Unsung Hero

You won’t get nothing in return.
You won’t be richer.
You won’t appear on TV.
Still Anonymous.
And not a bit more famous.
What you’ll receive are: emotions,
You’ll witness happiness,
Reach a deeper understanding,
Feel the love.
Receive what money can’t buy:
A world made more beautiful.
And in your life?
What is it that you desire most?

To This Day

By Shane Koyczan

The Power Of Your Words

And if you can't see anything beautiful about yourself...
Get a better mirror.
Look a little closer.
Stare a little longer.

Dolphins Form Life Raft To Help Dying Friend

Everybody's favourite cetacean just got a little more lovable. For the first time, dolphins have been spotted teaming up to try to rescue an injured group member. The act does not necessarily mean dolphins are selfless or can empathise with the pain of their kin, however.

Kyum Park of the Cetacean Research Institute in Ulsan, South Korea, and colleagues were surveying cetaceans in the Sea of Japan in June 2008. They spent a day following a group of about 400 long-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus capensis).

In the late morning they noticed that about 12 dolphins were swimming very close together. One female was in difficulties: it was wriggling and tipping from side to side, sometimes turning upside-down. Its pectoral flippers seemed to be paralysed.

Life Raft

The other dolphins crowded around it, often diving beneath it and supporting it from below. After about 30 minutes, the dolphins formed into an impromptu raft: they swam side by side with the injured female on their backs. By keeping the injured female above water, they may have helped it to breathe, avoiding drowning (see video, above).

After another few minutes some of the helper dolphins left. The injured dolphin soon dropped into a vertical position. The remaining helpers appeared to try and prop it up, possibly to keep its head above the surface, but it soon stopped breathing, say the researchers. Five dolphins stayed with it and continued touching its body, until it sank out of sight.

"It does look like quite a sophisticated way of keeping the companion up in the water," says Karen McComb at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. Such helping behaviours are only seen in intelligent, long-lived socialanimals. In most species, injured animals are quickly left behind.

For The Love Of Pod

While it may seem selfless to help an injured fellow, McComb says the helper dolphins might get some benefit. Rescuing the struggling dolphin could help maintain their group, and thus control of their territory. Furthermore, if the group contains close relatives, protecting those relatives helps the dolphins preserve their shared genes.

The simple act of working together could also bond the group more strongly. "It makes a lot of sense in a highly intelligent and social animal for there to be support of an injured animal," McComb says.

The act of helping also seems to suggest that the dolphins understand when others are suffering, and can even empathise: that is, imagine themselves in the place of the suffering dolphin. But while this is possible, McComb says the helping behaviour could evolve without the need for empathy.

There have been reports of single dolphins helping others, generally mothers helping their calves, but no cases of groups of dolphins working together to help another. Dolphins have also been seen interacting with the corpses of dead dolphins, which some researchers interpret as a form of mourning.

Via: "New Scientist"

Animals Are Moral Creatures

The book, "Can Animals Be Moral?" (Oxford University Press, October 2012), suggests social mammals such as rats, dogs and chimpanzees can choose to be good or bad. And because they have morality, we have moral obligations to them, said author Mark Rowlands, a University of Miami philosopher.

"Animals are owed a certain kind of respect that they wouldn't be owed if they couldn't act morally," Rowlands.

Some research suggests animals have a sense of outrage when social codes are violated.Chimpanzees may punish other chimps for violating certain rules of the social order, said Marc Bekoff, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and co-author of "Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals" (University Of Chicago Press, 2012).

Male bluebirds that catch their female partners stepping out may beat the female, said Hal Herzog, a psychologist at Western Carolina University who studies how humans think about animals.

And there are many examples of animals demonstrating ostensibly compassionate or empathetic behaviors toward other animals, including humans. 

In one experiment, hungry rhesus monkeys refused to electrically shock their fellow monkeys, even when it meant getting food for themselves. 

In another study, a female gorilla named Binti Jua rescued an unconscious 3-year-old (human) boy who had fallen into her enclosure at the Brookline Zoo in Illinois, protecting the child from other gorillas and even calling for human help. 

And when a car hit and injured a dog on a busy Chilean freeway several years ago, its canine compatriot dodged traffic, risking its life to drag the unconscious dog to safety.

All those examples suggest that animals have some sense of right and wrong, Rowlands said.

"I think what's at the heart of following morality is the emotions," Rowlands said. "Evidence suggests that animals can act on those sorts of emotions."

If one accepts that animals have moral compasses, Rowlands argues, we have the responsibility to treat them with respect, Rowlands said.

Via: "Live Science"

Compassion's Song

by Raymond A. Klesc

How does one measure compassion's pet;
When we casually stand by man's decent.

"Tis not us," reassuring glances met,
Of others ignored compassion's lament.

We leave to others what should be our charge,
But no one answers the clarion call.

Who acts, then, during times slow passing barge,
If silent compassion is man's downfall.

We leave it to God and his divine will
And cower from obligations unfound.

We on earth must recognize that we still
Have duties to compassion's solid ground.

Take heed friend! Live compassion's daily song,
Be kind to other's, rewards can be long.