Strange: Birds And Animals

Today a garden lizard happened to enter the back side of my house. It stood on its legs a few inches from the ground with a tail about 4 inches long, longer than it's body.

Its posture looked like that of a miniature dinosaur. Inside my house it tried to find it's way about but was locked in the wash area with buckets and brooms and no way out except through an iron gate through which it had come in. I was standing at the gate encouraging it to get out, but the lizard was wary. I poured a mug of water over it and it tried to avoid getting wet and ran towards the gate but didn't quite reach the gate since I was standing there.

I poured a few more mugs over the lizard and stood out of it's way and finally the lizard escaped outside. Both of us heaved sighs of relief.

We like our natural habitats and our regular residents. Strange ones are no no.

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Missing The Whole Point

I was watching this video that a friend sent me.

I thought of the sculptor who made the deer so well that he had even sculpted the female sexual organ realistically. So much so that the male deer was actively engaged in it for a few seconds.

While we may think that the male deer was silly in having pursued sex with a sculpture (or whatever it was), I think the male was actually silly in aborting its mission when it realized that the female wasn't real.

The male was having a perfectly good time with the fake until the head feel off. How silly it is to stop an important activity because of the occurrence of an unimportant event (head falling off).

How many times in life we do such things - account something because of an issue with an unimportant part?

This is because of our tendency to look at this holistically instead of being focused on what we need.

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Logic Comes To The Rescue

School vs Life

Strong feelings make us say or commit to things.
Other strong feelings make us do things (which sometimes run counter to what we said or committed to earlier).
Our logical mind resolves the issue by explaining how our circumstances constrained our actions.

In the absence of the logical explanation (3 above) the person is left looking silly - having said something and done something else.

It's the logical mind in strongly emotional people that helps them survive the tricky situation that is created (1 and 2 above) and get out of it elegantly. So it looks like the commitment was given in good faith, something else was done only because of circumstances.

The focus is left on the good intentions and taken away from actions not leading to the intentions being fulfilled.

Animals are aware of only point no. 2 - the action which in their case is about eating and procreation. Humans have identified points 1 and 3 as important activities other than point 2.

It's point no. 2 where we meet expectations or in this case fall below expectations. When at school, we are graded based on how much we met expectations. Points 1 and 3 don't play much part in our student lives.
In our adult life, it's how well we handle points 1 and 3 that determine our success, not how well we meet expectations.

Loosely we can term point 2 as hard skills. Points 1 and 3 are the soft skills.

Friday, July 19, 2019

Man And Animals - Accepting As They Are

Sometimes we wonder why someone behaves so differently, absurd it might seem to us.

Of course we realize later that to the other person their behavior was perfectly justified.

It's just that we are unable at times to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. Now why is this so difficult? Do the shoes bite? Is the size not same as ours? This is a question that's been on my mind for a long time Why do we, each one of us, think and feel so differently from others?

To address this question we have to look at cats, dogs, birds, fish etc. Why do dogs behave differently from cats? Or birds from fish? It's because each is a different species. Cats won't behave like dogs nor like fish or birds. Each of these has evolved differently and each has its own nature. Two different species aren't similar.

When it comes to people, we can take this analogy even farther. Each person is like a different species even if all people have 2 legs, 2 hands,2 eyes, 1 mouth etc. Each person is born with a unique set of genes and has had a unique set of experiences in their life.

The genes that you were born with and the experiences that you faced in your life hitherto are different from those that I was born with and faces. You are logically expected to be different, hence, from me in your values, your thoughts, your conditioning, your responses to a situation.

This is so logical, yet so difficult for my heart to accept. It's kind boggling.

We don't say a crocodile or a lion or a shark is cruel. We use different words to describe them. We may say they are carnivores or that they eat so many kilos of meat a day or that they are cannibals and eat their own siblings. But we do not use the word sweet, cruel etc to describe them.

Words like sweet (as in nature) or cruel are used to describe only those whose nature is quite different from the average of their species.

