We like to think that we are unique. That all sheep think alike and cows have no personality. We think we are the only people who dream of reaching the stars and falling in love. But we think the same way as cockroaches and mice, cats and camels and have personalities that resemble animals. 

Just as habitats are shaped by the necessity of the food web – too many predators and they will wreak havoc; too many prey creatures and there will be overpopulation and a collapse of the jungle – people also modulate their behaviour to keep the human jungle alive and stable. The ratio between predators and prey in animals mirrors the ratio in our own society. People with large animal-personalities cannot be supported in large numbers as their bulky personalities put a stress on the social environment, so smaller human-personalities like mice, otters, beavers, and sheep tend to dominate the concrete jungle. It is when the ratio goes out of sync that crime, starvation, dictatorships, disease and wars occur.

All behaviour, whether animal or human, revolves round the four Fs: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing and Sex.

Feeding: All animals and humans work towards being fed and having the security of being fed regularly. This translates into careers, striving for mates and homes etc. The type of animal personality that a human has, leads him into his career. Bird personalities prefer jobs that provide a great deal of freedom, while sheep personalities flourish under the direction of a strong dog personality. Canine personalities instinctively work well with others while bear personas chafe under the direction of authority.

Fighting: Means the way in which a person controls their environment. Carnivorous personalities are assertive and adventurous, while herbivorous personalities tend to be passive and cautious. This does not mean that a vegetarian cannot have a carnivorous personality. In fact they often do.

Fleeing: This is how people protect themselves from each other. Herd animal personalities find refuge in the company of family; wolves prefer tightly knit social groups, and mice personalities keep low profiles.

Sex: Describes the ways we seek mates. From the brutal strength display of the wild elk to the seductive display of peacocks, all creatures strive to exert control over their reproductive choices. An animal's mating habits also means how someone conducts their sexual relationships. Some animal species are monogamous while others have a variety of mates. Some (beaver) personalities mate for life, while tiger personalities are solitary and rarely monogamous. From the subtle and coy techniques of the rabbit personality to the aggressive displays of the lion, every species employs a unique mating strategy. Young girls walk by pretending not to notice the watching boys displaying their own mating behaviour, some of whom adopt masculine stances lounging around with their legs apart, or calling aggressively to the females, while others feign disinterest and use subtle body language to stake their claims. All animals do the same.

People change their personalities to adapt to situations for survival. A prickly warthog person would be in danger in a prison full of crocodiles and lions so he would adapt to the more gregarious personality of a herbivore, he could seek the protection of the herd to survive.

We all do the same thing. Aging silverback gorillas can no longer compete physically or sexually with the upcoming group of younger males, so in a biological panic, their personalities trigger them to make one last fling. In humans, this manifests itself when middle-aged men suddenly feel the urge to display their wealth, begin workout routines and ignore their wives.

Friendships often develop between prey and predator types. The meek mouse might even strike up a friendship with a powerful lion, since lions are disinclined to waste energy chasing elusive, low-calorie prey. These friendships can be quite enduring. In exchange for companionship and loyalty, the predator provides resources and protection for the rabbit. But if the pairing is wrong – a cat and a fox for instance, then it does not work. A marriage between a cat and a mouse would be very bumpy. 

Research printed in the New Scientists has gone one step further. Not only do we have the same primal instincts as animals but they have abilities that have hitherto been considered only belonging to humans.

1. Culture according to the article Culture shock (24 March 2001).

Art, theatre, literature, music, religion, architecture and cuisine - these are the things we generally associate with culture. But culture basically just means a particular group's characteristic ways of living, learned from one another and passed down the generations,. Every monkey species undoubtedly has practices that are unique to groups, such as a certain way of greeting each other or obtaining food. So do elephants and turtles and whales.

In fact, convincing examples of animal cultures are found in cetaceans. Killer whales, for example, fall into two distinct groups, residents and transients. Although both live in the same waters and interbreed, they have very different social structures and lifestyles, distinct ways of communicating, different tastes in food and characteristic hunting techniques - all of which parents teach to offspring.

