by Christyl Rivers

Created on: July 29, 2010   Last Updated: September 04, 2010

We can learn love and humanity if we open our hearts to animals.  Also, animals teach everything, if we are willing to learn.  Let's start at A, B, and C.

Astronomy: Animals use the sun, moon, stars and light sources to guide migrations, to follow food sources, to navigate for pollination. 

Biology: Biological diversity is the foundation for life on earth, everything ever learned from Neolithic times to I-pod evolution is based on mimetic and mimicry of all other living things.  Birds gave us song and dance, flight and fancy, and more.

Chemistry:  What animals teach with their pheromones and olfactory abilities has led to entire industries of medicine, agriculture, and more.  Let's not forget what lab animals sacrifice to teach us what is lethal and what is safe in our detergents, cosmetics, and food.

Democracy, Disability, Domesticity: Animals showed humans how being alpha can mean leadership, but rarely requires killing one another. For people with any disability, animals are both companions, and also life savers.  Domestication gave us animals that are companions, farm workers, food, and entertainment, raw materials such as leather and wool, and much, much more; A-Z.

Oh wait, my cats, Melanie and Matt, are telling me this article is not supposed to be a literal list of the billions of things animals teach us, but a fluff piece on how cute and cuddly creatures warm our hearts and teach us love.  Well then, animals have so MUCH more to teach us about the meaning of life!   They know when we hurt, when we are sick.

Cats sense when an illness is quite serious, and some comfort by never leaving the bedside of those who may otherwise die alone.  Pets can keep one who is in the depths of despair from suicide, or slow self destruction.  They help rehabilitate prisoners thought to be lost causes.  Their tales of rescue alerting us of burning homes, or potential gas leaks is legendary.  There are thousands of other things they provide as well.

 Animals, like we once were in the Garden of Eden, are without deception and guile.  They lack the developed neo cortex that allows us to abstract thoughts into language. Language allows us to record memory in such a way that we can, and do spend much of our waking time in thought as opposed to being attune to what senses could tell us.  We create limits on what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and so on, because we program preferences about

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