You don't have a vegetarian shark, nor a lion that is a sanyasi etc. Sharks are alike, at least to us they seem that way.

Maybe, if a shark were to write a blog such as this it may understand that each shark is different from another and hence it may also use differentiating words such as cruel, brave, sweet etc to describe other sharks.

But to us human beings, all sharks are similar, all lions are similar and so on. Here we use neutral or objective words to describe them - "eat meat", "have large teeth" etc.

But to describe each of us, human beings, we frequently use subjective words. Words that help describe how different each of us is.

But imagine if, as I wrote earlier, each of us is a different species. We would then describe others around us the same way we describe other species.

Words such as galling, obnoxious, saintly, liar (or sweet / cruel) etc would hardly be used to describe other people. We would describe others the same way we describe other species.

So what's the big deal?

We do not expect other species to change their nature, language, religion, character etc. We know it's not possible. If we understand and accept that each one of us is really a different species, we won't expect others to change. We wont have New Year resolutions.

Does this mean we would love everyone and accept everyone? Yes, the same way we love all peacocks, whales and snakes. Meaning we understand each species has certain characteristics which will not change any time soon. We decide which ones to be close to and which ones to avoid. And which ones to watch from a distance with a binocular.

Can we digest this thought? So difficult.

It's our social nature that makes it difficult to accept this. We WANT to love some people and hate some others. Maybe the human beings who are least social can understand the perspective of treating other human beings as just another species - just different from themselves, nothing inherently good or bad.

Is this a good idea or bad - to treat other people as another species?
We have come across people who would suggest to us, when we are having relationship issues, to take people as they are. What does this mean essentially? Is it not the same as treating others as another species - in the sense that we ought not expect them to change?

Which of us treats other people as they are? Those of us who are open or those who are judgemental? Does treating another human as another species imply alienation or acceptance?

End note
Just imagine. The expression "we human beings" would mean nothing if we treat other people as other species.

Sunday, July 14, 2019

Puzzle: Network, Evolution, SIM, Sperm

I have a Nokia dual SIM feature phone (not Android) in which I have inserted one Airtel and one BSNL SIM card.

Now, since this morning I find that my Airtel SIM in the phone is not enabled. While BSNL is fine. It's not as though the Airtel Network is unavailable but the whole SIM is disabled at home. When i go about 4kms away from home, the Airtel SIM gets enabled and everything is normal. I tried this twice today - 4km in two different directions. The phone worked fine but come closer to home, it gets disabled.

I checked another phone with an Airtel SIM. As expected it works perfectly fine in my house while at the same time the Airtel SIM in Nokia is disabled.

The question is why.

Is it a SIM problem? Is it a phone problem? Is it a network problem?

Should i change my house? Because of an issue with a Rs1000 phone or a Rs25 SIM issue? That doesn't make sense.

Is it possible that the real culprit is the BSNL SIM which disables the Airtel SIM near my house intentionally - so that I give up in frustration and end up porting my Airtel to BSNL?

I am reminded of a certain behavior in some animals. Males in certain species, before copulating with a female, remove any residual sperm residing inside the female in order to ensure that the female is impregnated with its own sperm and not by that of the other male.

Once we move into a house, don't we clean it to ensure that nothing of the previous tenants remains? Exactly the same.

The only males that seem to clean house are males of certain species - during, rather before, copulation.

Is BSNL doing something similar in my phone?

Today, 15th July, I visited Airtel showroom. I got a fix from them. They changed my network settings on the phone from automatic to manual and that seemed to solve the issue.

I guess BSNL didn't do any hanky panky. Whew...

As to why automatic Network selection should create some hanky panky in my phone, I have no clue.

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

IDMI And ITBC

I was initiated to the concept of "intention" by a friend about 20 years back. When something he did was not right, his reply would be that he didn't intend it that way. That response would leave me flummoxed. I didn't know then whether his response was appropriate, meaning relevant to my comment. But the response seemed to indicate that he wasn't at fault. And here I was left holding the baby (some thing that hadn't gone well which he was responsible for). And I had been intimated that it wasn't his fault.