2. Mind reading according to Liar! Liar! (14 February 1998).

Perhaps the surest sign that an individual has insight into the mind of another is the ability to deceive. To outwit someone you must understand their desires, intentions and motives - exactly the same ability that underpins the "theory of mind". This ability to attribute mental states to others was once thought unique to humans, emerging around the fifth year of life. Experiments in the 1990s show that apes and monkeys understand deception. So do butterflies and caterpillars.

3. Tool use according to the article Look, no hands (17 August 2002).

Chimpanzees use rocks to crack nuts, others fish for termites with blades of grass and gorillas gauge the depth of water with the equivalent of a dipstick. The smartest is the New Caledonian crow. To extract tasty insects from crevices, they craft a selection of hooks and long, barbed tapers called stepped-cut tools, made by intricately cutting a pandanus leaf with their beaks. What's more, experiments in the lab suggest that they understand the function of tools and deploy creativity and planning to construct them.

4. Morality according to the article Virtuous nature (13 July 2002).

A classic study in 1964 found that hungry rhesus monkeys would not take food they had been offered if doing so meant that another monkey received an electric shock. The same is true of rats. Does this indicate nascent morality? Scientists now have come to the conclusion that humans are not the only moral species. Morality is common in social mammals and that during play they learn the rights and wrongs of social interaction, the "moral norms that can then be extended to other situations such as sharing food, defending resources, grooming and giving care".

5. Emotions: according to the  article Do animals have emotions? (23 May 2007)

Emotions allow us to bond with others, regulate our social interactions and make it possible to behave flexibly in different situations. We are not the only animals that need to do these things, so why should we be the only ones with emotions?

Elephants caring for a crippled herd member seem to show empathy. A funeral ritual performed by magpies shows grief. Rival animals fight.  Divers who freed a humpback whale caught in a crab line describe its reaction as one of gratitude. Then there's the excited dance chimps perform when faced with a waterfall. It is obvious to all that all animals have the same emotions as humans.

6. Personality: Does one dog have the same personality as another? They do not. Neither do sheep or cows. Nor do tigers. Not even hens. In humans we call the difference in degrees of boldness or caution as personality traits. From cowardly spiders and reckless salamanders to aggressive songbirds and fearless fish, we discover that no two are alike. I am sure that transparent jellyfish and oysters also differ in their attitudes towards the world.

So how are we different?

Maneka Gandhi

To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.peopleforanimalsindia.org

If there is a Playroom for the Creation of Everything, it has to be inhabited by strange lunatic children with millions and millions of chemistry vials. Species, colours, sexes (one species has 16 sexes!) behaviour – millions of variations just on this planet. Imagine the wonders of the entire universe. What fun if, instead of being reborn just on Earth (even though it would take a thousand lifetimes to see all her wonders), one could be born on a different world each time. Or develop the ability, as so many of our Gurus have done, to travel between time and space.

Imagine any kind of possible variation in living beings and it already exists: in lizards / alligators when eggs are buried in cool sand, you get girls. Warm sand gets boys. In turtles it is the other way round. However, in snapping turtles and crocodiles, cool or hot sand hatches girls, warm sand hatches boys. Three variations, and which are bizarre. How can temperature affect the genes?

But sex selection gets even more curious. The Stictococcus sjoestedti is an insect that sucks the sap from cocoa trees. When she lays her eggs, those affected by a fungus become girls, the uninfected become boys.

The female Armadillo fuses egg with sperm, as do all mammals. But then the egg splits into four and four identical children of the same sex are born each time.

Honeybee females can either be sterile females or fertile queens – but it depends on the food they are fed when they are larva!

How about Greenspoon worms.  Their sex is determined by society! When the larva hatches from the egg it has no sex at all.  That will depend on whom the larva meets. If the larva encounters a female worm, it becomes male. If, after three weeks it has not met a female, it becomes a female itself. The female then grows 200,000 bigger than the male.  The male sits on the nose of the female where she inhales him into her reproductive tract. He now sits there in a little room (literally called androecium, or Little Man’s Room)  and fertilizes passing eggs for the rest of his life !

