Re “What I Learned Tickling Apes” (Sunday Review, April 10): As Frans de Waal beautifully describes, what looks like intelligence in animals is intelligence. The other critical similarity between species is suffering. The misery animals endure at the hands of human animals is nearly unimaginable; “experts” since Descartes have tried to persuade us that the behaviors of suffering animals — seen in pain, depression, loneliness and heartbreak — represent anything but the feelings we ourselves feel.
http://tinyurl.com/hj7bl3f
Thanks — sort of — for the disturbing Sept. 19 front-page article on small regional zoos [“Roadside dens of grim captivity”]. I have a hard enough time dealing with the way animals are raised and slaughtered in industrial nations. This reminder of what we do to the animals we want to keep alive is even worse because they have no escape but a slow, grim death from neglect, torment and depression. Such activity should be fiercely regulated or, better yet, banned.
http://tinyurl.com/ouesk6f