Something didn't sound right.

Fast forward 20 years. I still hear the same refrain "I didn't mean it" (IDMI) or "I didn't intend it".

IDMI is an interesting expression that addresses an issue between 2 parties.

If you point out a problem that occurred because of what i did (or didn't) do, my IDMI essentially removes my culpability while perhaps acknowledging your predicament. It, hence, shifts the focus from a fault on my side to empathy shown by me towards you. It's likened to a scenesce where you tell me about your issue and I provide a shoulder to cry on. The IDMI changes the issue you raised against me to an issue you have that has nothing to do with me except that I am being nice enough to listen to your woes.

Wow that's a terrific change in balance of power, isn't it?

More recently I was talking to another friend of mine when I pointed out that he had not having discharged his responsibility. He told me that he had always deeply wished for it. Just that he didn't or couldn't do it (for years).

I asked him. If he were a teacher grading a student's paper, would he give marks for correct answers or for the student's intention to write correct answers. He replied that he would give marks only for answers that were correct. Most teachers would agree with my friend.

It got me thinking. How is it that we expect a correct job while correcting an answer paper but in a social milieu we go by the intention to do the right thing? It's as though we have a dual operating system in our mind where "has to be correct" OS is switched on at certain times (example, when we are correcting a paper) while "intended to be correct" OS is switched on as in some social interactions. Read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/01/rita-and-sheila.html.
Often even within the context of social interactions, we sometimes use the "has to be right" mode while evaluating whole in other cases we go by the intention. The focus on the intention is basically used as a final "correction factor" to be applied on top of the evaluation based on normally agreed formula. The correction factor gives us the leeway to change the final grades. The beauty of it is that it's completely subjective while seeming to be perfectly fair.

The switching between one "OS" to another happens seemlessly. For example, while correcting a paper, we may take a break and talk to another teacher about some incident at school or about our personal lives when the "intended to be correct (ITBC)" mode is switched on.

Once I read an article which went like this:
First there was an assertion about some behavior (I forget what exactly it was). It was followed by a declaration that the said assertion was a myth. This interested me immensely. So I read further. The author went on to explain the reason why the behavior was exhibited.
I thought then, so there is a reason for the behavior. Did the presence of a valid reason for a particular behavior have anything to do with whether the behavior is real or a myth?
The presence of a valid reason for a behavior is taken to imply that the behavior wantwa exhibited. Hence, if I do something wrong, I need to come up with a reason for my behavior. Then I didn't do anything wrong. IDMI is a way to nullify my negative behavior.

This ITBC cannot exist where words don't exist. An animal cannot communicate the ITBC sentiment. Animals only react to what some other animal did and not to what they intended to. A peacock cannot convey to a female that he intended to show more beautiful feathers but on the way they got ruffled and hence she should give the peacock a chance to pass on his genes. Uh uh.

Prior to the time before humans learnt to talk, we would not have known the ITBC concept. We would have evaluated and been evaluated based on what we did, rather than by what we intended to do. And then, somewhere in the world, the first human being uttered those words "I didn't mean it (IDMI)". Imagine the shock of the person who heard such a thing for the first time.

Over time, we have been moulded to give importance to what was intended apart from what was done.

One doesn't need a camera to see what was done. It's hugely more difficult to see what was intended. The rational reason behind understanding why something was done (understanding behavior) was replaced or confused with something that would induce empathy.

By replacing "correct behavior" by "intended to be correct (ITBC) behavior as our yardstick we have created a kind of an "equal opportunity" institution in the social arena.

It doesn't matter as much if I didn't do the right thing so long as I can convincingly aver that I intended to be correct. The balance of power is moving towards those who can convince better from those who do better.

