News………….
The online chat for February " Plight of lesser animals" was moderated by Mr. Mahendra Vyas, Supreme court lawyer and member of the Central Empowered Committee. ( Read more about
MAHENDRA VYAS by clicking here). The chat attracted a good number of participants from all over the country. You can read the chat transcription by
clicking here. Though India is prime habitat for llesser cats, very little information is available about their distribution and about the existence of viable populations. The chat also threw up suggestions for improving the contents of the website.
……….………sachdr
"Maybe we can have an online space for sharing snaps that we think are worth sharing and mentioning some points about the situation when we took them + i think we should start something like, having an action item for the month. One example would be "the Bombay
Zoo" , seriously..there cant be any greater torture for the poor animals...maybe we can collectively contact someone who can do something about it. Let's have a topic for the month similar to this chat forum, but the response can be sent throughout the month
( a message board of sorts). This will give those people who can't come on the chat to give in their inputs as well "
rAJa "can we go for for some park visits "
"what abt giving info about IFS examinations? "
parthi "everyone of us shall mail to the group about the parks and sanctuaries they have been to". ………
Each month, we change the topic of our online quiz. It can be attempted online and you know how many questions you have got correct instantly. The correct answers are given in the next month's ezine. Two people answered nine questions
correctly in the January quiz. They are
magesh_g@yahoo.com
sukanya@banglalive.com
CONGRATULATIONS!!
…………..& Views
What can animals teach humans? Everything, writes the environmental philosopher Paul Shepard, and he's not being hyperbolic. In Shepard's view, it was through the observation and emulation of animals that humans developed their
abilities to communicate. The development of the brain and larynx depended on accidents of biology, on bipedalism and upright posture. But more, their development both hinged on and reinforced the desire of humans to communicate with each other, and to members
of other species, about their existence in the world; as Shepard writes of one particular human mental skill, "grouping and categorizing is not something done by children simply because their biology requires it, but because the real animal world of each child
is to be his concrete model of reality." The natural world, in other words, teaches us to think.
All human culture, in Shepard's view, rests on our natural history, and the separation that has occurred over the generations between humans and the natural environment is to our detriment. Shepard imagines a future in which animals
no longer have a place, their role in the world having been assumed by human inventions. Scholarly without ever being pedantic, Shepard offers a powerful argument for conservation and preservation. Thinking Animals, like many of Shepard's books, has come to
be a key text in the literature of the animal rights movement and of environmentalism generally, and it is endlessly stimulating. --Gregory McNamee
From a review of the book " Thinking Animals" by Paul Shepard