The Capella worm males look for females. But if they do not find them within a specific time, they turn into hermaphrodites. In the Slipper Limpet family – a sea creature which lives with oysters – everyone is born male. But when a fellow finds himself alone, he becomes a female and starts attracting mates. As the males accumulate around, and on top of the female, many of the males who cannot reach her become female themselves.

How about the marine worm Oohryotrocha puerilis.  If two females meet, the smaller one becomes a male. He then grows larger than the female. But as soon as he grows larger, both individuals change sexes again and the female becomes the male and starts growing larger. Then they change again and so on. When they have both grown to the sizes they want and have both been together as a happy couple for some time, they both become hermaphrodites.

Does it take a long time for creatures to become male or female? Apparently not. The black hamlet fish, which lives in our waters, swims along the edge of a coral reef and finds a mate. The couple take turns to become male or female as they play – changing sexes every time the female lays her eggs.

How about numbers and ratios? The female mite, who lives in the quills of the sparrow, lays exactly 12 eggs – of which only one is male. Nasonia vitripennis, the tiny wasp that lays its eggs in the blowfly baby, can decide whether to have boys or girls by fertilizing the eggs.  She keeps the male sperm in her body and releases it on the exact number she wants.  Fertlized – females; Unfertilized - males.

The Button Beetle lives in the hollows of date stones. If the female has failed to find a mate she lays unfertilized eggs which turn into males. She then mates with the first to hatch and then lays a large brood of only daughters.

The bacteria Escherichia coli, better known as E. Coli, go one better. They have separated reproduction and sex.  To reproduce they simply divide (clone) themselves into two identical germs. But they have sex with each other to exchange genes – and when they are in the mood for it, the way humans do.

Snails are hermaphrodites with both male and female organs. When they mate, each snail will fertilize the other and they will both have children.

Clownfish live in schools. All of them are born male. But the dominant member of the group will become female and mate with the lower members of the group. If she dies, the next member of the hierarchy will start changing in a few hours. It is exactly the opposite in Blue Headed Wrasse who are born female and whose group leader becomes male.

The Stoplight Parrotfish changes from female when young to male when old, but not just its internal organs, but its colours which go from marbled black, white and red to beautiful greens and yellows.

The Bdelloid Rotifers, pink slender transparent insects found in moss, and among the most common insects, stopped producing males many million years ago. An all female species, they simply clone themselves to reproduce. (If we could do that, we would also say goodbye to most crime, wars, corruption and bad governance and bring back a time when gentleness, peace, food, water and children were the centres of existence)

The human cannot naturally control the number, sex or even timing of his / her children.  Instead of discovering and enjoying this wonderful world of magic, we are now in the last phases of destroying it. I wonder if the Mad Scientists of Universal Creation had meant this to happen.

Maneka Gandhi

To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.peopleforanimalsindia.org

How many “scientists” in the world have bothered to study animal language? The only time they get excited is when the animal learns human language. Obviously, all animals have languages and it is sad that we cannot – or will not – try to understand them. Think how exciting it would be to have a dictionary and tapes of Chickenspeak or Pigspeak; How many new careers it would create in animal psychology. How much easier it would make even animal farming or the veterinary practice. Imagine how much easier it would be to live with a dog or cat if you could understand them – instead of expecting them to understand you. Since you cannot understand the animals it makes life difficult for him / her. There are so many things a dog would like to tell you about himself:

1. I really am speaking to you. If you don’t understand me, just look at my body language. My tail and mouth will tell you everything you need to know. Down tail:  I’m sad, scared, unhappy and hurting. Up tail: I’m confident, happy. Stiff straight tail: I don’t like you just now. Tail going round and round: I’m very excited and I am probably going to run after that moving object. Mouth open and tongue hanging out: unhappy, tired, thirsty. Upper lip up and teeth showing: very angry and threatened.