This would lead to the extinction of those who can't persuade or convince better, for example the peacock mentioned earlier. Read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/06/relation-between-nt-sf-natural.html

Additional Reading
http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/01/survival-of-fittest-non-t.html

Friday, July 6, 2018

Inna Cheithaarai Oruthal

About two weeks back I had occasion to call Chennai Corporation dog catcher squad to take couple of street dogs away from my locality. The dogs were creating a nuisance and also had bitten couple of people.

The dog van came and the catchers had a knotted leash and within a short period of time had caught one dog while it's friend ran away. After half an hour of chasing, the other dog was also caught. The guys told me that in all likelihood the dogs would be given anti rabies injection and then brought right back. This wasn't what I wanted. I arranged to pay them some money in order to ensure that the dogs were not brought back. The guys haggled and then we settled on an amount but I would pay only half the amount immediately and the balance after 10 days if we found that the dogs weren't back.

About 5 days after this incident the canine friends were back. The advance money was written off. And as a lady in Blue Cross advised me we, human beings, had to learn to peacefully coexist with dogs.

Yesterday when I was sitting in the neighborhood park, couple of dogs were walking around sniffing everything and occasionally barking. One of them came to me, sniffed me and licked me.

I thought that it was perhaps the same dog that I had arranged to be sent away. And yet when he licked me it seemed to me that he was telling me that all was forgiven.

I was reminded of the Thirukkural:

Inna cheithaarai oruththal avarnaana

Nannayam cheithu vidal.

Meaning

The best way to treat a person who has harmed you is to embarrass them by being nice to them.

I still am not sure whether the dog had learnt Thirukkural but he sure practiced it. Way better than me definitely.

Addional reading

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Influential Or Desire

A friend of mine told me:

Influential factor (INF) is a necessity for a human being to survive.

I had responded that feelers would need less of it. My friends disagreed with me.

We decided that we would need to come up with the meaning of influential factor.

For a child the factor to attend school on Monday is the fact that Sunday is a holiday. When we grow up the factors have to grow in numbers. But animals needs none.

For feelers to make their life more active they need more such factors, for them to believe that the world around them hugely depends on them.

Essentially I think my friend was saying that INF is like a carrot, something to look forward to.

This was my response:

Feelers do need the influential factor as you say - something to express their feelings on.

Where i still may disagree with you:

The ability of feelers to control or focus those towards influential factors and bring those in to their lives is much higher than what thinkers have. Hence their ability to survive is much higher.

After I wrote the above para, i thought of this example:

I have of late been thinking a lot about evolution. And why females of any species want to have sex or to breed.

What i understand now:

1. The need to have sex in females is instinctive (in humans, females also use S2 (conscious rational thought) while deciding to have sex. For example to get favors, to get pregnant and hence retain the father in their life especially if the father is high quality)

2. Most non human females (NHF) may not know that sex leads to childbirth.

When childbirth happens, NHF take care of the babies and themselves ALL ALONE. In some species, the males help during childbirth and in raising babies but in many species the males leave after making the female pregnant.

When humans evolved, the default status was that males did not help out much with post coitus (posr-sex) work. Maybe a million years ago.

For human females, one of their major needs is to be a mother. I do not know whether this is true of NHF.

Now,

In the last million years,

We have tamed the male species to hang around after childbirth and to actively be involved in raising babies, if not by changing diapers then by earning for the family),which males of most species have little interest in. Read about male Lions or about Russian human males.

Males have been tamed to hang around with a single human female BECAUSE the females need to be a mother and if the male leaves, he has to pay alimony, maintenance etc..

Has the female F survived better? The F succeeded in modifying male behavior to suit their own needs and also get paid for it - since the time we evolved from fish and chimpanzees. The influential factor was at work here, wasn't it?

It also helps them (human females) survive better.

The male also gets a benefit. They get a retirement benefit when the child becomes an adult (if child is male in some cultures, female perhaps in matriarchal cultures). The father, along with Mom, gets taken care of by the child.

Summary:.

Yes F need influential factors. But they also survive better, making good use of the influential factors.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Duty Or Love?

