At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man’s power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes.

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Ackerman: Anthropomorphism is a real sticking point in the field. I think that’s changing because a lot of behaviors in birds are in fact similar to human behaviors. But any scientist will tell you it’s not easy to probe the mind of another animal, especially when they have kinds of intelligence that differ from our own. We know how to measure things that we’re good at, like solving physical problems. Scientists may give a bird food in a container that it has to figure out how to open in order to eat. The scientists observe how long it takes the bird to solve the problem and whether it’s showing “behavioral flexibility.” In other words: Can it shift its strategies? Can it innovate when confronted with new challenges? That’s pretty easy for us to measure, but birds also have social intelligence, musical intelligence, and other kinds of intelligence that are harder to measure. For example, we’re still trying to figure out how birds know where they’re going. Humans don’t have the innate capacity to navigate using the earth’s magnetic fields and other information sources.

I’m still learning how dogged people can be in denial, even when their freedom or their lives are at stake.

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.

Rachel Carson