin saw the guide look at the elephant with his
binoculars. "He must have seen large wet patches around its ears which meant
the elephant was in musth and potentially aggressive." But the elephant,
too, was ambling towards the ant hill so that soon they were only 30 yards
apart. At the ant hill the guide urged Kelvin to take photographs. Just as
the Parkers began to walk back from the ant hill, Kelvin turned to see their
guide peering out - "and the elephant saw him", he says.

Only that morning the Parkers had been told how elephants when they're angry
put their heads back, flap their ears and their trunks shoot up. And that is
exactly what this elephant did next.

The guide shouted: "Stop!" The Parkers stopped, whereupon the guide waved
his hands in the air and yelled loudly.

"I'll never understand why he did that as long as I live," says Kelvin,
"because of course it really pissed off the elephant." Then the guide raised
his rifle and fired above the elephant's head - "So he'd used the only
bullet he had."

The elephant charged. "Because I'm at the back the elephant goes for me,"
says Kelvin. "I run, thinking, 'I'm dead'; the elephant is so big and so
close and so fast." In a desperate attempt to outwit the elephant Kelvin
zigzagged. Confused, the elephant stopped, turned and ambled back to the
forest.

At this moment, Kelvin turned to see the guide by the ant hill blubbering:
"I'm sorry; I'm sorry." And near him lay Charlie's white T-shirt. Kelvin ran
over to find his daughter "completely, utterly dead. Poor little thing; her
eyes were open but rolled back. I picked her up and her little head just
fell back. Her life spirit had gone".

Imagining his wife was hiding, he began to search for her. He found her, or
rather her brain, with bits of the top of her skull lying not far from
Charlie. "So I knew I couldn't find her in one piece," Kelvin says, tears
streaming down his cheeks.

Kelvin carried his wife and daughter to the ant hill, sent the guide to get
help, and sat for 45 minutes cradling them in the blistering sun. He says he
talked to them both, telling them, "I'd look after them and get them safely
home. I certainly wasn't scared. In a way I wanted to be dead too. But I
realised if I were alive then in some sense they were too".

When he was rescued and taken back to the lodge he couldn't face seeing the
guide but he felt no anger towards him. "He'll have to live with this for
the rest of his life." And so will Kelvin: "The worst time is when I wake
up. So I have to keep busy or walk."

This time last year Kelvin was in Britain for Father's Day, so Charlie wrote
him a card at her school in South Africa. Addressed to "a really cool dad",
and written in green and turquoise with lots of red hearts, Charlie's card
reads: "Dads are cool. Dads really rule! . . . I thank God for a dad like
you!"

Today Charlie's "cool" dad has found some solace in setting up a charity
called CharChar, commemorating her and her mother, to fund the teaching of
African children to read - reading was one of Charlie's greatest pleasures.

"The charity seems to make more sense than anything else," says Kelvin.
"When I look back I wouldn't change anything about our lives together -
except for that final minute." And with that he goes off to walk some more,
to try to obliterate the pain of his loss

Procasinator wrote: »

If you strip away out culture and combined knowledge, however, we are still anatomically and behaviourally very different (as you already mentioned). I think we would still be considered very different to chimps and bonobos.

Wibbs wrote: »

My point would be that our culture and combined knowledge is the huge extra and unseen anywhere else in the animal kingdom. Indeed it was barely seen in our own ancestors until we, modern humans came along. What was seen in them and very marked in us is that we externalised our own evolution. While natural selection still pressured us we were no longer complete slaves to it. How? Invention of tools to limit it's impact on our spread and progress. We started off as pretty weak vegetarians and scavengers. Then we became active predators. Predators with small teeth, low enough strength(Neandertals the exception), low stomach acid and no claws. Not a great blueprint for an apex predator. We came up with knives and spears to kill and butcher prey and we tamed fire to predigest the meat for our weak stomach acids. Then we migrated into new environments*. Sometimes very cold ones. Did we need to grow fur to adapt? Nope, we could use others fur by proxy. We could travel through or even live in arid environments and didn't have to adapt a hump to store food and water, we could carry it. That's all before the cultural stuff really kicked off. We're still at it. Hell there are folks reading this who would have been dead 100 years ago, but because we externalise our evolution we didn't have to directly adapt to the various illnesses and conditions that would have killed us, instead we invented external cures and treatments. Now we're even beginning to glimpse and influence the very building blocks of evolution itself. If we survive long enough it's likely that the next human species to evolve on this planet will be evolved by us, not nature. No other animal has come within sniffing distance of that level of culture as tool and externalised evolution.

As you say we have "become very distinctive by an accumulation of knowledge and culture". I agree, but to remove that from any equation is akin to removing the wings from birds and saying they're just lizards with funny scales.






*it's far easier for predators to do so. Plant food sources vary a lot between environments and many are poisonous, but so long as there are animals a predator can survive. Drop a Wildebeest into Donegal and chances are the local plant sources won't be the right ones, drop a lion into Donegal and it's grubs up.

Jacob T wrote: »

What's the story with all the grammatically incorrect thread titles lately?

Wibbs wrote: »

My point would be that our culture and combined knowledge is the huge extra and unseen anywhere else in the animal kingdom.

Shenshen wrote: »

Yes, we are different. And through that little difference (externalising our evolution, as you put it, I like that, it's a fantastic description and with your permission will use it going forward) we've reached a point where we to all intends and purposes are worlds removed from our closest cousins.

Shenshen wrote: »

Yes, most humans (most, not even all!) are more intelligent than chimps. But then, most chimps are more intelligent than gorillas, most gorillas are more intelligent than baboons, and so on and so forth.