A friend of mine said this:

Do you think that animals take care of their young ones because of affection? They do it as as their duty. When the young ones come in contact with humans, mothers leave them unattended. If mothers loved their babies, would they do such a thing?

My take:
First we need to define the difference between love and duty.

Love is instinctive. Duty is learnt. Who taught the animals their duty to take care of their babies? Isn't the care they show instinctive and hence it's more about loving (or being possessive). Anger, love, possessiveness don't need to be taught to us.
Duty is usually will defined. As in "I will do this this and this under these conditions". Duty does not understand ambiguous conditions. Love isn't an API (Application Programming Interface) that takes well defined input parameters and returns output parameters. What we show in a condition which is completely new to us is more likely to be love than an execution of responsibility or duty.

Friday, November 25, 2016

Why Do Human Mothers Feel So Much Pain During Child Birth

This is another post on the Man and Animal series. I had earlier written about rape in man and animals and the cause of difference between man and animals.

The current one is about the excruciating pain that human mothers feel during child birth. The question is: do all mothers feel roughly the same pain or do human being feel and / or express a lot more.

Here are some nice articles on the subject:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2012/09/animals_giving_birth_dolphins_bear_newborns_easily_but_hyenas_risk_death_.html: The ratio of the size of the new born (say 3kg baby in humans) in relation to the size of the mother (say 60kg) can be compared across species. The higher the ratio the more difficult the child birth can be. Nice analysis isn't it?
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-human-birth-seemingly-more-painful-than-other-mammals: This one again is lovely. Bipeds have a narrower hip and human heads are larger than heads in other species with the result that getting the human baby out is much more arduous.
http://community.babycenter.com/post/a24011163/are_we_the_only_animals_with_painful_births: This brings out the point that expression of pain in other species is likely to result in danger from predators to the mother and new borns and hence the mother does not express the pain. Extrapolate (from my earlier article that surmised that human beings think and emote much more than other species) and we can possibly explain why human being cry out a lot more. A quote from the link: "Animals have limited ways to express their feelings and my guess is that birth is painful for many animals, just like it is for many women. There are some women who have experienced pain free and even orgasmic births, but they are a rarity. The majority of women do experience pain and I think likely so do most animals, they just don't have the ability to express it the way we do."
http://psychologyofwellbeing.com/201005/why-is-childbirth-so-freakin-painful.html: I have included this article because it discusses the issue while providing no answer to the question (had this article been submitted in response to my question, I would have rated it "F").

Additional reading:

Inbreeding: https://davidcavill.wordpress.com/a-beginners-guide-to-inbreeding-and-line-breeding/
Pain in animals (a nice instructive video): https://video.scroll.in/827043/watch-this-is-how-animals-experience-pain-which-they-cannot-always-convey
http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2016/08/difference-between-man-and-other-animals.html

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Rape: Why Are Humans Perpetrating It While Animals Apparently Don't

As I was walking I suddenly had this thought. Why is it that the institution of rape exists only in human beings and rarely / never in animals? If Man evolved from animals then Man has gotten this unique habit recently. Why does he do it - more importantly why did he start raping only after having become Man?

As I was discussing with a friend while walking.. We came up few ideas in relation to the question raised above.

Animals strictly adhere to the "(Female's) No means NO" rule
Perhaps females in the human species have a higher expectation from the males than do females in other lower species with the result that more human males are prevented from mating resulting in "need" for giving an outlet to sexual urge
Animal kingdoms have a (alpha) male mating with multiple females and hence fewer unattached females are available for copulation and rape by males. Among humans, all males are treated as equals and no one man can have more than one woman at a time. Note that rape can be eliminated by removing all females from the scene.
A strict punishment enforced for transgressing males in animals

My friend and I thought that one or more of the points above could have caused human beings to coerce a woman into sex.