I am going to do things that you will get angry at: I am going to eat one shoe and run off with one sock. I am going to jump on your bed and tear the pillow. If you leave me alone all the time I am going to do things to tell you I am angry – and this involves nasty things like urinating and pooing on your carpet. If you chuck me out of the room, I will scratch the door. Sometimes I do things because I want your attention. Sometimes I do them because it seemed a good idea at the time – after all I need to play and you haven’t got anything for me to play with or anyone to play with me. So, try to take the temptation out of the way. Just as you baby-proof a house, doggie-proof it. Don't give me stuffed toys and then expect me to know the difference between them and a cushion. Doesn’t play pull-games with me and then expect me not to pull your clothes. How should I know the difference?

As a puppy I am a baby, I can’t control my muscles any more than a baby can. So please train me gently and happily. Don’t hit me if I don’t have bladder control. I’m trying my best but it will take six months. Until then, I'll try my best. Take me out as much as you can, but set up special spots for me when you're gone.

You can be angry at the behaviour; that's natural but if you are mean to me I will never know how to control it. If you punish me by ignoring me, remember you are my WHOLE world. You go to work, and you have friends. You have outside interests. I have you. That's it. So if you are angry, then leave the room, that's what I will remember.

Do not tie me up or shut me in rooms. I get frantic, insecure, upset. I have no one in the world. I have so much energy and if I am tied up the whole day I get angry. Then when you untie me, I am going to bite someone or run about madly with happiness or break something deliberately to annoy you. Then you will tie me up again. If you keep doing that to me, my behaviour will become worse and worse because I feel unloved. Then you will throw me out and I will die. So don’t do it. No matter how small your house, keep me underneath of a bed or a table and I will stay there. But don’t tie me up – especially not at the gate. For amusement or to keep myself busy I will bark at passersby, curl my lips, look ferocious, and go crazy. And everyone will complain about me.

I don’t like baths (do use special shampoo, and not anything you have lying around in the house) but I like being brushed with a soft brush. Look at my teeth and see if they are getting black – that means trouble for me but if you don’t notice, it will be too late and then I will be stuck with a permanent toothache and gum disease.  If you see me running round trying to catch my tail or backside, I probably have fleas and these can drive me mad. Check my paws for ticks because if you don’t I’ll tear them off and hurt myself. I am your baby – check me everyday to see if I am OK because, like a baby, I can’t tell you what’s wrong. If I won’t eat and my tail droops – I’m sick.

I feel safe with getting the food everyday at the same time and place (remember this because I know when you are going to feed me to the exact minute and my food juices start acting up ten minutes before). But, please give me well balanced meals – if you just feed me meat, and low grade mince or leftover rubbish or just dried commercial food, I will get very sick soon. I need vegetables, grain, vitamins and minerals. If I start getting sick because I am badly fed I will become very snappy and then you will be mean. So think of my food. I may need a little more of one thing and less of another. I am dependant on you so keep me healthy.

I am genetically structured to please you. So I have all your bad habits. I will eat all the rubbish you eat – popcorn, chocolates, bread, sweets, cookies. Don't feed me everything and anything just because I look like I want it. I don't want to be on one of those TV talk shows having to be escorted in a wheelchair because I'm too fat to walk.  Chocolate is a big no – it can kill me.

If I have a breed, then get a book and read about me. The more you know about me, the better we'll get along.

I will grow up. You may have found me when I was tiny and fluffy but I will grow and get less cute. Please don’t throw me out just because I am grown up now and need more space. I am not a thing – I am you, in another form.

I get old at a faster rate than you do. I will be slow. I will have accidents. Think of how you will want your relatives to treat you when you age. Do you want to hear: "What's wrong with you?" or "Hurry up!" I want to please you, but my body may not be willing. Don’t ignore me, give me softer food and a softer bed. Don’t get a new puppy. Love me more because I am as scared as you of growing old. Remember, it will happen to you, too. And who do you think would sit patiently by your side all night, if need be? Your dog.

