however, when storms blow and rains soak their slumbers, they will move to wooded areas where they can sleep protected from the wind and stay relatively dry. In summer, the bare earth is sufficient as a place to lay their head, because at that time of year wild boar are usually too warm anyway. In winter, however, they plan their nightly repose especially carefully. A snug little nest under a thick windbreak of blackberry bushes with only two or three tunnel-like entrances is ideal. They bring in dried grass and leaves, moss, and other soft materials, which they pile up carefully to make a cozy bed.
Did I say “nightly repose”? Although they would probably love to sleep as we do when we lie dreaming in our beds, these smart animals have adjusted their circadian rhythms. Every year in Germany, hunters shoot as many as 650,000 wild boar,20 and to do that they need daylight. In order to avoid their pursuers, the boar go about their business under the cover of darkness. Normally, that would be protection enough, because in Germany it is illegal to shoot animals after dark; however, an exception has been made for wild boar to try to control their burgeoning populations. Because night-vision devices are still prohibited, hunters have to wait for a full moon and clear skies so they can see more than just vague shadows in woodland clearings. They attract the wild boar with small amounts of feed corn, which the boar are particularly partial to. The goal: dispatch the boar with a deadly shot while they are feeding. But it’s not that simple to outwit the canny animals, which simply put off feeding until the wee hours of the morning. But the hunting industry has a solution at the ready for this, as well: game clocks. These are clocks that stop when they are disturbed. When hunters put these clocks in among the corn, they show the time when the wild boar come to feed. Now hunters can climb up into their blinds at just this time, and they don’t have long to wait until their prey appear.
In the final tally, however, it is the wild boar that seem to have come out ahead. In some cases, they rely on the bait as their main source of food, and they multiply quickly despite the hunting pressure—so much so that reducing populations has become a lost cause in many places. In the US, feral hogs are generally diurnal if left undisturbed, but they react like their European counterparts and intensive human activity or hunting during the day can drive them to be active at night.
There have been many particularly touching discoveries made about domestic pigs, if only because a number of research facilities are working to improve factory farming. When the newspaper Die Welt asked Professor Johannes Baumgartner at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna if there had been any notable characters among the pigs he had studied, he told them about one old sow. Over the course of her life, she gave birth to 160 piglets. She taught all of them how to build a nest out of straw, and when her daughters grew up, the old sow assumed the role of midwife and helped them prepare for the births of their own babies.21
The question then becomes, if researchers know so much about the intelligence of pigs, why isn’t the image of the smart pig publicized more? I suspect it has to do with eating pork. If people knew what kind of an animal they had on their plate, many would completely lose their appetite. We already know this from primates: could any of us eat an ape?
6
GRATITUDE
IT SHOULD BE clear by now that whether they are driven by their circumstances or our desires, whether they want to or not, animals love people (and, of course, the reverse is true). I consider gratitude to be a closely related emotion. And animals can certainly feel gratitude, as well. Owners of dogs with checkered pasts that have been welcomed into families later in life are particularly well placed to confirm this.
Our cocker spaniel, Barry, didn’t come to us until he was nine years old. Actually, after the death of our Münsterländer, Maxi, we wanted to draw the dog chapter of our lives to a close. Or so we thought. Despite the fact that my wife, Miriam, was absolutely opposed to a new family member, our daughter set out to convince us otherwise. She didn’t get much resistance from me, because I couldn’t really imagine life without a dog. When my daughter accompanied me to a fall market at a nearby country store, both of us were aware of what might happen. The Euskirchen animal shelter was going to have a parade of its guests, hoping to find homes for them that day. My daughter and I were hugely disappointed when the only animals on display were rabbits, because we already had plenty of those at home. After waiting around the market all day, making multiple tours of the stalls, here we were, confronted with this—no dogs. Right at the very end, there was an announcement that a future occupant was going to be shown by one of its former owners before being delivered to the shelter: Barry. Our hearts beat faster. The dog was apparently extremely good natured, a model passenger in the car, and he was neutered. Perfect! We leapt up from the bench and stepped forward. A short test walk, a handshake to seal the agreement for three days’ probation, and we took off right away with the dog in the car, headed for Hümmel.
The three-day trial was important, because Miriam didn’t suspect anything yet. She came back late that night after an engagement. She was taking her coat off, when my daughter asked: “Do you notice anything different?” My wife looked around and shook her head. “Then take a look down at your feet,” I prompted. And in that instant, it happened. Barry looked up at her, wagging his tail, and my wife took him into her heart right then and there for the rest of his life. And the dog was grateful—grateful that his long and arduous journey had finally ended. His owner, an old lady suffering from dementia, had had to give him up. He’d gone through two different families, and now he had found his forever home with us. It’s true that for the rest of his life, he worried that there might be yet another handover, but other than that Barry was always happy and friendly. He was grateful. It was as simple as that—or was it?
After all, how are you supposed to measure gratitude or—what’s almost as difficult—to define it? If you check on the web, you’ll find a lot of discussion but nothing definitive. Some animal lovers think of gratitude as their due, a response many owners expect from their animals in return for the care they give them. I wouldn’t even bother to search for this kind of gratitude in animals, for it would merely be an expression of subservience smacking of servility. Essentially, and this is in reference to people, what emerges from most definitions is that gratitude is a positive emotion arising from an enjoyable experience caused by someone or something else. In order to be grateful, you need to be able to recognize that someone (or life) has done you a good turn.
The Roman politician and philosopher Cicero considered gratitude to be the greatest of all virtues, and he thought dogs were capable of feeling it. But now it gets tricky. How can I know whether an animal recognizes who or what has caused its enjoyable experience? In contrast to the joy itself (which is easy to recognize in a dog), there’s also the question of whether the dog gives any thought to the cause of its joy. It’s relatively simple to answer this question. There’s food, for starters. The dog is happy about its meal and knows exactly who filled its bowl. In fact, dogs often encourage their owner to repeat the process. But is this really gratitude? You could just as easily call it begging. Doesn’t true gratitude include a mindset, a way of looking at life? An ability to celebrate small pleasures without constantly craving more? Seen from this perspective, gratitude is when joy and contentment about circumstances that are not of your own making coincide. Unfortunately, this kind of gratitude cannot yet be proven in animals—we can do no more than speculate about their inner outlook on life. In Barry’s case, at least, my family and I are certain that he was both happy and content to have found his final home with us, even if we don’t have any scientific proof.
But how about other examples in the animal world? Might they shed more light on the issue? There is the story of a humpback whale in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico that put on an hour-long display of breaching and flipper flapping after a man called Michael Fishbach spent hours cutting off a fishing net in which it had been hopelessly entangled. When Fishbach encountered the whale, it looked as though it would not be able to survive for much longer. Fishbach immediately entered the water armed with just a small knife. As soon as the whale was free, it put on a glorious acrobatic