At this point in time I am still very confused. My initial belief that rape was a truly human invention is itself wrong. Of course many of the articles say that the term "rape" is inappropriate when used in the context of animals and that the right term is forced copulation. Whatever... A rape by any other name... is still rape.

Additional reading:

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/jkywrmQMip9SG6QVYDoe0H/Rape-in-the-animal-kingdom.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiological_theories_of_rape
I was fairly sure that gang rape was unique to humans until I read this article (read under bottlenose dolphins and also in the para on ducks): http://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/columns/faunaforum/rape-happens-in-animal-kingdom-too-maneka-sanjay-gandhi-animals-1.1435307
Why rape is supposedly high in Sweden - lovely article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden
Nice series of answers to a similar question: https://www.quora.com/Is-there-really-any-such-thing-as-rape-All-animals-mate-without-incident-of-rape-except-human-beings-What-makes-rape-real-with-men-but-not-apes
Another nice article showing how apes do "rape" but is not as bad as human rapes: http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/10/03/228809153/why-gorillas-arent-sexist-and-orangutans-dont-rape
Rapes by animals: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-dope/article/13045860/can-dolphins-rape-humans-when-animals-attack-sexually
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2896628-when-fathers-rape: This book seems to be interesting, unfortunately there is no online version available as of Nov 5, 2016.

Monday, September 19, 2016

Whales - Math Puzzles

Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale:

Males typically mate with multiple females every year, but females only mate every two to three years

How is that possible? If there are 100 males and 100 females and let's say 40 of the males mate each year (other 60 are either too old or too young or sick or gay or weird ones that mate with sharks).

Each of the 40 males mates with 2 or more females from among the same pack of 40 females (rest 60 females which again will have some that are old too old, too young etc).

In this scenario, how can we have females that mate only every 2 or 3 years? This can happen if few females mate with most of the males but then they abstain for the next couple of years.

Is there any other interpretation possible?

Monday, March 21, 2016

How Do Birds And Animals Know What Food Is Good For Them?

This is a question I pondered. The other day I saw a crow trying to drink from a pool of fresh cow urine. It took a sip, probably didn't find the taste good and flew away.

How do snails or dogs or birds know what is good or what is poisonous and to be avoided?

Then I read this article. In 30 years, storks in Portugal had changed their migrating behavior and their food habits as well.

I guess the answer is partly intuition coming from memories from across generations which they carry in their genes / DNA and just plain experimenting as the storks must have done.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Dog Personality Traits

I met a couple of dogs recently. I didn't know that dogs have diverse personalities as we humans do. I have jotted down the differences. All of these were observed by me except crying and getting wet in rain (about which I was informed).

*********************************************************************

Traits	Dog A	Dog B
Wagging Tail	Will wag often.	Of course capable of wagging tail but not inclined to wagging often.

Anger	Capable of immense anger. Will even bite close people if provoked.	Generally quiet.

Needs affection	Loves to be stroked. Loves to play with family and to be allowed inside the house. Hates to be asked to go out of the house. Hates it when family leaves him (when they have to go outside). Insists on respect and affection. Will bare his teeth if angered / provoked.	Prefers to be alone. Not keen about getting inside house. Doesn't mind if asked to go out of the house into the garden. Not particular / doesn't care as much about respect and affection.

Speed	Slower, normal body structure and height.	Faster, thinner and taller.

Getting wet in rain	Hates to get wet in rain.	No problem with getting wet.

Crying	Fairly predictable. Certain things are unacceptable and he will howl.	Howls more when dog A howls.
Strangers	Doesn't tolerate strangers.	Tolerant of strangers


Eating	Will hide bone somewhere and eat it over a long period of time		Will eat bone immediately.

*********************************************************************

Dog A comes across as mature, capable of displaying a range of emotions while dog B comes across as more innocent, immature. Dog A is more martian, Dog B is saturnine. Being detached is also perhaps seen by us as being immature.

Interesting, no?

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Friday, June 3, 2022

Friday, May 27, 2022

Saturday, May 21, 2022

Saturday, July 17, 2021