Maneka Gandhi

To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.peopleforanimalsindia.org

If it is one book that should be read for knowledge of the other beings on this planet and how amazingly similar they are to humans, it is Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson. It was sent to me by a professor from Canada. The book is delicious, warm, funny and informative. I have never recommended a book as highly as I do this one.

Here are some things I learn from it about our fascinating world.

Are human males the only ones that fight over their girls? It seems that most species have females who flirt, males who fight. But do girls like fighting? Are they really keen on the Salman Khan type of personality who thinks with his fists and feet and attracts all the women after he finishes pulverizing any rival males? Do they actually encourage fights in order to watch the action? I’m afraid so.

Take a termite who lives in rotting wood: males and females live as couples in a nest. But if the female gets bored she will invite a new male into the nest and the two males will obviously start fighting. In between the fighting bouts, the female will first caress one then the other, until the loser either dies or slinks away.

Female cheetahs do not encourage males fighting, but it has a powerful effect on them to watch the fight: they come into heat almost immediately in order to mate with the winner.

If a young bull elephant tries to mate a female, she will actually bellow for older bulls to come and drive away the young one so that she can watch a good fight.

Komodo dragons, who are the largest lizards, fight over females by trying to catch each other’s hind limbs, with the loser eventually being pinned to the ground. These males vomit or defecate on each other. The winner of the fight flicks his long tongue at the watching female to get her to come with him – and she does.

Elephant seals fight so viciously over their women that each surviving male carries scars. Bleeding and wounded, they mate their ladies after the fight is over. One would think that the female would feel sorry for him. But should a male elephant seal try and mate with the lady he fancies, she makes such a noise that every other male comes running and the fights start.

Once married, is the female faithful to her mate? The law of nature is generally thought that males are promiscuous and females chaste? Unfortunately that is as much of a myth in the animal kingdom as it is in the human one. Given half a chance the female will philander as well.

Splendid Fairy Wren couple live together and rear children together but the wife has a lover as well as the husband. The Idaho Ground Squirrel male knows his wife will stray given an opportunity, so he follows her everywhere and picks fights with any male who looks her way. The Blue Milkweed beetle husband in fact rides on his wife’s back so that he can stop her from gallivanting.

Black-capped chickadees live in flocks where everyone is ranked. Every bird knows its position relative to its fellows, as well as the ranking of the other birds. Though the pairs are supposed to be monogamous, there is infidelity. On occasion, a female mated to a low-ranking male will leave the nest and sneak into the territory of a higher-ranking male nearby. She is not moving randomly, but very selectively - mating with a bird ranked above her own mate.

Female barn swallows are only adulterous when they meet a male who has a longer tail than her mate. Females mated to very short-tailed males engage in these extra-marital affairs the most. The short-tailed husband retaliates by attempting to have affairs himself but he is rarely successful. He punishes his cheating wife by reducing his attention to her babies.

Male Red Back Salamanders look for females who will be true to them. They shy away from the openly flirtatious. However, like all plans of mice and men, once he finds a shy homely virgin and the two form a pair, the female, who likes hunky males, flirts with others secretly. When she returns to her mate, he can sense if his partner has associated with another male by smelling the other male on her skin. Punishment takes the form of increased use of threat postures and even nipping.

Black Vulture pairs are believed to mate for life, remaining together year-round. The male is strictly monogamous but some wives tend to stray. Woe be to her if she is seen with her lover.  For black vultures, enforcing monogamy is a family affair: If caught having sex with a bird other than its partner, the vulture gets harassed by not only its mate, but by other vultures in the area.

A scientific study has found that female zebra finches who cheat on their husbands are those who have seen their fathers cheat on their mothers!

What fun the world is. And how sad that we have reduced it to such desperation that each species is simply looking to survive and find food and water, rather than enjoying the gifts of the planet.

Maneka Gandhi

To join the animal welfare movement contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., www.peopleforanimalsindia.org