“You can’t know what your dog is thinking — except when you can. You and your dog both know if you’re about to go for a walk or get into the car; and when you’re preparing to give them some leftovers, you both understand it. True, most of the time…

“What is cultural becomes obvious if not everyone does it. Everyone eats; eating isn’t culture. Not everyone eats with chopsticks; chopsticks are part of culture. All chimpanzees climb trees; that’s not cultural. Some chimpanzee populations crack nuts with hammer stones and anvils, but not every population that lives where there are nuts cracks them. It’s cultural. Group-to-group variations in customs, traditions, practices, and tools — such differences show what is cultural.” — Carl Safina, in Becoming Wild; How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace

“The howling fills the valley, seeming to my human brain solemn and yearning as a sacred chant in a cathedral. It reaches right into me. In hear affirmation and mournfulness. But how do they mean it and what do they hear? Rallying cry? Emotional release? A warning? Whatever they are saying and however wolves hear it, the impression on me is of some ancient story, wordless as a dream at dawn.” — Carl Safina in Beyond Words; What Wolves and Dogs Think and Feel

“Like flying flames of red and yellow and blue, they transited overhead. From unbroken forest they flew over the wide river, to vast continuing forest rising from the far bank. They are huge birds, improbably beautiful, made by and for a world that, itself, is almost impossibly beautiful. What most…

“Many creatures blow us away at sight, hearing, smell, response time, diving and flying capacities, sonar abilities, migratory and homing abilities (even under the sea, sensing Earth’s magnetic field). Various abilities of many other animals enormously exceed ours. Many are super-hunters. Extreme athletes. (Humans are best at running on two legs — if you exclude ostriches.) Different brains emphasize different abilities, enabling different living beings to excel at exploiting different circumstances.

“Even Chula — smart as she is — cannot talk. Communicate, yes. But talk, no. ‘When we ask things of animals, they often understand us,’ animal expert Elizabeth Marshall Thomas wrote. ‘When they ask things of us, we are often baffled.’ So we try to be better at understanding…. Shared…